Why Ignore Africa?

 

Global warming is altering the human food supply and threatening some of the world's poorest people with hunger. Emissions, primarily from developed countries, are exacerbating flooding, droughts and extreme weather events. Why does climate change occur? A small amount is due to ignorance or miscalculation. A small amount is unavoidable given the present technology and population. But the greatest cause is due to the economic system. Global warming takes place because it is in business economic interests to do so.

The United Nations predicts that in some African countries, crop yields could fall. For poor farmers on the margin of survival, these losses could really be crushing. Gains made in human development in Africa may be reversed if climate change is not checked. Among the threats to human development, that African countries may have to deal with, is a breakdown of agricultural systems due to increased exposure to drought, rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall, leaving millions of more people facing malnutrition. 

African countries are also most vulnerable to the likely impacts of climate change on fisheries. Climate change will change the distribution, conservation and use of the water of the earth and its atmosphere. African fisheries are particularly at risk because semi-arid countries with significant coastal or inland fisheries have high exposure to future increases in temperature, and the linked changes in rainfall and coastal current systems. The high catches that currently allow exports may become a thing of the past, and a high dependence on fish for protein could threaten the health of many thousands as catches shrink. Low capacity to adapt to change due to their comparatively small or weak economies and low human development indices could set back development in countries like Angola, Congo, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

In African countries like Ghana, Namibia, Senegal and Uganda, the fisheries sector contributes over six percent of gross domestic product. Rift Valley countries such as Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda, river-dependent fishery nations, are also vulnerable. Researchers found that lake fisheries have already begun to feel the impact of climatic variability, affecting fish production

Global warming also poses health risks. Rising temperatures in the highlands allow mosquitoes and ticks to survive longer, leading to an increase in mosquito-borne diseases and the emergence of new diseases. Malaria, dengue fever and Leishmaniasis, a disfiguring disease caused by sandflies, are good examples. New kinds of Leishmaniasis have been detected across Africa. This type of Leishmaniasis is resistant to all forms of available treatment. This stigmatizing skin disease, which afflicts the infected person with sores and lesions that can cause permanent disfigurement.

Climate has been a major driver of armed conflict in Africa as much research shows and future warming is likely to increase the number of conflicts and armed casualties.

 It is the capitalist economic system itself that is responsible for ecological problems. In fact, not only have workers no influence over the decisions taken by enterprises but those who do have the power to decide - the capitalists - are themselves subject to the laws of profit and competition. Capitalism can only function in the interest of the capitalists, no palliative, no rearrangement, no measure, no reform can subordinate capitalist private property to the general interest. We can only “cure” the planet’s ills by establishing a society without private property where humans will be freed from the uncontrollable economic laws of the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital.

We live in a world that has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth. The resources exist to banish material want as a problem for members of the human race. Yet millions throughout the world are malnourished, live in squalor or are actually dying of starvation or starvation-related diseases. World socialism could stop the dying from hunger immediately, and provide the conditions for good health and material security for all people across the Earth within a short time. It would do this by producing goods and services directly for need.

 

 

#StopEACOP

  

The $20bn (£14.8bn)East African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) forecasted to deliver 1.7bn barrels of crude oil starting in 2024 or 2025 will transport oil 900 miles (1,450km) from the shores of Lake Albert on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo through Tanzania to the port of Tanga on the Indian Ocean. In April, Uganda and Tanzania signed agreements with the French oil and gas company Total and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Total is planning to drill more than 400 oil wells at its Tilenga project, which is inside the ecologically fragile national park. CNOOC will develop its Kingfisher project with 31 wells, about 90 miles to the south. Pipelines from the two sites will merge at Kasenyi, where oil will be processed and separated from other fluids. Then it will be pumped across the Albertine Rift valley to begin its journey to a port in Tanzania. Along the way, the pipeline will cross the basin of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, which is an essential watershed for more than 40 million people in the region and feeds into the Nile. The pipeline will be buried up to two metres underground, will be 61cm wide and heated to 50C, so that the crude oil does not solidify, according to the project managers. Above ground, a corridor 30 metres wide would be cleared of all structures, trees and shrubland.

