Greta Thunberg and climate activists speak on the sidelines of COP31

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - Oh, yeah. - Selene, one, two, three. [00:00:21] Speaker 2: - Well, welcome everyone and good morning. [00:00:23] Speaker 1: - What? - Good morning, everyone. [00:00:27] Speaker 2: - Good morning, everyone. [00:00:29] Speaker 1: - Good morning. - Good morning. [00:00:33] Speaker 2: - Should we start? Are we ready? - Yes. - So, well, we are all here because we know that the climate crisis is already here and now, and it is already a matter of life and death. And these disastrous trends that we are seeing unfolding all over the world are going to continue to exponentially get worse and worse. And these trends are unfolding worse and faster than predicted. And we have to start acting accordingly. The actions from those in power here are completely detached from reality. As we speak, we are losing priceless lives, ecosystems, and species that we will never get back. And the climate crisis is a crisis of injustice, where those least responsible for this crisis are being hit hardest and fastest. And today, we will hear some more testimonies about how these crises are manifesting already today all over the world and how people are resisting against it. So welcome, and you can all introduce yourselves before you speak up. [00:01:49] Sagar Dakal: So introducing myself. Hi, everyone. I'm Sagar Dakal, and then I come from Nepal, from the Himalayas, and I think we have seen the recent devastating disasters and we don't know what name we should give it to you. I don't think there are any words in the vicinity to describe this event. So I'm the one who was in the rescue, like arresting the people inside the tunnel were trapped. And when we were able to rescue the two people, and I was right inside there with all the medias and everything. And I think it was a global coverage, don't probably have seen. And so I'm here to explain the mountain issues here. Thank you. [00:02:30] Rikki Day: Thank you. My name is Rikki Day. I'm a traditional owner from the Northern Territory, from Barkley Tablelands. My traditional name is Lari Pina, and I am a Wakaya Borenti woman, and I am from women's country. My country is currently being frapped. Our water poisoned. Our history being erased as we speak today. Yesterday my Prime Minister said he wanted to speak for the people of the world who needed urgent action. Whilst yes, we do need urgent action. But we need him, but we don't need him to speak for us. We can speak for ourselves. And I am here today to speak. I am here to speak for my country, my clan, my grandmother, my daughter, and my niece. He needs to stop speaking and start listening. He needs to stop speaking and start listening to when we say no to fracking. No to fracking of our country. He needs to stop speaking and start listening when we say no to the poisoning of our drinking water and our sacred sites. He needs to stop speaking and start listening to the Australian people when they say no more new coal, oil, or gas. He needs to stop speaking and start listening to our brothers and sisters across the world and they say they don't want us to export coal, oil, or gas and the climate harms that they bring with them. As an Indigenous person from Australia, we are home of the world's oldest continuing civilisations in the world and we recognise that these solutions that challenge us today can be reached by working with Indigenous peoples and local communities on the ground. Our governments and governments around the world would have us believe that they would call a just transition away from fossil fuels leaves us unharmed. But Indigenous peoples know this is not to be true and if we aren't careful, we will repeat the same mistakes that we have made in our recent history. Pursuit of rare earth and critical minerals are literally replacing one mining method with another. We need to start demanding better of our governments, not just for ourselves but for our communities, not just for our futures, but our children deserve a future that we need, that they want to look forward to and a past that is worth remembering. Thank you. [00:05:24] Sagar Dakal: So you have heard the stories from Australia and now I would like to share the stories from the stories from the Himalayas, from the Everest, from the mountains. So probably I would like to present you a case study where in 20 days, in the next 20 days, we all could save the lives of 7000 people, dozens of people from UK, Switzerland, Ukraine, India and all of this. And in the next 20 days, there is a big disaster upcoming, we all don't know. But if we work together, we all would identify the exact disasters. So are we willing to work on that? So the same thing happened here. I'm going to share you one research paper here, which is published in Springer Nature Landslide Journal, it says that there was a crack, 100 meter crack in the glacier six months before, but then we identified this 20 days after the disaster, not before the disasters. So our ask is a mountain country is we all need to work together in the research. We