We Must Center Gender and Community Rights for Climate Action (Commentary)

Jun 8, 2023 | Coraina de la Plaza and Valentina F. Martínez
View Original

As we head into the mid-year climate talks in Bonn, Germany, the corporate co-opting of the climate agenda has never been starker. Public pressure must be brought to bear on UN member states to reject the corporate-backed focus on carbon removals, offsets, and other false solutions and urgently shift to real, gender-just and rights-based actions capable of tackling the root causes of the climate crisis and securing a livable and sustainable future for all.

Following the last Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27) in Sharm el Sheik, climate talks (SB58) continue in Bonn from June 5-15.

It has been 31 years since the UNFCCC and its sister conventions were established during the Rio Conference in 1992. Since then, emissions have continued to rise, biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented scale, and land degradation and desertification are advancing faster than ever before. This isn’t because we cannot find the solutions to these existential threats, but that corporate co-opting of the climate agenda has systematically and intentionally blocked genuine pathways to a sustainable future.