What it takes for climate action to work: World Environment Day 2022

 What it takes for climate action to work: World Environment Day 2022.

To commemorate this year’s world environment day, I Lead Climate Action Initiative has started a campaign of “Beyond Environment Day.” We interviewed four well known environmentalists from different parts of the world. This includes; Micheal Gerrard,  Sherilyn Macgregor, Tamara Toles O’ Laughlin and Saleemul Huq. Of which all of these guests are on the same page of climate justice for all. At this age and time, I don’t want to believe that we don’t have the solution in solving the climate crisis; rather we are not making use of the solution because we want to make profit over the people. That is why we are not doing enough yet in addressing the climate change crisis. Also, while trying to save the planet we also need to care for one another. Sometimes I wonder how many Conference of Parties (COP) we need before we address the climate crisis. Don’t we think that these negotiations are taking longer time than the real actions? We have a list of commitments at COP but how far have we gone in achieving it?

Sherilyn, a reader in environmental politics at the University of Manchester is of the opinion that climate change is gendered and gender inequality is driven by care inequality hence the need of research on the care and climate nexus just like the report she co-authored. Because people are displaced the condition of care becomes unstable and also the distribution of work becomes affected; one of the coping strategies is to migrate therefore leaving behind women and girls to take on a greater share of care work with great emphasis on adaptation and mitigation to take into account care. Therefore, care has to be gender neutral.

Likewise, a foremost environmental lawyer in the U.S and the director of the groundbreaking Sabin Center for Climate Change Law during the conservation with them stated that the Paris agreement still remains a voluntary commitment so it allows inaction and there is a need for mechanism to be put in place to checkmate “progress.”

First cop should be the people’s co because the people make the party. Once we place the people over the parties then we will make head way

According to Saleemul Huq, one of our guests; he mentioned the fact that we are in the era of loss and damage; every country will be impacted by the climate crisis. COP27 is an African COP, another chance to make climate justice a reality. COP26 is an Africa COP doesn’t mean that Africans should be left to deal with the crisis alone. "There are different agreements in every Conference of Parties and also making the commitments a reality is what makes climate action progress”. Invariably, when we don’t meet up with our commitments, loss and damage becomes inevitable. In his opinion, there are three strategies to adopt this includes; a common agenda, being united by getting allies of the developed countries to hold their country accountable and thirdly through our homework through accountability.

I also asked Tamara, what are the biggest disruptions toward meeting climate targets? She mentioned the fact that the number drivers of climate change is emission, the focus of net zero emission rather than zero emission and lack of decision making. She further buttressed that carbon credit is not a workable solution; “there are no market based solutions that should allow us to pollute at the rate we are doing”. So we really have to be careful about the technology that we employ.

Check out other interviews available on our YouTube channel.

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