In Gaza’s shadow, a climate summit on war and peace
DUBAI, UAE-Protest chants at this week’s global climate summit have been dominated by calls for a cease-fire as well as for cutting carbon. People are focused not just on 1.5 – the threshold degrees, in Celsius, of warming set by the Paris Agreement that the world is at risk of overshooting – but also on 14,000, the number of Palestinians reported killed in Gaza.
Activists from as far away as Colombia and the Marshall Islands are setting their eyes on militaries and war along with big oil as major spoilers to climate progress.
In more ways than one, the issue of war and peace has arrived at the United Nations’ annual Conference of Parties (COP) on climate here in Dubai. Simply put, policymakers and activists say conflict and climate can no longer be treated as separate issues in a fragile world reeling from both.
Gaza ever-present
Even as policymakers explore new pathways for peace and progress, the shadow of Gaza looms over COP28.
The end of an Israel-Hamas cease-fire overshadowed the first full day of the conference on Thursday. Mentions of Gaza are ubiquitous in COP28 speeches and side events this week. The Iranian delegation walked out of the talks in protest over Israel’s ongoing participation in the summit.
A World Bank report released here revealed that Gaza is facing increased water scarcity and saltwater intrusion into groundwater due to rising sea levels – increasing poverty levels in the most climate-hit communities prior to the war – a trend that will impact both Palestinian and Israeli lives.
Two hundred justice activists protested in solidarity with Gaza on Sunday, a rare demonstration in tightly controlled UAE that marked the first pro-Palestine protest on Emirati soil in more than a decade.
Wearing white-and-black Palestinian kaffiyehs and carrying banners reading “ceasefire now,” climate activists from Africa, Latin America, Pacific Islands, and Asia chanted, “There is no climate justice without human rights!” Some wept as they read out the names of Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs in Gaza.
The gathering attracted a large crowd among participants and country delegates, some of whom hugged the activists. Others painted murals of Palestinian women at the conference’s women’s pavilion.
Climate activists say ongoing protests and signs of support aim to send the message that global climate progress is inseparable from addressing conflict.
“We are all connected; this is a global village. Just as we want climate justice for our communities in Bangladesh, there must be justice for Palestinians in Gaza,” says Raoman Smita, a Bangladeshi climate justice advocate for the Dhaka-based Global Law Thinkers.
“How can we move forward on climate when there is war? Even on an environmental front, look at all the damage the war in Gaza is doing to the coastline, the water, the pollution from phosphorous bombs,” she said. “Wars don’t just delay climate progress; they make climate disasters worse.”
A coalition of feminist and Indigenous groups protested on Sunday, demanding, “No wars, no warming.” The groups urged governments to “address the elephant in the room” – militaries’ carbon footprint and what the groups claim as diversion of resources to militaries rather than to climate action. ………CONTINUE READING AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR