Climate and Environment: The new instruments of injustice (EN)

Mordecai Ogada, cologist and executive director of Con- servation Solutions Africa, Kenya.

CLIMATE CHANGE:  A Global Crisis Used as a tool for Oppression
The global climate crisis is beginning to manifest in extreme weather events like floods, droughts and temperature rises all over the world. It is therefore important that the world comes together at this time to meet this new challenge. However, the rate of commercialization ‘climate finance’, carbon trade, carbon offsets, and other financial instruments are overtaking the pace of actual reduction of emissions, which is what the environment needs. In tropical Africa, Asia, and other parts of the Global South, indigenous people are now suffering injustices like dumping of European toxic wastes, displacement of people for carbon trading, displacement of people to create protected areas, and violent law enforcement to ‘protect’ the environment and wildlife. The payment of money of planting of trees does not reduce emissions, which are the source of the crisis. The Cop26 meeting in Glasgow in November 2021 clearly demonstrated the depth of this problem. It resulted in a lot of financial calculations and discussions, but failed to make any concrete commitments on reduction of emissions or reliance on fossil fuels. The success of these financial machinations has created a myth that a clean environment is something that can be bought and paid for instead of achieved through action.