The pipeline will pass through the habitats of at-risk species. It could jeopardise community water sources and pollute the air, and its construction will be intrusive and noisy. In Tanzania, local government authorities have admitted that environmental disturbance is inevitable. The pipeline project comes as world leaders are aiming to divest from fossil fuels. The pipeline will contribute to the climate crisis, locking in more oil use and planet-heating emissions for decades to come. The pipeline project is in direct conflict with the recommendation by the International Energy Agency that there must be no new fossil fuel development if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C. The #StopEACOP campaigners estimate that the pipeline would lead to more than 34m tonnes of CO2 each year, exacerbating the global climate emergency. That is equivalent to the emissions from nearly 7m passenger vehicles driven for a year.

Activists and hundreds of local and international civil society organisations in April launched a campaign called #StopEACOP, condemning the oil extraction and pipeline for its threats to endangered species in the park and other conservation areas. They also asked international banks and other financial institutions to stop financing the projects.

Local activists have condemned the government’s failure to address the delayed compensation. Under Uganda’s guidelines, people affected by the pipeline should be resettled or compensated with cash based on what they will have to spend to replace their land.

Local campaigners fighting the project have been arrested and detained in recent months, and they say they are the target of intentional intimidation by the government. Ugandan authorities claim the group is violating registration laws for non-governmental organisations. 

A 2020 report by Oxfam that surveyed communities along the path of the pipeline found they feared it could “burst and explode, causing property damage, injuries and major disruption of the aquatic life of [Lake Victoria]”. “A spill would not only affect Uganda but rather become a transboundary issue affecting all the east African states,” the report noted.

The environmental and social impact assessment reports also failed to include mitigation agreements in case of oil spills, and had no detailed plan on combating climate change, said Brian Nahamya, a programme associate at Global Rights Alert, an advocacy group based in Kampala. He said the National Environment Management Authority, the government agency responsible for approving the project, was “pursuing its mandate to impress oil companies and the central government without putting the interests of the country at the centre for sustainable exploitation of oil”.

Several local non-governmental organisations launched a lawsuit against the project, alleging that it poses imminent dangers to the climate, environment, biodiversity and human rights. Nahamya said the compensation delays violate property ownership rights and “go against best international standards and practices for land acquisition and resettlement … There are a number of environmental and human rights issues that remain unresolved.”  The oil project has now plunged communities into land conflicts, as wealthy individuals have shown up to claim properties that people have been living on for decades.

Onesmus Mugyenyi, deputy executive director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment, based in Kampala, argued that some of the money going into the new oil projects should go to clean energy. According to a June 2020 report solar power accounts for 4% of Uganda’s energy production, just 1% of the country’s 2040 goals.

‘No power to stop it’: optimism turns to frustration over east Africa pipeline | Africa | The Guardian

UK versus China in Africa

 Britain is to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into developing African port infrastructure in a bid to win a "battle for economic influence" against China and other authoritarian states.

CDC Group, the Foreign Office's investment arm, will jointly underwrite a £1.25 billion plan to expand three ports in Egypt, Senegal and Somaliland, the unrecognised breakaway province of Somalia, in what a government source described as a direct challenge to "malign actors" in Africa.

Lizz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, said the projects would provide "reliable and honest investment in developing countries" and opportunities for British business.

It comes after US President Joe Biden called for a Western-led alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative, China's sprawling overseas infrastructure building program.

CDC said it would provide about £515 million ($720 million) to upgrade and expand three ports of Sokhna on the Red Sea, Dakar on the Atlantic, and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden in Somaliland, it said. The remaining £710 million ($1billion) will be invested by the Dubai-based logistics group DP World as part of what the companies called a "long-term partnership to accelerate Africa’s long-term trade potential".

CDC and DP World said the investments would generate 138,000 jobs and indirectly support 5 million more in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Both areas are theatres of intense geo-strategic competition, with Western governments competing for influence with China, Russia, and Middle Eastern powers including the United Arab Emirates and Turkey to provide investment and security assistance. The announcement comes four months after Britain endorsed an American call to invest in developing countries in response to "strategic competition from China".

A Foreign Office source said: "The Foreign Secretary believes more infrastructure investment into developing countries will help counter authoritarian regimes. Ultimately she thinks we need to win the battle for economic influence and sees infrastructure investment as a key part of that plan along with closer trade and tech ties. We need to give more countries the option of closer economic links with democracies so they aren’t driven into the arms of malign actors. We want to work with like-minded parterres to take that ambition forwards."

Britain to invest in African ports as part of Western response to China (yahoo.com)

Drought in Kenya

 Drought has descended yet again in northern Kenya,

As world leaders address a global climate summit in Glasgow, pastoralists watch their animals suffer from lack of water and food. 

