Following the holding, in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, of COP 27 - Conference within the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the PCP salutes all those who fight in defence of the environment and nature, in particular the youth, who have mobilised to denounce an unfair system that has worsened environmental problems and has shown its incapacity to solve them.
The PCP has affirmed that the developed countries cannot continue to dodge their responsibilities. And it has been alerting to the insufficiency of the global reduction targets of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, established in successive COPs.
At the same time, it has been denouncing that the decision-making centres of capital do everything to hide their responsibilities for environmental degradation, claiming individual accountability, while they sophisticate mechanisms to revitalise capital accumulation, tax individual behaviour and find new and old ways of appropriating natural resources, not resolving and often worsening environmental problems, heightening social inequalities and conditioning the development of countries.
The 100 largest economic groups are responsible for 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Per capita, the US emits twice as much GHG as China and eight times as much as India, and from a historical point of view the US is by far the main polluter, with 20% of the world's emissions since 1850. However, successive COPs have moved away from the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” and moved towards levelling the responsibilities of the main emitters in per capita terms, with the so-called developing countries.
In a first analysis, this COP may have opened the possibility of creating a fund to cover “losses and damages” of countries affected by extreme climatic phenomena, valued by developing countries, but which still lacks further deepening on the concrete mechanisms of its functioning.
The PCP also warns that, regarding these “loss and damage” mechanisms, the EU representatives are referring to a reform of the Development Banks and a commitment to the establishment of insurance. Schemes that have a high probability of becoming yet another mechanism for transferring funds to the financial system, this time through insurance companies, and that raise doubts as to their effectiveness, considering existing experiences that reveal many limitations in terms of coverage and financing .
As the PCP has been denouncing, the financing schemes set out in the COPs have meant more indebtedness for developing countries, while for capital they mean subsidies.
The bet on carbon credit transaction schemes has failed across the board. The European scheme turned out to be responsible for the increase in emissions and other market-based schemes have shown inability to enforce greenhouse gas reduction targets. Which brings to light that the market guarantees profits, not environmental policies!
Capitalism is not (and will not be) green! It is increasingly clear that the so-called “green economy” is aimed more at bolstering capitalism and less at solving environmental problems. The denunciation of environmental degradation, if not accompanied by a strong denunciation of “green capitalism” schemes, tends to legitimise them and encourage their acceptance on a mass scale and to give cover to “greenwashing” strategies, which is why the demand for concrete measures to promote environmental balance must be accompanied by denouncing capitalism's incapacity to respond to humanity's problems, including environmental problems.
This denunciation of the incapacity of the capitalist mode of production cannot end in sweeping proclamations and catastrophic visions, it must be accompanied by the demand for concrete measures in our country.
Which brings us to the need to demand more means for public structures in terms of planning, management, monitoring and environmental intervention.
To demand public control of strategic sectors, such as the energy sector.
To promote sustainable mobility policies that call into question the paradigm of individual transport and attribute centrality to public transport, expanding its network and guaranteeing affordable prices.
Policies to promote local production and consumption, recognising for each country and each people their right to produce and sovereignty in essential areas, such as food.
Measures are needed to increase the efficiency of the use of water, ensuring public control of water, combating the commodification of the waste sector and implementing policies to combat waste and planned obsolescence.
Also urgent are measures of adaptation to the effects of climate change on the national territory.
The PCP reaffirms that the denunciation of the strategy that imperialism develops, of interference and aggression, of escalating the policy of confrontation and war, which increase the danger of a global confrontation, cannot be removed from the struggle in defence of the environment.
The PCP calls for the fight in defence of nature and the environment, rejecting the construction of false dichotomies between generations, strategies of commodification of Nature and financialization of environmental policies.
A healthy, ecologically balanced human living environment is a constitutionally enshrined right, and is the State's responsibility, through its own bodies and with the involvement and participation of citizens, to ensure this right.
The duty to defend nature and the environment is also constitutionally enshrined, which is why it is an obligation for all those who defend the values of April.
