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The climate crisis is the present of the Global South | Climate Crisis

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Glasgown, Scotland, was an event where less than 0.0004 per cent of the COP26 population came together to negotiate our lives. World leaders, through those who decide how to limit global warming, are the powers that be who decide who will live and who will die. Keeping the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) is non-negotiable, and yet we are not on track to comply. According to the Climate Action Tracker, we will also move towards 2.4 C (4.3 F) warming with the targets agreed at COP26.

In the midst of this, they have criticized the COP26 as the most “exclusionary” summit ever for civil society organizations, people in the Global South and people with disabilities. The COP26 Coalition, a coalition of UK-based civil society environmental NGOs, said two-thirds of people helping to travel to Glasgow were unable to do so due to visa restrictions, accreditation problems and differences in the COVID-19 vaccine. access to vaccines. This was especially hard in the Global South, as many people refused to sit at the table. Despite these obstacles, South Global activists who managed to stay in COP26 have been removed images and discarded the media. The exclusion of the Global South is a common theme in climate talks and negotiations.

When we are excluded, our voices are silenced, our experiences are not heard, and the reality of the climate situation in the Global South is blurred. This exclusion becomes a refusal to acknowledge the proximity of the climate crisis and puts it as a future problem when millions are dying.

Young people around the world are concerned about the future, and rightly so, but a skewed focus suggests that the general population would rather care about the future of white children than the present of black, brown, and indigenous children. If this is to continue, we have already lost.

In my country, India, the climate crisis is an unwanted caller that has taken place in our homes. It is not planned to arrive later; is already here. The world is currently above 1.2C (2.2F) pre-industrial levels and this is already wild for so many people in India.

Less than 50 percent of Indians have access to safe drinking water. Droughts, coupled with increasing demand and tremendous groundwater management, make access to this water even more difficult. Lack of safe water means a lack of sanitation, especially during a pandemic. For some countries, droughts are becoming a way of life. 20 percent of the country suffers from drought-like conditions.

Elsewhere, there is extreme rainfall. Last month, the southern state of Kerala was hit by floods and landslides due to heavy rains. This killed 42 people and sank thousands. In northern India, rains hit the state of Uttarakhand, causing flooding and killing at least 46 people. In my hometown, Bengaluru, the airport was flooded due to unprecedented rains.

We have experienced most of the morbid climate calamities in India this year due to cyclones, floods and landslides, heat waves and droughts. We know what it feels like to be affected by the climate crisis in detail.

When I joined the movement in 2019 I first noticed a concern for the future of activists. People who have stolen and besieged their land in the name of coal in the Hasdeo forest in India or who have seen houses cleaned in floods.

Our messages did not come close to explaining what it means to be an adivasi (indigenous) activist like Hidme Markam, who was imprisoned earlier this year, and who was charged under the anti-terrorism legislation used to punish environmentalists. A 28-year-old land and women’s rights activist protested against extraction mining and for the rights of locals, as well as fighting for Adivasis, who was jailed for false accusations.

I including environmental activists (who were imprisoned for 10 days and released in February in constant protests by farmers) are being punished by the Indian government for demanding a viable planet. Sudha Bharadwaj, a trade union activist, lawyer and teacher who served 60 years in prison on the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India’s commitments at COP26, including carbon neutrality and an increase in the share of solar, wind and electricity by 2070. other sources other than fossil fuels. Bharadwaj has worked to ensure better wages and land rights for adivasi workers, but he has been accused of being a Maoist with the intention of overthrowing the government. More than three years after his arrest, the trial is yet to begin.

On the same day as Modi’s announcement, a group of more than 50 adivasi from Chhattisgarh state walked 30 km (19 miles) to highlight the rise in air pollution due to coal-fired power plants in Raigarh. People in these communities have been deprived of land and forests to build coal mines. Coal has affected their livelihoods and health, but our prime minister wants to expand coal mining. Last year, India launched an auction of 38 new mining blocks. Some of them pass through the land of the ancestors of Adivasis.

I couldn’t see the overlapping injustices in my country and I was desperate to change this.

In Fridays for Future, how our future-oriented attitudes took us away from earthly realities and we couldn’t keep up with this. We cannot highlight the losses and damage that are now occurring in the Global South. When we do, we do an injustice to Adivasis and environmentalists who are at the forefront of the climate crisis.

That’s why at Fridays for Future we decided to launch MAP – Affected People and Fields. The MAP was created to ensure that we focus on the people most affected by the climate crisis, to focus on the present, not just our future. Through our campaigns we have been focusing on the voices of those most affected, and now witnessing the losses and damage caused by the climate crisis.

To deal with the systems responsible for the climate crisis, we need news organizations, activists and governments to first accept the urgency and proximity of the climate crisis. To promote climate action, we need to change the conversations. We need to live in the moment. And we need to remove white clothing from environmentalism if we are not fighting for the present, because there is no future.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



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