need to, we need to support. I think you know, last year as well, there was a similar disasters in the Switzerland as well. So the Swiss people, they have been, they are doing the research in the birth glacier. So above the village of Blatton. So they have identified that the glaciers, there will be a big landslide with the ice and the moths and the debris. So they identified it. And two days before, they removed the village. They escaped, they transferred the people, you know, but then the Switzerland could do it because they had enough research and resource and everything. But then Nepal couldn't do it. And we have lost 7,000 peoples from more than 34 countries. So now we all want support from all the global communities and we have faced the disasters, which the world haven't seen yet till now. And we will not know what name should we give it to eat. We don't have the name even in the history. And I don't know how many names we are going to eat in upcoming time as the earth melts. So now, like in this COP as well, like from the Nepal, Bhutan and Kyrgyzstan, we all tied up to raise the agenda. So we said to the plenary that mountain and the climate change agenda should be established. But then we didn't succeed. We negotiated till 2:00 a.m. in the morning. But then this agenda is not established. And I do not know what the talks are going on backside of this stage. So we all need your support to feel and realize the whole world that climate change is real. We need to work on the science. We need to work on the research. And the vulnerable communities all around the world needs support from the developed world as well. We need to work together. And we look forward to your support so that we can save the upcoming disasters as well. Like in Nepal, as I speak, there are roughly 90% of the glaciers which are in the mountains. So roughly 90% of them are in the verge of similar glacier disasters in the Coast River Basin. So if we will all work together, we will definitely prevent the next disaster. Thank you so much. We all are looking forward to your support. [00:08:56] Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Hi everybody. Good morning. My name is Mohamed Osroff. I am the founder of the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy. I am a Palestinian from Gaza. I come here today to first of all echo the call of the Palestinian trade unions at the start of this COP. Palestinian trade unions are calling on workers worldwide to refuse to handle the weapons and energy supplies that continue to sustain Israel's genocide. We are three years into a genocide that remains ongoing. We have seen the catastrophic results, the murder of families. I have lost 20 family members during the genocide in the first day of Ramadan to two S-16 jets. This militarized fossil economy continues to profiteer off of genocide but to also profiteer off of the complete devastation of our land. What is happening in Gaza and in Palestine is not just genocide but also a complete intentional act of ecocide and environmental devastation. In the first 12 hours of the winter season just a week ago, we saw the first rainfall and we saw 70,000 families displaced just because of the rain. Because they are all living in makeshift tents. 3,000 Palestinians continue to get displaced in the West Bank just last week with dozens killed and that is just because of the consequences of the ongoing genocide by Israel's military assault supplied by the U.S. alongside the U.K. and as well as by Turkish oil. So Turkish oil continues to fuel the genocide in Israel alongside Colombia as well as South African coal that goes directly to Israel's electricity grid as well as military system. On the 30th of October, we saw major mobilizations across docks and ports. We saw workers calling for this huge action and we saw dock workers mobilizing across more than 30 countries where they stopped the fuel shipments. Not only is that an act of resistance against genocide but that's also an act of resistance against climate change. It's an act of resistance against the corporations that continue to fuel not just genocide and Palestine but the devastation of the world, the never-ending proliferation of fossil fuels that we are seeing the consequences of in Nepal, in Australia and all over the global majority and the world. So it's extremely crucial here to recognize what is happening in this COP. The stakes that we are here for. The stakes that our lived realities essentially symbolize to these negotiations. So the most important thing I want to say is what next? What are COP 31 demands? What are we here to do? We're here with the Palestinian civil society coalition. A coalition consisting of multiple groups and dozens of unions to say that first of all, we must sustain Israel from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change alongside the larger UN. Second, to end the pillage of Palestinian energy resources. That includes pressing Dana Petroleum to withdraw from the consortium seeking to extract gas from Palestinian waters. And what we've seen is that in fact they did, as of yesterday, completely withdraw. So