The biosphere thrives or fails according to climate conditions, so everyone living on Earth is a climate stakeholder. Nearly 200 nations agreed 3 decades ago to prevent dangerous human-caused interference with the climate system. Now, we are living in a climate-altered future. We are working to bring stakeholders’ insights into global climate talks, and to build political will locally and nationally, around the world. Every person has a role to play, and we will be focusing on empowerment and action, in local and global context, for the first CCI Month of Action.

June is a Month of Action for citizen volunteer policy advocates

At Citizens’ Climate International, we believe everyone’s chances of success, including governments and industry, are enhanced when the design of our world is shaped by the needs and aspirations of all people. This is why Citizens’ Climate volunteer chapters around the world will organize and support actions on five levers of political will, throughout the month of June:

1. Meeting with public officials

2. Media relations

3. Grassroots engagement

4. Grasstops engagement

5. Local chapter & volunteer development

This Month of Action is not only about advocacy and outreach. It is also an opportunity for local volunteer chapters to focus on volunteer training and development. We must learn from each other, keep up with current events, and empower our new members to be effective advocates and part of a multifaceted team. To support our volunteers globally we are are conducting three 30-minute volunteer training sessions on the 1st three Thursdays in June.

Learn more

CCI co-convenes Climate Diplomacy Workshops with the Fletcher School

Citizens’ Climate International and the Fletcher School at Tufts University are teaming up to host a series of trainings for diplomats and observers, to help them enter the negotiating process with enhanced understanding, ready to work effectively. This three-part cycle of trainings aims to provide participants with the ability to enter the UNFCCC venue with the awareness, references, tools, and adaptive capacity required to keep their footing on uneven ground where new developments constantly threaten to disrupt well-founded strategic priorities.

The three sessions will be:

1. The Process – Tuesday, May 31

2. The Stakes – Wednesday, June 1

3. Navigating Complexity – Thursday, June 2

Learn more

CCL Canada wove dreams of a better climate future on Parliament Hill

From May 1 to May 3  Citizens' Climate Lobby Canada held a conference and lobbying days in Ottawa. The theme of their conference was both brave and radical: "Keeping it Polite". On Tuesday, May 3, 2022, CCL Canada co-hosted the building of a Giant Dreamcatcher Parliament Hill. In the midst of a very light drizzle of rain, Indigenous artist William Morin shared teachings, facilitated conversations and with his helpers, built a giant Dreamcatcher on the West Lawn of Parliament Hill.

Over twenty people attended, including seven Members of Parliament with all four national political parties in the circle including Marc G. Serré (cohost), Anna Roberts, Carol Hughes, Charlie J. Angus, Elizabeth May, Laurel Collins, and Viviane Lapointe. All the videos from the conference can be found here and the webpage dedicated to this event is here. The rest of May was a month of lobbying for Canadian CCL volunteers. A short but full report will be part of the International plenary on June 13 at the CCL USA conference.

On May 3, after the Dreamcatcher event, long-time CCLer, and the event photographer Keith McNeil (ClearwaterBC) sent the following email:

Thanks for arranging this morning’s dream catcher event. It was a powerful experience.

The thought has occurred to me that there is a connection between Indigenous knowledge and carbon fee and dividend—equal sharing. When a hunter brought in an animal he had killed, it would be shared equally with every member of the band. It seems to me that equal sharing is one of the most important differences between Indigenous and modern societies.

The dividend in carbon fee and dividend is a return to that.

Keith

Rachel Kyte tells CCI Monthly Call leaders must address poly-crisis sustainably

The Citizens’ Climate International special guest speaker for May was Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Dean Kyte is also serving as co-chair of the Steering Committee for the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative and as a member of the Steering Committee of the United Nations Global Crisis Response Group for Food, Energy, and Finance and co-chair of its Energy workstream.

Dean Kyte put the moment in context, saying:

“We are paying the price for decades of underinvestment in infrastructure. The economic consequences of pandemic were already severe, with developing countries facing liquidity stress and debt distress, with severely disrupted supply chains, rising energy prices and food prices…”

Her core message to Citizens’ Climate volunteer policy advocates was that we have wasted too much time with inaction, and now we need to push through multiple crises, making sure always to insist on high integrity and accountability. We need to demand, she said, that leaders “be able to manage the poly-crisis” defining so many decisions of our moment.

Read the full report

FORMAL SUBMISSIONS & POLICY BRIEFS

CCI brings calls for participatory process, high integrity green finance to UNFCCC talks

The SB56 mid-year U.N. Climate Change negotiations open on Monday, June 6, in Bonn, Germany. The negotiations will be the first official action toward new legal decisions on the outcomes of the COP26 Conference in Glasgow, last year. With the IPCC having reported on pervasive climate disruption, worsening impacts and vulnerability, and the need for accelerated decarbonization everywhere, the talks need to invest in front line communities and regions and decisively move the world away from future fossil fuel investment.

Citizens’ Climate International has issued detailed briefs to the process, on:

• Non-market approaches to cooperative decarbonization, under Article 6, Paragraph 8 of the Paris Agreement

• Addressing the Glasgow Work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment in-session technical workshop and short-term Action Plan

• Civil Society Observer recommendations for Arrangements for Intergovernmental Meetings

We have also reported on:

• Connections between Ocean Health, Climate Resilient Development and Nature-positive finance, for the UN Ocean Conference dialogues

• Ways in which Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement can be an engine for food security

• Financial Integration and Inclusion Needed to Get Best results from Glasgow Outcomes

• Open societies as key for achieving a better future for all of humanity