SEPTEMBER 24 GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE

Fridays for future international movement (FFF) is today leading young climate strikers across the globe to a global climate strike.

Fridays for future international movement (FFF) is today leading young climate strikers across the globe to a global climate strike.

FFF is demanding intersectional climate justice calling upon world leaders to uproot the system. Their message to world leaders is:

1.  The Global North needs to cut emissions drastically by divesting from fossil fuels and ending their extraction, burning, and use. We need concrete plans and detailed annual carbon budgets with roadmaps and milestones to ensure that we get to net zero with justice and equity in the time needed to address climate change.

2. The colonizers of the north have a climate debt to pay for their disproportionate amount of historic emissions and that starts with the increase of climate finance to implement anti-racist climate reparations, the cancellation of debts especially for damage caused by extreme weather events, and providing adaptation funds that serve the communities.

3. Work towards a genuinely global recovery from COVID-19 by ensuring equitable vaccine distribution worldwide and suspending intellectual property restrictions on COVID-19 technologies. This is an essential step towards a global green and just recovery.

4. Recognize the tangibility of the climate crisis as a risk to human safety and secure the rights of climate refugees in international law.

5. Recognize the invaluable impact of biodiversity on indigenous communities’ lives and culture, and commit to make ecocide an international punishable crime.

6. Stop the violence and criminalization against indigenous peoples, small farmers, small fisherfolk, and other environmental and land defenders. Support the work they do. Respect and listen to our defenders.

Their message to everyone across the globe is:

1. MAPA (Most Affected Peoples and Areas) are unheard, not voiceless. They’ve been fighting for their present, not just their future. No one should be a prisoner of injustice. Don’t fight for MAPA, fight ALONGSIDE MAPA. MAPA are not just sad experiences, we must highlight their rich stories of resistance.

2. MAPA countries are not “poor” they are rich with resources but have been historically and systematically oppressed and kept from developing. The Global North leaders have a climate debt to pay to humanity. Urgent climate action and assisting with adaptations is not an “honorable duty” or “solidarity” its reparations for the injustices high-income nations and sectors have caused through their exploitation.

3. MAPA voices must be amplified and centered in our fight for climate justice, otherwise, even if we succeeded in limiting global warming to safe levels for life on earth, marginalized communities would still be sacrificed and left behind, thus only part of the problem would be solved.

4. Now more than ever, we have to join the masses and follow the lead of environmental defenders, workers, and those most ignored. Join in their struggle for decolonization, justice, and autonomy. We must remember that our liberations are tied together.

Fridays For Future or FFF, is a youth-led and organized global climate strike movement that started in 2018. You can find all the details on www.fridaysforfuture.org/september24 and take action.