On September 25th 2021, the NYCI-led Future Generations Climate Justice Project together with Friends of the Earth Ireland held an event with the aim of explaining how the UN climate talks work, who is involved, and how young peoples’ voices fit within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and COP26.
Our five takeaways from the event:
- Climate Justice is key to unlocking the global co-operation that is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement target:
The 1992 Earth Summit – UN Conference on Environment and Development set the tone of the UN climate talks by recognising the need for deep reform of production and consumption patterns. States (countries and their leaders) understood that past development patterns would compromise the needs of future generations rather than meeting them. It is from this point onward that most of the issues arising at the UN climate summit centred around questions of equity, fairness, historic responsibility, and capability to act. All of which are questions at the heart of Climate Justice.
Long term tensions between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change focus on these questions. Climate Justice is all about ‘looking after the needs of people while looking after the needs of environment’. It is for this reason that Climate Justice is key to unlocking the global co-operation that is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement target of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C.
