Activists protest at ‘sidelining of social justice’ at UN climate talks

Youth climate activists have called for a global strike on Friday to protest that human rights and social justice have been sidelined at the UN climate talks in Madrid, where governments look set to wrap up two weeks of negotiations without a breakthrough on the pressing issue of greenhouse gas reduction.

Campaigners have been frustrated not only at the slow progress of the talks but also that groups representing women, indigenous people and poor people have struggled to have their voices heard within the conference halls where the official negotiations are taking place, even while 500,000 people took part in a mass protest in the streets outside last Friday.

“Human rights and gender equity are at the heart of what we are talking about on the climate,” said Mary Robinson, former UN high commissioner for human rights and president of Ireland. “This is about people and people’s livelihoods. Gender and social justice have an enormous impact on what people face from climate [breakdown]. If we don’t have these issues included we are going to make enormous mistakes.”

She said progress had been made on a gender action plan that was promised as part of the 2015 Paris agreement, but that some countries were still reluctant to include the language of human rights in official UN outcomes from the talks.

Fridays for Future, the movement that coalesced around the world after Greta Thunberg’s solo school strikes, said the summit “has failed us. On 13 December, local Fridays for Future groups will strike because the outcomes of COP25 [the name for the UN meeting] are not only insufficient, but a painful image of how little the politicians care about the planet.

“We stand in solidarity with indigenous people, people from the global south, and people already suffering from the climate crises.”

For almost three decades, world governments have met every year to forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, every country on earth is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change”, and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in an equitable way. COP stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC.

The main subject up for discussion in 2019 is a provision in the Paris agreement known as article 6, which allows for the use of a global market in carbon to help countries cut emissions and to fund measures that reduce emissions in developing countries.

The negotiations, which run until 13 December, will be led by environment ministers and civil servants, aided by UN officials. Nearly every country is expected to send a voting representative at the level of environment secretary or equivalent, and the big economies will have extensive delegations.

Each of the 196 nations on earth, bar a few failed states, is a signatory to the UNFCCC foundation treaty. The COPs, for all their flaws, are the only forum on the climate crisis in which the opinions and concerns of the poorest country carry equal weight to that of the biggest economies, such as the US and China. Agreement can only come by consensus, which gives COP decisions global authority.

Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent

Scores of activists were temporarily banned from the conference centre after an incident on Wednesday afternoon when police escorted out a group of protesters made up mainly of women and indigenous people from areas affected by climate breakdown, who had staged a brief disruption. On Thursday, the UN allowed them to return. The UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which organises the talks, put out a joint statement with some NGOs saying that after the “unfortunate security incident” all sides had agreed to follow the established guidelines on peaceful demonstrations and respect the need to safeguard all participants.

The UN said: “The UNFCCC secretariat remains committed to the inclusiveness and openness of the process and looks forward to strengthening the working relationship with observer organisations.”

Angela Valenzuela of Fridays for Future, one of the protesters involved, said the actions were an illustration of the difficulties for women, indigenous people and workers, at talks that can seem dominated by government officials and corporate vested interests. She said: “The doors closed in our faces were a very powerful metaphor for what is happening here and what has happened for the last 25 years [of climate negotiations].”

People of colour also faced exclusion, added Ta’Kaiya Blaney, of the Tla’amin Nation in Canada, who was also involved in the protest. “Indigenous people are on the frontline of climate chaos but we contribute far less in emissions than rich countries,” she said.

“We represent areas [such as forests] that absorb carbon [dioxide]. Women of colour are often the most impacted, and we are requesting that these issues such as gender and human rights are raised here. Too often we are on the receiving end of violence at home.”

The Women and Gender Constituency, made up of 29 women’s organisations, drew parallels between what they said was “excessive force and shoving” used by police to eject protesters from the vast conference halls on the outskirts of Madrid, and the risks and violence environmental defenders face. “We want to highlight that women environmental rights defenders continue to be on the front lines to save the planet, especially indigenous, black and those from the global south, and yet are harassed, threatened and persecuted by those in authority in their own countries and elsewhere.”

While protesters were pondering how best to make their point as the Friday evening deadline for the negotiations approached, the conference halls were still thronging with business executives and representatives of corporate groups, many hosting receptions, cocktails and dinners for financial backers, institutions and government officials.

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The talks are taking place in Madrid because the Chilean government, still officially in charge of the conference, had to abandon year-long plans to hold them in Santiago after riots broke out over inequality. A small number of Chilean protesters have made it to the Spanish capital.

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said powerful business interests enjoyed easy access to the talks, and to behind-the-scenes meetings with national delegations. “They are inside government writing the rules, like the fossil fuel industry,” she said.

“They can afford to run these big advertisements and have these meetings. Inside the conference, there is a sense of business-as-usual – that if we tweak things at the edges, we will be fine. But it’s not true. If we want system change, which is what we need, that is not going to come from inside [the conference] – it can only come from outside.”

Some campaigners see capitalism as an inescapable part of the climate crisis, and have argued that free-market-based economics cannot solve the problem it has created. Al Gore, former US vice-president, rejected that view, and said the overthrow of current economics was not necessary to tackle the climate challenge. He said: “We need reforms, there is no question about that. But alternatives to capitalism were characterised by environmental abuses in the 20th century. I think the answer is reform, and not the discarding of capitalism.”

Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Programme, said social justice and development were inseparable from the climate emergency, and that governments needed to regard both in forming plans to tackle the crisis. “Climate change is causing new inequalities,” he said. “But by rebuilding the global economy in a low-carbon fashion, governments could also address issues such as jobs, skills, education, health and social development.”

Related: COP25 climate summit: what happened during the first week?

In putting forward their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scheduled for next year before a crunch climate conference in Glasgow in November, governments should address these issues explicitly, he said. “This is probably the greatest opportunity we have to get investment on the scale that is needed and deliver multiple development benefits at once,” Steiner said. “This is not sorcery – this is intelligent, smart systems planning.”