The real solutions to the climate crisis exist and are already being implemented by communities all over the world. Guided by climate justice, equity and urgency, we must aim to keep average global temperature rise below 1.5°C and continue to build a livable and just future for all. But as we scale up solutions like people-centred renewables, countries need to do their fair share to reduce emissions, with rich historically big polluters taking the lead to ensure a just and equitable phase out of fossil fuel production and consumption. Meanwhile, public climate finance from the Global North to the South is needed for those leading the realisation and implementation of solutions, like Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food producers. As the effects of the climate crisis worsen, solutions related to adaptation and resilience (and the financing of such) are also increasingly necessary. And funds for irreversible loss and damage from the climate crisis also need to flow.

For a Feminist and Just Energy Transition

As the planet boils and the effects of the climate crisis continue to be felt globally, especially by communities in the Global South, Friends of the Earth International recognises the urgent necessity to address the root causes of climate change. A just energy transition is essential to doing so but all mainstream approaches have so far adopted a dangerously narrow focus, considering only emissions accounting, mitigation measures and technical fixes. As a result, the fossil fuel era and its harms continue on and false solutions like carbon markets, nature-based solutions, carbon capture and storage and geoengineering are proliferated. The energy transition must be feminist and it must be just.

Since its inception in the late 20th century, the concept of a just energy transition has continued to expand and evolve to address the multilayered injustices embedded in the climate crisis while unifying movements.

Friends of the Earth International and its allies are committed to further developing a feminist perspective on a just energy transition. As feminists, we know that changing the energy system does not automatically solve systemic and historic inequalities and oppressions that run deep in our societies. We need a feminist approach that places life at the centre of the just energy transition through a feminist economy and that powers pathways to system transformation.

Yes to Renewables Done Right!

We cannot simply substitute renewables for fossil fuels – the urgency to deliver climate action can lead to renewables projects that replicate the problems of fossil energy – land grabbing, human rights violations and environmental destruction. Today, communities, mainly in the Global South, that host renewable energy projects or provide ‘transition mineral’ resources for renewables are being sacrificed. We need People Power, system change, the transformation away from corporate extractivism and towards energy produced for and by the people.

This transition can transform people’s lives by ensuring sufficient access to sustainable clean energy services which support thriving local economies while protecting and regenerating local environments. But this transformation must be based on principles like energy sufficiency for all, energy sovereignty and others outlined in Friends of the Earth International’s People Power Now manifesto.

Land, seas and forests – community-based solutions

Upholding the rights of the communities leading the realisation and implementation of solutions and system change is essential. 

Clean air and energy that doesn’t pollute lands and soil, and equal access to high quality and healthy food should be guaranteed as basic rights for people everywhere. For this to happen, moving away from the corporate-controlled industrial food and energy systems is essential. There is a pathway towards a food system based on food sovereignty, ensuring food as a human right, peoples’ control over seeds, land, water and other commons, agroecology, artisanal fishing, and small-scale food production. Similarly, the inherent rights and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples, and human rights of peasants and local communities must be granted and implemented, so that the traditional knowledge and practices of Community Forest Management can be fully implemented to help halt climate change and biodiversity loss.

Adaptation and resilience

Even as we transform systems to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis and ensure a just and equitable future for all, the devastating impacts are already being felt, especially in the Global South. These communities, least responsible for the crisis, are facing ever-worsening conditions.

We’re facing the potential of hundreds of millions of people being displaced from their homes within this century, and swathes of farmland turning to dust. We urgently demand finance for adaptation and for loss and damage, to help vulnerable populations.

Amos Nkpeebo, Friends of the Earth Ghana

Vulnerability to the climate crisis is shaped by colonial legacies and intersecting processes of oppression and marginalisation like gender, Indigenous identity, health, poverty, conflict and education. Climate solutions must prioritise the most marginalised, while urgent and increased public climate finance from developed nations to the Global South must be secured. This is vital not only for mitigation and adaptation measures, but for responding to already irreversible losses (Loss & Damage).

Building resilience also means rethinking our economies, for people and planet. We need systems that value care and the respect for life, recognise human interdependence, and more equitably reorganise care and domestic work. We also need to reclaim the public sphere and political arena, guaranteeing public services to secure peoples’ access to water, health, energy, education, communication, transport and food.

True adaptation is not only about surviving the climate crisis – it’s about creating fairer, more just, caring and resilient societies for all.