there are successes that continue to happen with pressure from workers and pressure from all of us. And third of all, to impose a comprehensive energy embargo. Exporting and transit states must stop Israel-bound supplies, including indirect shipments through intermediaries. So I hope that in this COP we can center workers, we can center supply chains as part of the larger intermediary of genocide and devastation and extraction and exploitation all over the world. I'll end it by saying there's no climate justice without Palestinian liberation. And we must all remember the role that we all play. We're surrounded here by so many media and press and journalists who have blood in their hand because of how they've documented the genocide. Your headlines mean a lot the way that you've dehumanized Palestinians in the last three years. I hope you can recognize that and I hope moving forward you can know the fact of the matter and the role that you play in dehumanizing people in the global majority. The role that you play in the killing of so many people. The role you play in the devastation of this world. Thank you. [00:13:14] Speaker 6: Good morning members of the press and general public. My name is Selina Simbi. I stand before you not as a single voice but as a story in a collective struggle. A struggle against a global regime of extraction and exploitation. A system that fuels an ever expanding race to the bottom through militarization, genocide, and ecocide. A system that views our community's lives as worthless for the bottom line. For 51 years, in these rooms just like this, they have gathered, they have debated points and commas, they have produced vague signposts and so-called outcomes. And all the while, our communities, my communities, continue to deal with the consequences. I come from a family of refugees, I was born into refugee-hood, and only recently was further displaced into the wider African diaspora. It has been 26 years since my mother was forced into the asylum system. 26 years since she has been able to return to her homeland. This is not a unique story. This is not a unique story. The compound impacts of genocide and civil war, ignited and fueled by the very economic economic and political actors driving climate change are felt in my lifetime, with its lasting and compounding effect far exceeding my own. Year after year, session after session, the climate governance ecosystem settles in one place, attempts to produce supposed outcomes, and then returns without any actual material shift for us on the ground. Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, a pastoralist community loses its livestock as droughts intensify. Many Africans are left stateless and without adequate pathways to redress. Households face rising food insecurity as costs climb. And the governments of nations that proclaim bold commitments continue to fail to put their money and power where their mouths are. And so, the financing gap grows larger, debt increases, but the exploitation and extraction of our people's resources continue to expand. The land is viciously bled dry, and our life-giving waters continue to be polluted. So, what do you do when your home is made unsafe, when you are forced to leave, when you are besieged, occupied, and unable to flee, when all you want is to stay, and when defending your language, your land, your history, and your culture becomes a responsibility, not a choice, by any means necessary? Let me be clear: we are not all in this together. They are the ones who put us in this situation. They allow, and in fact facilitate, banks, insurers, and corporations to skirt legal and moral responsibility. It is countries like Canada, where I am based, with one of the world's largest consortium of mining companies operating on the Toronto Stock Exchange in the financial district of Bay Street, that continue to cause the absolute devastation of my homelands. And where is Bank Akane today? Not in sight. It is the UK, since the time of British colonial conquest, along with its European brothers in arms, that continue to expand fossil fuel operations. It is the USA, the largest historical polluter, whose military is the single largest institutional emitter, that has time and time again evaded responsibility, failed to acknowledge its fair share, taunting false solutions that put money in their pockets at the little cost of our community's lives. The answers exist. You see it in the work calling for an energy and arms embargo. The same fuel that companies based in Canada, the USA, and the UK ensure, underwrite, finance, and provide political cover for, as they murder our people and destroy the basis of our survival. This global regime needs that fuel. It needs the banks, it needs the insurers, the governments, and the arrangement of complicity to allow this displacement to continue. I want to make one thing clear. Our communities have been made vulnerable. From the trafficking of Africans across the Atlantic, to the pillaging of indigenous lands across the African continent, the so-called Americas, and the Eastern Hemisphere, to the inciting and fueling of