UNFCCC, COP 25 Review

On 11 December, two and a half days shy of the end of the U.N. Climate change conference in Madrid(COP 25) and minutes before the start of a high-level session, one of the COP’s keynote events in which U.N. Secretary-General António Gutteres would speak in a video conversation with a Spanish astronaut in space, demonstrations broke out by the doors of the main plenary hall where the session would take place.

What started as chants calling for “Climate Justice” and for countries to “step up, pay up” and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions escalated as the media flooded around the activists. As the high-level discussion carried on, the activists were forced outside of the venue by security, which refused to comment for this article. In what a coalition of civil society organizations is calling an “unprecedented crackdown on dissent,” many of the activists and other observers that followed their movements outside were not allowed back into the COP. Some were also stripped of their badges for future attendance.

The demonstrations were the most heated moment of the COP so far and a metaphor for what many are seeing as a growing chasm between climate activists – namely the youth movement, Indigenous communities and environmental defenders – and the decision-makers of chief polluting countries and industry.

 “So I’ve been taking part in these COPs for 25 years, and I’ve never seen the divide between what’s happening on the inside of these walls and what’s happening on the outside so large,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace, earlier during the same day.

Morgan spoke in the same session as Greta Thunberg, who questioned: “How do you respond to the fact that basically nothing is being done about this without feeling the slightest bit of anger?” The stage was soon thereafter joined by other youth activists, who occupied the stage until they were forced to leave.

“So far, being at this COP, I still haven’t seen any outcomes come out of it,” said Alexandra, a 14-year-old climate activist who co-founded of the U.S. Youth Climate Strike. “So far, no action has been taken, and that’s why today, Fridays for Future ended up occupying the main stage here – to really put pressure on our heads of states here.”

Dissent against the fossil fuel industry was also at the core of the day’s demonstrations. “Since the Paris Agreement, global banks have invested USD 1.9 trillion in fossil fuels,” Thunberg noted in her speech.

Reference: Global Landscape Forum