The heat is on to deal with climate change
NEWSLETTER, May 2024—CCI to host Interparliamentary Exchange; CCL advocacy model spreading in France; How to run the Loss and Damage Fund; Bonn meetings: All can enjoy benefits of climate value.
As summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, unbearable heat is once again assaulting humans and disrupting lives in many parts of the world. In Delhi, India, temperatures soared to 47.4°C (117°F), forcing school closures. In Mexico, where a third of the country experienced highs of 45°C (113°F), 138 howler monkeys fell out of trees and died from the heat. Half of Pakistan’s schoolchildren stayed home for a week as temperatures climbed to 46°C (111°F). There’s a limit to the amount of heat the human body can withstand before damaging the brain and other organs, in some cases leading to death. As global temperatures rise and extend the duration of heat waves, hundreds of millions of people could find themselves living in places that are simply uninhabitable. With the consequences of climate change being visited on more and more people, pressure is building on nations to prioritize efforts to reduce the heat-trapping emissions at the root of the problem. Citizens have an important role to play in steering their governments toward policies that will preserve a livable world, and CCI is helping them to find their voice.
CCI to host Interparliamentary Exchange
The policies and programs needed to fight climate change — carbon pricing, climate-smart agriculture, eliminating deforestation, clean energy support — must be enacted by the legislatures of nations throughout the world. It makes sense, therefore, for the legislators of those countries to meet and discuss best practices and policies with the aim of international cooperation that can hasten the restoration of a stable climate. With that objective in mind, Citizens’ Climate International will convene the first Interparliamentary Exchange during the annual Citizens’ Climate conference in Washington, D.C., June 8-11. Interest has already been expressed by legislators in several African countries.
IPE24 will provide an opportunity for climate-interested lawmakers to meet with peers, share experiences, learn together and engage with stakeholders and institutions. The goal is to advance discussion on how countries can build climate value together for the benefit of people, local and national economies and the planet. Key objectives for the Exchange will be multilateral climate cooperation, Good Food Finance, Capital to Communities and climate income.
CCL advocacy model spreading in France
The model for citizen empowerment and advocacy that Citizens’ Climate uses was developed in the U.S. in the 1980s by Sam Daley-Harris when he launched RESULTS, an organization focused on ending hunger and poverty. Sam wrote a book about this approach — Reclaiming Our Democracy — which chronicles the breakthroughs people have made with transformational advocacy and provides a how-to for being effective change agents. The essential elements for success: form a group that meets regularly and support each other to take action; develop and practice short “laser talks” about your issue; write to elected officials and meet with them in person; work with media to get letters to the editor, opinion columns and news articles published about your issue.
Marin Chaveyriat in CCL France recently reread Sam’s book and was inspired to organize a series of group start workshops. “We only have like one big chapter around Paris,” said Marin, and by forming other chapters around the country — he’s aiming for five to ten — CCL France will be able to exert more influence in the French Parliament. With an updated Emissions Trading System in Europe on the horizon, Marin said CCL France would launch a campaign to support climate income to give carbon pricing revenue back to the people. They’re also planning a national lobby day in October. If the new chapters are up and running by then, Parliament won’t know what hit them.
How to run the Loss and Damage Fund
Last December, at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, nations of the world announced that the long-awaited Loss and Damage Fund will soon become operational to provide much-needed help to developing countries dealing with the impact of climate change. Since then, questions have arisen as to how the fund will operate and how nations will participate. A recent brief from the Loss and Damage Collaboration, co-authored by CCI board member Dr. Isatis M. Cintron-Rodriguez, attempts to answer those questions. The brief — “The Loss and Damage Fund: A Participation Blueprint” — underscores the necessity for robust, inclusive mechanisms to ensure meaningful participation of all rights holders, particularly those in the most vulnerable situations.
Some of the participation principles highlighted in the Blueprint:
Participation should be inclusive and non-discriminatory, bringing in marginalized groups that often face intersecting forms of discrimination.
Rights holders must have full access to information about operations, decision-making processes.
Participation should prioritize equity, ensuring that support is directed where it is most needed and that it advances substantive equality.