war and genocide across our homelands to serve this global regime. We are not here begging for scraps. We are here making clear that what was stolen, what was taken, our people who have been martyred and made sick across generations will be taken back. The land, the rivers, oceans, and streams, the air, and the people will be returned. Whether you add the comma in the text or not, we will receive what is owed. The time to pay is overdue from the struggle for self-determined recognition of African descendants to indigenous peoples across the globe. We engage a liberatory responsibility in whatever form that takes across every single territory. Water always makes its way back and remembers. And like water, so are we. Our work exists far beyond these multinational spaces and will continue to be a thorn in your side, both inside and outside this process, because our power, our collective rights, for this exceed the greed of a few deciding in the back rooms and boardrooms. As have many of our key in these spaces from across the global majority, I want to emphasize that we cannot have another so-called implementation crop while our communities are denied access, financing, and self-determined, sovereign decision-making. The very same states complicit in destruction can come into this process claiming climate progress and a renewal of multilateralism whilst committing war crimes. Whether they are arming or fueling these crimes by allowing these shipments to pass through or dock in their waters, like the hosts of the Scott 51. Or states who have stood by and watched our conditions worsen. A genocide escalating across this Mediterranean Sea only 691 kilometers away from this very venue. And providing scraps of the end of a table we are continually excluded from. But just last year, over 1,500 fossil fuel lobbyists and warmongers were allowed to roam these walls last year alone. Climate justice will not be realized without the end of these death-dealing systems that suffocate the conditions for life. The people responsible have names and they have addresses. We will not allow them to neo-liberalize our way out of it. We will not build more pipelines or allow for the rush for so-called critical minerals to give power to the few over the majority. While our African and Afro-descendant communities in Sudan, the DRC, Haiti, Colombia, the Sahel, Chad, Brazil or our kin in Palestine are ended in conditions of death and whose ability to live and die is always held by those officials who have decided not to attend this leader summit or those complicit in attendance. We will not operate as usual while the destruction is fault in our people's lands. We refuse to allow you to talk us to our death. We have buried one too many family members, many disappeared, many still under rubble, washed away by floods and many, many more on my home continent who will have to deal with this overshoot and the effects of our nemio this upcoming season. The fire is catching. In fact, the fire has already been caught and if we are made to burn, you will burn with us. Thank you. [00:20:53] Speaker 7: Okay, we have time for some questions. Please state your name and outlet before you ask. [00:20:58] Speaker 8: Yes, hello. Our lady from Danish should be broadcasting letter to bed. In Glasgow, you called the cops from blah, blah, blah. Why did you decide to show up this time? [00:21:07] Speaker 2: Well, first of all, we have to clarify that the questions should not be directed to individual people. The questions should be asked to everyone. But I would want to make some closing remarks which is that we are heading towards the future of more genocides and more ecocides and the complete compromise of our basic rights and where basic necessities become luxury. And it is more clear than ever in spaces like these that the situation could not be less under control. The planet is not dying. It is being killed. And we know by who. And it is being killed by the very same people often thought to come to our rescue. No one is coming to our rescue. When our human rights are being threatened by states and other institutions it becomes our duty. Everyone's duty. But especially the more privileged you are the bigger your responsibility to stand up to be the adult in the room and to fight for the rights of our human rights and for everyone's human rights. And I want to amplify the collective call for a Turkish energy embargo on Israel to stop the transfer of oil and energy from its territory to Israel directly fueling the genocide of Palestine and justice for Kurdistan. [00:22:47] Rikki Day: Who wants a question? Questions? Yes, please. [00:22:54] Speaker 9: I'm Dea from Perpez. I'm from Indonesia and currently Indonesian forest fire is still going on. Do you have a thought about it? Thank you. [00:23:12] Speaker 7: Sure. Does anyone else have a question? Yes, please. Yes, please. Yeah. Come. Here. [00:23:26] Speaker 10: This question might be to all of you. For years, you guys have been demanding leaders to listen to us. What if they listen to us but they simply choose not to act? So what do we do? And my name is Alana