SECAM: “COP27 Must Abandon False Solutions,” SECAM’s Justice and Peace Commission to World Leaders
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) through Justice, Peace and development Commission in their message to world leaders and delegates attending the COP 27, shorthand for 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, have denounced “false solutions that deprive local communities their livelihoods, their land rights and tenure.”
In a communiqué signed by SECAM’s President for Justice, Peace and Development Commission (JPDC), His Eminence Fridolin Besungu Cardinal Ambongo, the collective message to COP27 delegates came as a result of ongoing dialogue with African civil society and grassroots organizations, women’s and farmers’ movements and other faith-based groups gathered in a spirit of “synodality” in a platform called Our Land is Our Life.
“The UNFCCC and COPs have demonstrated to delay, deny, or further kick a way the goal of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius global temperature,” reads an excerpt of the message dated Thursday, November 4, by Cardinal Ambongo who also doubles as the first Vice-President of SECAM and it continues, “Rich nations currency fictitious solutions and pretend to compensate poor communities in Africa.”
“Rich countries push to offset their emissions, while refusing to cut back on their own emissions,” reads part of the message as members of African civil society and grassroots organizations cautions “the COP27 must abandon all false solutions (net zero, failed emissions-trading, offsetting schemes). Governments, civil society, and social movements must join the struggle for a system change and demand real zero, and not net zero.”
In the Thursday statement, SECAM’s Justice and Peace Commission acknowledged that communities are exposed to the climate crisis and the land grabbing that goes hand in hand with “water grabbing, increasing water and soil pollution by pesticides, loss of biodiversity and traditional seeds, as they witness the irreparable destruction of their environment.”
Besides, communities share the experience that as they “claim their rights to land, they are being persecuted, which is leading to more violent conflicts, despair, and instability. Unfortunately, the dignity and shared well-being of women farmers and peasants’ farmers without land experience, coupled with deep inequalities, are compromised.”
Members of African civil society and grassroots organizations called upon delegates attending the ongoing COP27 which began Sunday, November 6 and will close Friday 18, to remember the “calls recently made by local communities in their struggle against large scale land acquisition. “
They promise to “stand in solidarity with all communities and territories affected by land grabs, armed conflicts and resource wars,” emphasizing that, “Climate actions that perpetuate land injustice and further exploitation of natural resources and displacement of communities due to false solutions must make way for equitable and just transition in sectors of agriculture and mining.”
Additionally, the statement reads in parts, “Indigenous communities and their traditional leaders must be the principal dialogue partners when large scale land acquisition projects affecting their land are proposed.”
In conclusion the concerned actors urged the Global North to pay their ecological debt and respectfully use indigenous knowledge to design interventions on the ground that is adopted to the local context.
