Reflecting on Week 1 of COP28, ActionAid International’s Global Lead on Climate Justice, Teresa Anderson, said,
“The Global Stocktake was designed to be the report card that grades global climate action since the Paris Agreement was signed 7 years ago. Its assessment is quietly devastating. A C-minus grade on performance would be too kind. The frankly pathetic action since Paris is already resulting in floods, droughts, cyclones, heatwaves, ocean warming and catastrophic crop failures. Billions of lives are at stake.
The question now is what the world decides to do with that horrific assessment. If we don’t do something very different, and very soon, we will push the planet to the brink. It’s clear that the world needs COP28 to agree to phase out fossil fuels, with the richest countries taking the most urgent action, and providing support so that lower income countries can leapfrog the fossil fuel era.
The finance piece is particularly important because developing countries are understandably hesitant to be burdened with global targets that they can’t afford to carry out. The only sensible way to break the deadlock is for rich countries like the EU to put their money where their mouths are, and package fossil fuel and renewable energy targets along with real finance and different timelines for lower income countries.”
Ends
For media requests, please email Christal.James@actionaid.org or call 704 665 9743.
Spokespeople are available:
- Brandon Wu is currently here in the U.S. and available for interviews.
- Teresa Anderson is at COP28 and available for interviews and media engagements.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 15 million people living in more than 40 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.