Chalangat. I'm 14 years old. A young Chinese advocate from Kenya. Yes. [00:23:53] Sagar Dakal: We can take questions from all of them. [00:23:56] Speaker 1: No, I think we answer this one. Answer us. Yeah. [00:23:59] Rikki Day: I'll go first. I am an indigenous person, a woman from a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory and our governments too won't listen to us. And my advice is to you is to keep fighting. Some days you will be knocked back and you will think it's not worth fighting but I want you to stand up, look at your family, look at your culture and your country and you remember who you are and who you represent and you let that drive you every day. You let that drive you and make you get up every day and you fight for your family, your country and for yourself, darling. [00:24:46] Speaker 1: I think even a snail would agree with that. [00:25:10] Speaker 2: It's common sense. It doesn't get more clear than that. [00:25:13] Speaker 6: I would like to add that we are in solidarity with our indigenous brothers and sisters in Australia and Australia like many other nations that are present here are complicit in far worse, in genocide, in ecocide. The histories of your people are the histories of mine and we are here in solidarity with you wholeheartedly, unapologetically. [00:25:35] Speaker 5: I do also want to echo the same for our Indonesian brothers and sisters both in Jakarta but also in West Papua and Aceh and all over. So I hope that your family is safe and well and let's connect after, please. [00:25:50] Sagar Dakal: Yeah, same from Nepal as well. Like in Nepal, we have a lot of indigenous communities especially in the mountains and the Himalayas. I think we all share the same pain and I think we need to fight on. So what we say is like there are some decades where nothing happens but then there are few months where everything happens. So we need to keep on fighting so that the tipping of point will cross and all of our demands and everything will be in the right track. So let's wait for time. Let's keep fighting. Thank you. [00:26:20] Speaker 11: I have a question for all of you. Yesterday in a speech the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said make polluters pay. Do you have any notes in this scope to make any progress in making polluters pay? Can I take it up? [00:26:35] Speaker 5: In terms of making polluters pay I think what we're not going to see polluters pay through the COP process the climate negotiation process has been held in major fossil fuel producing countries and besides them being hosted in fossil fuel producing countries they also convene these business sales and deals. We've seen the same in Azerbaijan where there were leaks of the Azerbaijani president who called fossil fuels the fruit of the earth also mediate a lot of these negotiations to further proliferate the business. So the same happened in Brazil where also not only the businesses also convene in there but also Brazil Brazilian oil was getting to Israel during the genocide. So polluters are also genociders they're also profiteering not just from the fossil fuel industry but also from the military industry and from these many different states. So what we call for is accountability not just from states but from corporations and the people have to demand that. The people have to demand that and we've seen a lot of resistance in Colombia for example if we were to take that as a case study in Colombia in Serejani like Wakhira a lot of the Colombians fought against Glencore which ended up getting them to seize operations for 12 days getting the indigenous people to negotiate for their rights. Colombia actually for example to Alana's question was also a country that listened and was able to fight against the system to fight against fossil fuels and to get a major win not just for the Palestinian people but for the Colombians themselves and what happened we saw the ISDS we saw punishment so that is the reason that people are not acting it's not because countries are not willing it's not because people are not willing it's because the global north imposes sanctions international law does not work for us during genocide it could claim Palestine as a state of genocide but it will only do so in 2029-2030 Afro-Palestinians have been genocided for what? 6-7 years? the same with fossil fuels a lot of these contracts are 20 year old contracts that are not and now are going to be renewed so we call for the non-premediation of fossil fuels and we call for direct accountability measures and resistance by the people against these extracted projects on the ground thank you [00:28:42] Rikki Day: could I just briefly add to that too my family will now still will be drinking now poison water we are testing for radium in our drinking water I want to know when is it going to be enough for indigenous bodies when do we stop having to pay with our culture and our bodies on my country I have the MacArthur River mine one of Australia's largest zinc mines we have a diamond mine and now we have fracking when will it be enough when do we have to why do we have to keep giving ourselves