climate change

By various - Transnational Institute, November 30, 2023

By Ben Crawford and David Whyte - Institute of Employment Rights: Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, November 23, 2023

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Co-authors of the report, David Whyte, Queen Mary University of London and Ben Crawford, The London School of Economics, argue that the transition away from a carbon-based economy relies on the collective action of workers and their organisations, challenging an economic system focused on extracting value at any cost. While the primary analysis addresses the British context, the authors acknowledge the global nature of ecological sustainability and its transformation of social existence both within and outside the workplace.

Focusing on the economic sphere of production as the engine of climate change, the authors contend that the future of the planet relies heavily on workers' power and collective action. Contrary to decisions made in boardrooms and cabinets, they stress that a sustainable transition depends on workers and their communities organising a new social and economic system.

Co-author of report Professor David Whyte, and Director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University of London explains: “Time is running out for us. We don’t have time to wait politely until employers decide to do the right thing. This is why a transition to a low carbon economy has to be led by workers taking action in their workplaces. A sustainable planet has to be based on sustainable jobs and sustainable ways of working and living.”

Trade unions, historically not prioritising climate change in bargaining, have a rich history of environmentalism and struggles against the commodification of labour. The pamphlet argues for a "secret solidarity" between workers and nature, emphasising the shared interest in slowing down production processes causing social and environmental harm.

To achieve a transition at the necessary scale and pace, the pamphlet proposes priorities for the trade-union movement:

1. Empowering Members: Workers must put climate change on an industrial footing, building a grassroots power base through coordinated workplace representatives and political education.
2. Integrating Climate Bargaining: Climate bargaining should be integrated into campaigns for employment rights, demanding a statutory basis for the right to bargain on climate and ecology.
3. Allocating Resources: Trade unions must allocate greater resources to climate campaigning, countering the false dichotomy between jobs and a green economy and advocating for public ownership of key sectors.
4. Engaging Globally: Unions should organise and recruit along global supply chains, recognising the need for international coordination and bargaining.

The report concludes by urging a transformative approach to just transition, where workers and trade unionists rethink the production and purpose of value, ensuring products and services align with socially useful and sustainable goals. The call is clear: workers must harness their collective power to lead the way towards a low-carbon economy.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By staff - La Via Campesina, November 22, 2023

(Bagnolet: November 24, 2023) In response to the genocidal war being waged on the people of Palestine, we, La Via Campesina, reiterate our steadfast solidarity with the peasants, fisherfolk and working families of Palestine. Many of them dedicate themselves daily to the realization of Peasants Rights and Food Sovereignty, engage in heroic acts such as planting their lands, caring for their orchards, fishing in their rivers and sea, and organizing themselves within the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a longstanding member of La Via Campesina.

There are no words to describe the pain and the heartbreak felt within all of La Via Campesina with each life lost, each child maimed and orphaned, each home and hospital destroyed, each farm and field abandoned for fear of death by air raids in Gaza or armed emboldened settlers across the West Bank. This illegal Israeli occupation that has lasted far too long now carries out what one UN official described as a “textbook case of genocide”.

Over 13,500 civilians have been killed, at the time of writing this press release, and the numbers of lost souls continue to increase. The majority of the casualties are women and children. Another 3,000 missing trapped under the rubble. A ceasefire is imperative to prevent further horrors. It is our duty as social movements, organizations, and individuals within society to globalize the struggle and solidarity, and put to an end these shameful crimes that do not lead to peace and undermine sovereignty, destroying the future of generations.

By staff - 350, November 22, 2023

With just days to go until Cop28, we are launching a landmark report to highlight the need for massive investment in renewable energy sources rooted in justice. “Power Up for Climate Justice: Financing and Implementing a Global Renewables Target” makes it clear: an agreement to triple renewable energy capacity to over 11,000 gigawatts by 2030 is poised to take center stage at COP28.

But such a target will only deliver for climate justice if it is accompanied by a robust energy package that includes finance for the Global South and financial system reform. 

It is also imperative that a target be accompanied by a binding commitment in the COP28 final text to phase out fossil fuels by 2050. Both the scaling up of renewable energy capacity and the phase out of fossil fuels must be anchored with concrete processes and resources for their implementation.

Earlier this year, G20 leaders acknowledged that a yearly investment of $4 trillion by 2030 is required to finance the global energy transition. But across the Global South outside of China, we are confronted with a stark reality: investment in renewable energy has remained more or less flat since the Paris Agreement.

