Record temperatures during the entire year of 2016, as well the series of cyclones, hurricanes, floods, forest fires and droughts that have taken place serve as clear reminders that climate change is a reality that already affects hundreds of millions among us.
We, social movements and civil society organizations, assembled in Casablanca in all our diversity in order to launch a campaign for mobilization in the lead up to COP22, which will take place in Marrakech between November 7th and 18th, reaffirm our determination to act in order to ensure that global warming remains below the level of 1.5°C – in accordance with commitments made at COP21 in Paris by participating heads of state.
At the end of COP21, we were on our part committed to mobilize, everywhere and anywhere necessary so that red lines looming atop a just and livable future are never reached. This is a promise we have honored and will continue to honor.
Africa, host of COP22, is currently experiencing the most brutal and extreme consequences of global warming: environmental and resource degradation, food insecurity, water stress, increase in poverty levels and health risks and massive waves of climate related migration. Paradoxically, African people are not responsible for global warming, and as such, our commitment is not only in the name of climate justice, but also social justice.
Therefore, we have every intention of continuing to mobilize in order to:
– exit the era of combustible fossil fuels and accelerate the just transition towards a future that is 100% renewable,
– defend human rights and true equality against all forms of gender, geographic, or other domination and oppression,
– defend food sovereignty and peasant agriculture, and fight against false solutions that often dispossess rural people of their land,
– recognize and settle ecological debts amassed by highly industrialized countries at the expense of poor and developing countries and break from development models that are based on the exploitation of natural resources,
– guarantee that countries of the North assume their responsibilities so that our communities can effectively adapt and face the consequences of climate change
Time is running out; we have but a few years to preserve the possibility of a future that is free from climate-induced chaos. Together, we must ensure that COP22 is a determining step in strengthening the movement for climate justice.
Casablanca, the 24th of September 2016 at the close of the African and International Conference convened by the Moroccan Coalition for Climate Justice.