and when will it be enough for all of you and the greed to stop [00:29:17] Speaker 7: and the greed to stop this please Attracta are you in the back yeah we had a question [00:29:25] Speaker 12: yesterday talk about equal size but we also had to celebrate the final new order this week are you worried about that this COP is not being very transparent and how it's approaching the COP [00:29:42] Speaker 5: so performative solidarity is performative solidarity Turkey can claim to be pro-Palestine but we understand that that's politics the Turkish people recognize the importance of standing in solidarity with Palestine and standing in solidarity or standing even in the right side of humanity against absolute tragedies what's happening here is that in terms of the material infrastructure that thus directly enables Israel's genocide that is harder to call out however Turkish [00:30:12] Speaker ?: unions [00:30:12] Speaker 5: and Turkish workers have called that out we've seen on the 30th of October strikes at the Chehan port and in Antalya and all over Turkey to call that out check our reports out we're coming out with a zine and a report in the coming two weeks on the specific supply chain data on Turkey's complicity you can also check our website we're going to launch another brief report on that tomorrow at a press conference and the most important piece here is that every country can be complicit through the corporations that it hosts and holds through the partnerships and normalization of ties with Israel that they hold complicit with genocide is not just material through oil it's through as I said the media industrial complex is through the educational systems that continue to partner up with these countries that fuel genocide further thank you we'll do one more question [00:31:02] Speaker 7: go ahead [00:31:03] Speaker 1: yeah a lot of leaders haven't made the trip here to Turkey do you feel disappointed do you feel that shows a lack of focus and clarity on this issue even though the people obviously around the world are increasingly alarmed about the climate crisis are leaders disconnected from what we do [00:31:26] Rikki Day: for us this is not something that's new and it's not a surprise for us particularly in Australia in Australia we see that there are more investments into big oil and gas companies rather than into communities so this is not something new this is the same walk the same talk there is no action here [00:31:44] Speaker 6: I'd like to add to that as I mentioned I'm based in so-called Canada Banga Kani is not present the leaders that are present whether they as Muhammad mentioned whether they hear or not does not absolve them of complicity in the harms that are happening [00:32:01] Speaker ?: in Nepal [00:32:01] Speaker 6: with our indigenous brothers and sisters in so-called Australia in Palestine in my homelands and my own territories on the continent whether they show up showing up means nothing for us when families are under rubble when you're having to physically bring your family members your community out from under flash flooding they're showing up means absolutely nothing in Canada right now the government the federal government is currently expanding major projects under the guise of nation building indigenous leaders across that the territory have named that they do not have the free prior and informal consent to engage in these projects there's a rush [00:32:39] Speaker ?: for critical minerals [00:32:39] Speaker 6: in Canada there's more investment in expansion in fossil fuel industries in so-called green transitions greenwashing the extraction and the exploitation that's occurring so whether they show up they don't show up what changes for us on the ground means nothing because they aren't actually putting their money where their mouths are they aren't actually meeting our material demands and commitments whether it's an energy embargo an arms embargo or just providing financing in case of disasters that they are complicity and so that's my response to your question [00:33:16] Speaker 7: Does anyone have any final remarks? Yes Can I have a question? Any final remarks sorry no more questions any final remarks before we close? [00:33:24] Sagar Dakal: Um, yeah my final remarks is from mountain to sea to oceans and all the indigenous communities and all of this I think we all are together and all should be seen as an integrated approach and all should be awakened all the people should be awake and this should take a decision not discussion and research should be done before the disaster not after the disasters and we need your support on all this one thank you so much goodbye goodbye okay thank you [00:33:56] Speaker ?: thank you [00:33:57] Rikki Day: my final remark is land back always was always will be Aboriginal land thanks everyone [00:34:04] Speaker 7: we're done [00:34:05] Rikki Day: thank you if you need names then come to me I can give them to you thank you so much [00:34:10] Speaker 1: thank you so much [00:34:11] Speaker 8: folks please make some space [00:34:28] Speaker 7: folks please make some space so they can leave leave