COP28 must underpin the tripling of renewables with tangible political commitments and processes to unlock finance: debt cancellation at scale, $100 billion in concessional finance, and $200 billion in grants yearly.

The good news is, this is all possible. 350.org’s Power Up for Climate Justice report presents a roadmap for unlocking the finance to make a global renewable energy target at COP28 a significant milestone for the climate. 

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By staff - Equidem, November 20, 2023

Workers at the heart of the United Arab Emirates's renewable and gig sectors, and at the site that will host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) have left homes in Africa and Asia because of climate change only to be subjected to physical abuse, heat stress, exploitation and discrimination, a new report from Equidem reveals. Serious labour violations have taken place at the site of COP28, Expo City, as well as at five renewable energy firms, including Siemens Energy. 

Based on correspondence with 248 workers, and interviews with 102, the expansive report offers unprecedented insight into the renewables, construction, security, and delivery sectors in the UAE, shedding light on both industrial and service sector working conditions for 9 million migrant workers. 

The shining facilities at Expo City Dubai boast internationally lauded solar and wind parks and a booming local gig economy. Underneath that cheerful exterior, however, women and men from some of the poorest countries on earth are falling victim to an unjust transition: Migrant workers from Africa and Asia are being subjected to serious human rights abuses in a nation whose oil and gas-powered economy is at the heart of the planet’s climate crisis. 

“Hosting this peak global conference in a climate and rights abusing state was bad enough. Equidem’s research starkly reveals that the UAE is failing on almost every metric of the UN’s own human rights benchmarks for addressing climate change through the COP process,” said Mustafa Qadri, CEO of Equidem. 

Abuses include workplace violence, wage theft, working in extreme heat and other occupational health and safety risks, nationality-based discrimination, exploitative hiring practices, understaffing and overwork, lack of opportunities for promotion, overcrowded accommodations, inadequate food allowances, and inadequate channels for workers to seek relief from these violations. 

Investigations by Equidem were carried out between February and October 2023 at Expo City Dubai and in the renewables and delivery sectors, including at Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, Al Dhafra Solar Power Project, Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Plant, Sir Bani Yas Wind Farm Project; and in the delivery sector in the UAE. 

• Together, 57% of the migrant workers interviewed come from climate impacted areas of Asia and Africa.
• 41 % of the workers reported nationality-based discrimination.
• 77.% of the workers in renewable sector reported living in overcrowded accommodations, with up to 20 people in a room fit for six or fewer workers.
• 83% of the African and Asian workers interviewed reported being unable to afford nutritious and healthy food.
• 40% of the workers said they were skipping meals.

Equidem’s research found that African and Asian workers have migrated for employment based upon climate impacts in their own country, and then find employment in the industrial and service sectors in the UAE. These migrant workers are doubly impacted by the global climate crisis—they migrate in response to climate impacts and find employment in exploitative industrial and service contexts where they work long hours in extreme heat. These rights violations take place against a backdrop of racially delineated exclusion from labour rights protections, denial of freedom of association, and authoritarian suppression of dissent in the UAE. 

Download a copy of this publication here (Link).

By Kevin Krajick - Columbia Climate School, November 20, 2023

A global study of major crops has found that farmworkers are being increasingly exposed to combinations of extreme heat and humidity during planting and harvest seasons that can make it hard for them to function. Such conditions have nearly doubled across the world since 1979, the authors report, a trend that could eventually hinder cultivation. The most affected crop is rice, the world’s number one staple, followed closely by maize. As temperatures rise, the trend has accelerated in recent years, with some regions seeing 15-day per-decade increases in extreme humid heat during cultivation seasons.

The study was just published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.

“If this affects humans’ ability to grow food, that’s serious,” said lead author Connor Diaz, who did the research as a Columbia University undergraduate student with scientists at the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The global food chain is all connected, and the danger is, this will impact crop production.”

By Tina Vásquez - Prism, November 15, 2023

At a small press conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Nov. 3, farmworkers, activists, and advocates gathered to honor the dead. 

Steps away from the state’s Department of Agriculture, farmworker advocates transformed Bicentennial Plaza into a public ofrenda for Día de los Muertos that included images of farmworkers who recently died in the line of work—including José Arturo González Mendoza. The 30-year-old and most of the other men honored were young, fit, and in the prime of their lives—factors that make little difference when the body is exposed to extreme temperatures for long periods while deprived of water, shade, and rest. 

