Roots Newsletter December 2024
Roots Newsletter
December 2024
Dear friends, members, allies, and comrades,
It has been a busy few months for us all, culminating in our collective efforts at major international policy events including CBD COP16 in Cali, Colombia in October, UNFCCC COP29 in Azerbaijan, and the G20 in Brazil in November.
Unfortunately, the outcomes – and the processes – of both COP16 and COP29 were less than desirable, to put it mildly. We continue to face extreme, systemic challenges in our collective efforts to ensure gender-just and rights-based solutions to threats to our forests and other ecosystems, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
But we remain defiant and confident. Within the GFC membership, we are seeing increasing collaboration and consolidation of our collective knowledge and capacities to challenge the dangerous narratives, false solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss, gender inequalities and colonial structures that continue to perpetuate the destruction of our environment and communities and hinder efforts to resolve these connected crises.
With this in mind, GFC and allies launched a new campaign declaration to avoid the point of no return of tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo, and Indonesia, as well as a commitment to not sit by in the face of government inaction. Together we will carve out our own spaces and paths forward to address the climate and biodiversity crises.
CBD COP 16
Throughout COP16, GFC, members, and allies advocated for a transformative approach to biodiversity protection, championing gender-responsive, rights-based, ecosystem approaches and the preservation of traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples that centre the leadership of those living in harmony with forests and ecosystems. We came up against increasing corporate intervention and influence, and together we continue to push back against the threat of biodiversity offsets and all market-driven and corporate-centric solutions that commodify nature and undermine the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, youth and Afro-descendant peoples.
We participated in both the blue zone and the green zone, where we organized and participated in protests, side events, actions and other activities, which also sought to denounce the impacts of unsustainable livestock farming on deforestation and forest degradation, and the associated loss of biodiversity.
Click the link below to access press releases, statements, side events, publications and other work around COP16.
Read more
Will COP16 on Biodiversity Listen to Indigenous Women or Corporate Lobbyists?
We Know What’s Behind Biodiversity Loss—It’s Time to Actually Tackle It
Latin American organizations call for urgent systemic change at COP16 biodiversity summit
UNFCCC COP 29
COP 29 started badly and ended even worse. On the opening day of the conference, the Presidency broke procedure and protocol by gaveling through the adoption of standards by the Supervisory Body of Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement promoting carbon offsets and carbon trading, without providing Parties the opportunity to review. With the presence of over 2200 fossil fuel and agri-business lobbyists over the two weeks, the COP again gavelled through an “agreement” on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), drawing the ire of developing countries and civil society, and threatening to undermine the very foundation of the Paris Agreement. GFC’s senior policy advisor on climate and biodiversity, Souparna Lahiri, summed up the misgivings in his article From Baku to Belém: An Uphill Struggle for Climate Justice.
GFC members and allies from across the globe worked hard across the two weeks to challenge the dangerous precedents being set, urging immediate action to end gender inequality and the financing of false solutions to climate change, such as carbon trading and offsetting, REDD+, monoculture plantations, bioenergy, and geoengineering and called for non-market approach and real solutions to mitigate the climate crisis.
GFC also pushed for food system transformation, as its concentration around industrial animal agriculture is a major cause of GHG emissions and climate injustices, highlighting our White paper for a Just Transition from industrial animal production.
Click on the link below to access all our press releases, statements, side events, publications and other work around COP29.
Read More
Baku Forest Declaration from Central Asia and Caucasus
G20 Civil Society Summit
GFC Policy Director Mary Lou Malig and Africa Regional Coordinator Kwami Kpondzo were in Rio for the Civil Society Summit parallel to the G20 in November. One of the key public events included Building Alternatives for Tropical Forests by Civil Society in the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia. Several GFC members were present, and we held key strategy meetings to forge new alliances to protect the world’s largest tropical forests, leading to a declaration to avoid the point of no return of tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo, and Indonesia.
Research and Reports
Over recent months GFC and members have produced a number of research papers, reports, and analyses that shine a spotlight on the destructive impacts of false solutions, including REDD+ and biodiversity offsets, and look deeper into global policy discussions and chart out a rights-based, gender-just and ecosystems based pathway to climate justice and protecting the world’s forests.
Who Really Benefits? How REDD+ Fails Forests and Those Who Protect Them
The Great REDD+ Climate Illusion: A flawed equation for forests, people, and planet
Are Global Climate Talks Delivering for the World’s Forests?
Just Food Transition: White Paper and Roadmap
Media and Public Advocacy
All of our media outputs, statements, op-eds and articles are accessible on the GFC website. Please take a look at some of our recent outputs that came outside of the key policy events detailed above.
Quito Declaration: Tackling Industrial Animal Production
Civil Society Organizations Worldwide Warn Against Biodiversity Offsets and Credits
Biodiversity Offsets: A Flawed Conservation Solution
GFC In the News
COP29: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Baku
GFC Demands Stronger Action in the Convention on Biological Diversity
Action against forest biomass subsidies gains momentum at COP16
Webinars and Side Events
One of the key approaches to the work we do at GFC is building synergies within the membership and beyond, sharing knowledge and strategies across regional and thematic areas to build a strong, united, and connected community capable of tackling the challenges we face head-on. Check out the recordings of some of our recent webinars below.
Advocacy Strategies Against Harmful Public Investments – Industrial Livestock in Latin America
Guardians of the Earth: Indigenous Women at the Forefront of Biodiversity Conservation
Water as a Living Entity: A Conversation with Juana Vera Delgado – More than Human Series Episode 2
Meetings, Workshops, and Training
Hybrid GFC Members Meeting
On the sidelines of COP 16 GFC members met in person and online to review our common ground and objectives, with an agreement to hold regional meetings in early 2025. The event followed several online meetings in the run-up to COP16.
Advancing Gender Equity in Biodiversity: Insights from the GLA Gender Hub
In June 2024, the Green Livelihood Alliance’s (GLA) Gender Hub hosted another Inclusive Forest Community of Practice (InFoCP) session, focusing on preparations for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP16.
Latin American Gathering against meat extractivism
In August we co-hosted the Latin American Gathering against meat extractivism, in Quito, Ecuador, and visited the Tsáchila Indigenous community in Santo Domingo de las Tsáchilas, affected by industrial pork production. We created a collective work plan to tackle the expansion of unsustainable livestock in the region and this amazing video (available in Spanish only).
Thank you for reading this issue of Roots and for your important work and collective solidarity. We hope you’ll stay connected with GFC’s campaigns and network of members!
In Solidarity,
The GFC Team
Donate
GFC at CBD COP16
Divest Public Climate Finance from False Solutions: A Roadmap Towards Gender-Just & Real Climate Justice
Don’t be Fooled
S3FCampaign
Green Livelihoods Alliance
Celebrating 20 Years of the GFC
GFC Image Library
Videos
