2023 must be a year of empowerment & acceleration
2023 must be a year of empowerment & acceleration
NEWSLETTER, January 2023—Connect stakeholders to policy processes; Vote4Climate; CCL Mauritius lays out mission; Bretton Woods action team; Livable Future news; Canada report; Resilience Value...
Engaged climate civics is rebellion against despair. Hope alone is not a strategy, but it is the starting point for coordinated and consistent people-centered problem-solving. We are kicking off 2023 with a message of climate hope: together, we can put the tools in place to make the world work for everyone. The hour is late; the challenge is growing; we need everyone to pitch in their time and talent.
Connect people to process to drive systems change
To achieve systems change, we will need integrated and cohesive political will. We need open processes that allow stakeholders to weigh evidence and participate in the design of better and more livable futures for their communities. Abstract policy spaces need the detail of lived experience to shape rooted, practical, and sustainable solutions that benefit people in their everyday lives.
Ongoing, safe and secure public engagement, allows stakeholders to provide critical practical insights about needs, capabilities, and optimal pathways for achieving high ambition goals. This can be the best way to demonstrate viability of climate-resilient development pathways, making clear to development and trading partners the value of new investment in a given country context.
CCI Nigeria co-leads Vote4Climate Campaign
Citizens’ Climate International’s Nigeria chapter joined GIFSEP and other civil society organizations in Nigeria to organize a Vote for Climate campaign. The Vote for Climate campaign is aimed at ensuring that climate change is made a campaign issue ahead of Nigeria’s general elections, which will take place February 25.
Electing climate deniers into political office can have serious detrimental consequences for the future human development and wellbeing of all Nigerians. Fresh in our minds are the recent 2022 floods which caused the death of over 600 Nigerians, displaced millions of people, washing away hundreds of farms, damaging and degrading farm lands, and destroying other critical infrastructure like roads, houses, and the infrastructure for basic services.
As part of the campaign activities David Michael, the Africa Regional Coordinator who leads the campaign alongside Joseph Ibrahim, the Nigeria National chapter lead, were interviewed on Nigeria national television and granted several other TV and radio interviews. They also organized and led street awareness campaigns in different parts of Nigeria and made advocacy visits to two traditional rulers.
Citizens’ Climate Mauritius lays out mission in three tiers of action
Citizens’ Climate volunteers in Mauritius have issued a project report outlining their mission and focus. Citizens’ Climate Lobby Mauritius is coordinated as part of the Halley Movement Coalition—a coalition of charitable organisations working for the welfare of citizens in Mauritius and in the Southern African region. Halley Movement holds consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
The report outlines a “consistently respectful, non-partisan approach to climate education [that] is designed to create a broad, sustainable foundation for climate action across Southern African regions and Indian Ocean Islands” across three tiers of volunteer activity:
Research: To understand and analyse the facts concerning Climate in Southern African Countries and Indian Ocean Islands;
Awareness: Communicate findings to educate the public and engage with key stakeholders to take research findings into policy-making;
Change: Advocate for better climate reform that will benefit Southern African Countries and Indian Ocean Islands, including carbon fee and dividend policies.
CCI starts up Bretton Woods action team
The Bretton Woods institutions—the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund—were established after the Second World War to provide cooperative, global, and ongoing means of support for reducing poverty, investing in economic development, and preventing fiscal collapse of nation states. Now, they are answering calls for reform of their core mission focus and of the way they serve vulnerable countries and value return on investment.
CCI is organizing a focused action team of volunteers, staff, and allies, to coordinate engagement from the grassroots to the senior leadership level, to provide stakeholder input into these reforms.
Mapping safe passage to a livable future
On January 24, in the first global online event for the Livable Future Consultation, we heard from participants that stakeholders can provide insight into impacts and vulnerabilities, as well as locally relevant implementation guidance and performance tracking. This “groundtruthing” function is a natural fit for those affected by policy actions and investments.
Asked what they hope their youngest family members might dream and do in the future, participants called for:
Clean air and a clean and healthy environment;
Reduced violence within and between nations;
Broad and consistent protection of human rights, including the right to advocate for environmental protection and human rights without fear of persecution, retribution or violence;
Rights for nature, including rivers and sensitive ecosystems, to provide more policy capacity for achieving a healthy, clean environment;
Livable cities, served by resilient infrastructure and sustainable supply chains.
We also heard about the long-term need to reorient policy and economics so no money causes climate disruption or harm to nature. And, all of this was situated within an awareness of the responsibility to future generations, to create conditions for livability not only in the nearest future decades, but thousands of years into the future. To achieve this, we heard we will need responsible, inclusive, and cooperative global governance, starting right now and sustained over time.
CCL Canada ‘Standing Our Ground’ Event
On Sunday, January 29, 2023, 26 climate leaders from across Canada met online to celebrate their achievements in 2022 and plan for 2023. With photos, graphs and anecdotes they honoured their history, and celebrated a year of major breakthroughs in 2022.
Then they outlined a plan for 26 National Action Teams to build political will for a liveable world in 2023. Armed with almost 13 years of institutional wisdom, a theory of change and the tools to run productive Action groups, they more than ready to help shift trillions of dollars towards a thriving and equitable planet.
Rebellions are built on hope.
We need to reward investments that lead to good outcomes for people and for nature.
A new brief from CCI and Resilience Intel focuses on the important role Resilience Value, as a multifaceted way of measuring financial and economic value, will play in climate action and sustainable development.
Read this newsletter in a beautiful PDF designed by Duane Saunders.
