Friends of the Earth`s activists from the five continents and several dozen countries met with representatives of numerous social movements to celebrate the strength of the peoples and reaffirm the need to be united in the struggle for climate justice.
With some 800 bases around the globe, it is no surprise that the U.S. military is the world's biggest consumer of petroleum. What is perhaps more surprising is that this so-called carbon bootprint has been completely exempted from international climate agreements, including the one currently being finalized at COP21 Paris Climate Change Conference.
Parallel to the climate conference in Paris, social movements and allies within the ‘Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles’ discuss climate justice and real solutions to the climate crisis.
A return to public forms of administration in water supplies is a phenomenon that has been spreading globally. Over the past 15 years almost 235 cities around the world, among them Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires and Kuala Lumpur have either terminated or have desisted from renewing the contracts with private concessionary companies. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and the Scandinavian countries, for example, water delivery is, by a tradition, almost 100 percent public.
What if government and corporate elites have given up on stopping climate change and prefer to try to manage its consequences instead? In the weeks running up to the major UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21), this event examined issues raised by a new book, 'The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations are Shaping a Climate-Changed World'
John Hilary, Diana Aguiar and Brid Brennan discuss how we need to move beyond reformist politics in a convergence of citizens, organised citizens, organisations social movements, trade unionists, peasants, women organisations, and indigenous peoples to reclaim sovereignty over the resources of the planet.
