“Polluters, pay up!” and “trillions, not billions!” chanted activists on Finance Day this morning at COP29 in Baku.
While holding up a 10m-long ‘invoice’ and banners, activists from ActionAid, APMDD, CAN, and DCJ, called on Global North governments to agree to a strong climate finance goal of trillions a year in public funds.
The activists said there can be no more delay in providing climate finance for vulnerable communities that continue to pay the price of a climate crisis caused by the emissions of rich countries.
Teresa Anderson, the Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid International, said:
“The time for excuses is up. Developed countries simply need to own up for the harm they have caused. It is absurd that people in the Global South who have done little to cause the crisis have been forced to bear the costs of climate destruction unleashed by richer countries.
The giant invoice that we displayed today clearly itemizes the costs of loss and damage, adaptation, and mitigation already being borne by developing countries. If developing countries want to avert runaway climate breakdown, they need to repay the debt owed to the Global South.”
Speaking after the action, other climate activists said frontline countries were being pushed to the brink of collapse due to rich, polluting countries’ continued inaction and refusal to provide grant-based public climate finance.
Sylvia Kijangwa, a youth climate activist from Tanzania, who attended the action, said:
“In my country, women and young girls are increasingly forced to walk long distances in search of water, putting them at risk of attacks by wildlife and abuse at water wells. This Finance Day, we demand justice for these women who come from countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis. Our children are suffering from malnutrition due to the food crisis as empty promises become the norm. COP29 is the right time to provide finance for the costs of climate impacts that we are still paying.”
Nura Mohamed, the Program Manager of ActionAid Somaliland, who also attended the action, said:
“Women and girls in Somaliland cannot wait any longer as major polluters continue to evade accountability for the climate debts owed to communities devastated by climate change. For women and girls, the impacts are severe – droughts endanger livelihoods, and the resulting economic hardships fuel surges in gender-based violence and FGM/C.
The time for delay is over. With climate shocks threatening our very survival, we are now demanding climate finance in the trillions, not the billions.”
Ends
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Notes to editors:
The full photo collection from the action is available here.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 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.