A tobacco worker who spoke at the event said he was there to support his colleagues who died. 

“We cannot lose any more lives,” he said. It was both a plea for help and a demand.

At one point during the press conference, an organizer yelled, “Ni una vida más,” or not one more life. The crowd followed suit, their chants bouncing off the walls of the North Carolina State Capitol and legislative buildings. 

But would the state agencies and elected officials in North Carolina’s center of power heed their call? 

By staff - La Via Campesina, November 3, 2023

On the 11th of October, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution to establish a Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. This resolution (A/HRC/54/L.11), tabled by the Plurinational State of Bolivia and supported by other members, including Cuba, Costa Rica, South Africa, Gambia, Paraguay, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, and Luxembourg, was adopted at the 54th session of the Council in Geneva, with an overwhelming majority, with 38 out of the 47 members supporting it.

The group, which will be established for a period of three years, will consist of five independent experts, with balanced geographical representation, to be appointed by the Human Rights Council at its fifty-fifth session.

This marks a great leap forward in meaningfully translating the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) into pragmatic public policies at the national and local levels.

As the resolution rightly notes, ‘the UNDROP is an important recognition of the past, present, and future contributions of peasants and other people working in rural areas in all regions of the world to development and to conserving and improving biodiversity, which constitutes the basis of food and agricultural production throughout the world, and their contribution to ensuring the right to adequate food and food security, which is fundamental to attaining the internationally agreed development goals, including those in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’.

The 28 specific articles within UNDROP offer a much-needed framework for governments worldwide to craft national and state-level policies that genuinely support and strengthen local food production and empower local food producers. UNDROP lays down the pathway to fight against hunger, protect and nourish biodiversity, and preserve cultural heritage. It forms the basis for advocating food sovereignty, agroecology, climate justice, agrarian reform, and human rights.

Hunger, like poverty, is still predominantly a rural problem. It is also ironic that in the rural population, it is those who produce food who suffer disproportionately. Eighty percent of people suffering from hunger live in rural areas, particularly in developing countries, and 50 percent are small-scale and traditional farm-holders, as well as subsistence peasants and other people working in rural areas, and they are especially vulnerable to food insecurity, malnutrition, discrimination, and exploitation.

It is this difficult reality that prompted the majority of countries in the Global South to overwhelmingly support the adoption of the Declaration in 2018 at the UN General Assembly in New York, with 121 nations voting in favour. Notably, 54 countries abstained from voting. In essence, 90% of the world’s nations either supported or did not oppose the need for a global framework that addresses the concerns and aspirations of billions of small-scale food producers.

However, like many UN Declarations, even after five years, UNDROP has yet to meaningfully influence national food and agriculture policies because it is not legally binding on the member states of the United Nations to implement it. This is why the resolution for a UN Working Group is all the more important in facilitating mechanisms that encourage member states to frame national policies based on the framework this Declaration provides.

By staff - La Via Campesina, November 2, 2023

On 27th October 2023, ESAFF Uganda, through the ESAFF Women Forum together with partners, organised the 5th Women in Agriculture (WiA) Conference, an annual event that empowers small-scale women in agriculture. This year, with support from Oxfam in Uganda, Humundi and GIZ, the 5th National Women in Agriculture (WiA) Conference was conducted under the theme “Equal access and control of agricultural resources for all”. Small-scale women from 54 districts under the ESAFF Women Forum, a platform set up by ESAFF Uganda to purposefully position women’s issues for policy and practice change in Uganda. Apart from small-scale farmers, the conference also attracted local leaders, investors, and farmer leaders, among others. The discussions focused on the constraints they face in accessing equal rights of agricultural resources and what should be done for them to have equal access.

The National Chairperson ESAFF Uganda Mr Hakim Baliraine, acknowledged that 88% of women in Uganda engage in agriculture, and from the majority of the ESAFF Uganda membership districts, women have been empowered in different capacities to enable them to achieve equal access to agricultural resources. “Over 70% of the women empowered by ESAFF Uganda know their land rights, and they have come to appreciate and believe that the resilient way of farming is agroecology. Women small-scale farmers can now fight for their resources for production.” Mr. Hakim added.

During the conference, women small-scale farmer leaders highlighted key agricultural resource challenges, including access to land, access to water, access to quality seeds and access to finance, among others.