COP27 Activists to UN: Stand for Just Transition, Not 'More Net-Zero Nonsense'

Frontline climate campaigners on Wednesday reiterated demands for a just transition to a post-carbon economy and for eschewing false solutions to a worsening planetary emergency as the activists prepare to travel to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt later this week.

"The world needs funding for real solutions like just transition, climate reparations, and self-determination of Indigenous and frontline communities."

The Just Transition Alliance, along with Central Florida Jobs with Justice, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, and United Steelworkers Local 675 will take a delegation of community organizers to participate in COP27, which begins Sunday in the Sinai resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh.

Delegation members include rank-and-file leaders from Indigenous, Black, Brown, migrant, and poor white communities that have experienced the storms, floods, fires, droughts, pollution, and pandemic that are all linked to human-caused climate change.

"The just transition worker delegation will bring the voices of workers from different sectors of the economy, and that is exciting because we will have the opportunity to strategize together about how to build solidarity among workers and build a collective analysis to share with our communities," Edgar Franks, an organizer with Familias Unidas por la Justicia, said in a statement.

Just Transition Alliance executive director Jose Bravo asserted that "this is a critical moment to come together and force state representatives at the U.N. to center the vision, voices, and priorities of those workers and communities who are first and most impacted by climate change so that we can effectively reduce both climate pollution and the direct harm faced by people everywhere."

"Beware of corporate co-optation of the U.N. agenda," he added, arguing that "just transition principles require community-driven solutions which are the opposite of all these 'net-zero' scams proposed at the COP."

Central Florida Jobs with Justice Organizer Paula Munoz said that "climate impact will always be felt strongest by the most vulnerable communities and that includes immigrants who are forcibly having to uproot their lives to survive. We need to understand how climate is deeply tied to migration and develop infrastructure to create resilient communities in the face of climate disaster."

Ananda Lee Tan, strategy adviser for Just Transition Alliance, explained that the activists are going to COP27 "to draw a clear line in the sand between just transition strategies led by frontline communities and workers on one side, and corporate climate schemes such as [carbon capture and storage], bioenergy, nuclear power, forest carbon offsets, and hydrogen fuels on the other."

"The world needs funding for real solutions like just transition, climate reparations, and self-determination of Indigenous and frontline communities," he added, "and the U.N. needs to stop subsidizing more net-zero nonsense!"