Page 27 - Islands Business June 2023

Climate Change

WE HAVE RUN OUT OF TIME

WHY PACIFIC FEMINISTS AND CLIMATE JUSTICE ACTIVISTS ARE
BOYCOTTING COP28

By Noelene Nabulivou and Jeshua Hope likely to see their work disproportionately increase. 68% of
Pacific women face gender-based violence at the hands of
DIVA for Equality is part of a growing list of resistance their partners which is double the global average rates, and
movements that are refusing to attend COP28. Working this is likely to increase as severe climate change impacts
against a context of having transgressed six of the known nine lead to increased tensions within communities and homes
planetary boundaries - Pacific Islanders, Indigenous people, where patriarchal systems remain dominant. Around 50%
faith communities, LGBTQI+ people and local communities of women in the Pacific have unmet contraceptive needs,
are unequivocal in stating that we simply do not have time for and in an increasingly chaotic socio-cultural and physical
corporate-captured talk-fests. environment worsened by climate change and disasters, it
In May, the World Meteorological Organisation announced is crucial that Pacific women can equitably negotiate their
that the world is likely to breach global temperatures of 1.5 sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). This
degrees above pre-industrial levels between now and 2027. requires concentrated, long-term and deliberate work to
The chance of this happening? 66%. The chance of at least one address human rights violations and transform gender unjust
of these years being the warmest on record? 98%. social norms.
Against this backdrop, the Stockholm Resilience Centre has And yet, against this terrifying ecocidal backdrop, the
launched a 3.0 version of the Planetary Boundaries model, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
showing that at least six of the nine known processes that (UNFCCC) is hosting the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) -
regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth’s systems arguably the most important climate conference of the year
have been breached. in a country that is simultaneously host to one of the largest
Yet nearly a decade ago, 195 countries gathered in Paris, oil reserves globally as well as one of the world’s leading
and committed to efforts to limit global temperature in- producers of oil, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
crease to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. At In fact, only this May, Al Jazeera reported the UAE Minister
their behest, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of Climate Change and Environment, Mariam Almheiri as
(IPCC) released a report detailing what a world that exceeded saying that “phasing out fossil fuels would hurt countries that
the target of 1.5 degrees would look like. Their predictions either depend on them for revenue or cannot easily replace
were terrifying. Extreme temperature fluctuations, increased hydrocarbons with renewable energy sources”. The Minister
flooding, increased tropical cyclones, increased sea level rise, advocated instead for a phase out of fossil fuel emissions
increased saltwater intrusion, increased damage to infra- through such things as carbon capture and trading - some of
structure, and increased loss of species - among many other the many strategies that many social movements are calling
impacts. out as “false solutions”.
The IPCC in that same report pointed out that vulnerable States like UAE have no intention of transitioning away
populations, particularly Indigenous people and local com- from fossil fuels - they see no future without it. The UAE
munities, were likely to be most impacted by this increase. As announced the appointment of Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the
feminists engaged in gender-just climate change response, we CEO of its state oil and renewable energy companies, the
know that women and girls are disproportionately affected by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), as President of
climate change and that the impacts are not uniform. Various COP28. Consequently, Pacific feminist movements like DIVA for
forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate Equality who have been working in the climate justice space
each other. Climate change risks are acute for Indigenous and and global UNFCCC COP processes for years, in turn confirmed
Afro-descendent women and girls, older women, LGBTQI+ that they will boycott the COP28 climate talks.
people, women and girls with disabilities, migrant women,
and those living in rural, remote, maritime, conflict, occupied The organisation’s Executive Director remarked:
and disaster-prone areas. “There is a point at which the level of corporate interfer-
With the projected increase in global temperature, and ence at UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COPs) makes our
economic and non-economic loss and damage already presence untenable. It is not just that corporations are pres-
experienced by climate frontline people, including in the ent in large numbers, but that those Member States who have
Pacific, women and girls in all their diversity (who are already done the most climate damage, ignore or enable co-option of
performing at least 75% of all unpaid care work globally), are multilateral processes. They are acting for corporations, not

Islands Business, June 2023 27