Participation should emphasize collaboration between affected communities, other rights holders such as Indigenous Peoples, women and diverse gender groups, and children and youth, and governments, civil society, and the private sector.
Isatis provides more details about the Blueprint in a blog posted on CCI’s website.
Bonn meetings: Cooperation needed for all to enjoy benefits of climate value
With COP29 coming up in Azerbaijan in November, thousands of representatives from nations around the world will gather in Bonn, Germany, this June to set the agenda for November’s meeting. Issues under discussion at the Bonn conference — known at SB60 — will include climate finance, increasing climate ambition among nations, adaptation plans and accelerating climate action through a just transition. In a new blog post, CCI Executive Director Joe Robertson shares his thoughts on SB60 and the opportunity to increase climate value, which will lead to a more resilient and robust global economy.
As Joe writes, the economies of all nations have been diminished by the impact of climate chaos — damage from extreme weather, rising insurance rates, food shortages from drought and flooding, wildfires that consume large swaths of land and choke people with smoke. Decisions about where to invest resources, therefore, must be made with an eye toward how those investments will improve climate value. Greater cooperation in the financial, public and private sectors is needed to stabilize at-risk nations being pummeled by the effects of our changing climate. CCI suggests several approaches to unlock the climate value economy: effective and just carbon pricing, accounting for the cost of pollution-driven climate disruption, investing in nature and resilient food systems, and financial relief and assistance for nations struggling with climate-related disasters.
Updates
Citizens’ Climate Lobby Germany met in Berlin, and after a day of workshops, they held 25 meetings with members of the Bundestag. The big topic was climate income to relieve the anticipated burden of the EU’s new Emissions Trading system for the heating and transport sector. More in this report.
CCL Tokyo is working to get Japan to join Canada’s Global Carbon Pricing Challenge. Having published CCI’s piece about the Challenge on their website, they plan to meet with newspaper editors to enlist support for the Challenge.
CCL UK, in response to the snap election coming up on July 1, plans to canvas door-to-door, asking people to vote and attend the The Restore Nature Now march in London on June 22, which aims to be the UK’s biggest gathering for nature and the climate.
In Africa, CCI volunteers urged their governments to join Canada’s Global Carbon Pricing Challenge and suggested that national delegations attending the SB60 meeting in Bonn engage with the Canadian delegation about the challenge.
CCI Africa Regional Coordinator David Michael Terungwa participated in the UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi ahead of the Summit of the Future, which will take place at UN headquarters in New York this September.
CCI volunteers in Adamawa State, Nigeria (above), met with the Honourable Yohanna Sahabo Jauro, chairman of House Environment Committee, to lobby for the fast track passage of the Adamawa State Climate Change Policy, which was introduced in early May and initiated by our volunteers.
A new World Bank report on carbon pricing offers the encouraging news that in the past decade the percentage of greenhouse gas emissions covered by pricing instruments has risen from 7 percent to nearly 25 percent. However, the report, “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2024,” also says “higher pricing and wider coverage are going to be essential to really unlock the potential of carbon pricing.”
When CCL Canada goes to lobby in Ottawa on June 4, they’ll be asking their parliamentarians to Dream No Small Dreams, urging them to get “on track to meet our targets by strengthening, protecting, and fine-tuning existing climate policies.” Can’t come? You can stream some of the sessions online. Register here.
Coming up
Get-To-Know-Us: Join us to learn how you can help drive evidence-based and socially just climate action on one of three calls around Wednesday, June 19. In 2024, the agenda was revamped to include an introduction to the EnROADS policy simulator and a primer on redirecting financial flows. Register here.
Global climate leaders are invited to our monthly CCI Global Check-In Calls on Tuesday, June 11. Check your emails, global leaders! This month, our focus is on "Canada's Global Carbon Pricing Challenge". We will provide resources for you to take action that include: sending a personalized letter to your politicians and pitching an Op-ed to newspapers ahead of the G7 meeting in June to address the Challenge.
The Citizens’ Climate conference and lobby day in Washington, D.C., takes place June 8-11. Registration for the in-person event is closed, but you can register for the live stream of sessions happening June 9 and 10.