Yusuf Abdullahi says he has lost 40 goats. “If they die, we all die,” he says. Wildlife have begun to die, too.

Kenya’s government has declared a national disaster in 10 of its 47 counties. The United Nations says more than 2 million people are severely food insecure. And with people trekking farther in search of food and water, observers warn that tensions among communities could sharpen. Experts warn that such climate shocks will become more common across Africa, which contributes the least to global warming, but will suffer from it most.

“We do not have a spare planet in which we will seek refuge once we have succeeded in destroying this one,” the executive director of East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Workneh Gebeyehu, said last month while opening a regional early warning climate center in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta stated, Africa, while currently responsible for a negligible amount of total global greenhouse gas emissions, is under significant threat from climate change.” The continent is responsible for just 4% of global emissions. Kenyatta was among the African leaders speaking at the global climate summit as they urged more attention and billions of dollars in financial support for the African continent.

AP PHOTOS: 'If they die, we all die': Drought kills in Kenya (apnews.com)

Noma - A Neglected Disease

Noma is a largely forgotten and hidden disease. Noma remains little known because it affects the most marginalised children in the world and kills quickly. Noma is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, though cases have been detected in the US, south-east Asia and South America. It has been recognised for more than 1,000 years and emerged in Europe in concentration camps during the second world war.

Noma starts as a sore on the gums and progresses rapidly, destroying the soft tissues, bones, hard tissues and skin of the face. Without treatment, noma is fatal in 90% of cases, according to the World Health Organization.

Children aged two to six living in extreme poverty with weakened immune systems from malnutrition are most at risk and can die within weeks of the first sore appearing. If they make it to a health facility and survive, they can be left with severe facial disfigurements that hinder eating, drinking and speaking. Where noma is detected early it can be simply treated with antibiotics.

Noma is entirely preventable. When a child has enough food and clean water, the disease is unable to thrive, and is therefore often called “the face of poverty”. That it exists at all is a sign of how society has failed, says Dr David Shaye, of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, who has operated on hundreds of noma survivors in Nigeria. He says: “Noma is a canary in the coalmine indicator of where there are systemic problems with society. It’s a disease of poverty.”

Dr Bukola Oluyide, deputy medical coordinator Nigeria for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), says: “It is assumed to be no longer in existence. Where we see it is where we have poverty and no health centres. It’s only when children are almost on their deathbed with another illness that they [are taken] to a healthcare facility … People do not know they can receive care in the early stages.” Healthcare professionals often miss it completely, she adds.

The WHO estimated in 1998 that there may be up to 140,000 cases a year, and 770,000 survivors of the disease.

Noma: the hidden childhood disease known as the ‘face of poverty’ | Global development | The Guardian

Capitalism pollutes and Africa suffers

 

COP26 has commenced. Past experience shows thousands of experts and politicians travelling the globe regularly to these climate summits, indulging in facile talk and false promises can offer no hope for worldwide citizens who are earnest in their desire to protect the planet and maintain a liveable environment. Political and business allegiance to the global capitalist system of profit first highlights once again that the call must be “System Change Not Climate Change.”

 

The continent that’s most at risk from the effects of climate change is Africa where  people and communities are already paying the price of the climate crisis with their livelihoods and lives. Climate change has increased desertification, deforestation, flooding, and stronger storms, all leading to increased population displacement. To feed oneself, to provide for ones family, men and women will always seek other lands, and while the grass is still literally greener on the other side then men and women will endeavour to reach it. Only when it is possible to maintain an adequate living standard at home, will men and women stay at home. That is something capitalism will never be able to offer many people throughout Africa. One extreme event can drive people into poverty almost instantly. Rural poverty and food insecurity have long been a reality in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but rising temperatures and the disruption of seasonal rains upon which millions of small-scale farmers rely is creating altogether new challenges for Africa’s poorest people. Researchers warn that the effects of global warming in sub-Saharan Africa are putting peace and stability in the region at risk, with reports concluding that climate factors and the struggle for a share of scarce water resources has increased the risks of conflict in the region significantly.

Socialists have a long memory and know that attempts to tackle the climate crisis will often be thwarted by the international market system and will frequently be foiled by the national ruling class appropriation of the local resources and wealth. The majority of aid organisations develop their programmes on the basis of their own priorities and their own visions and the views of locals are usually ignored. It will be the democratic empowerment of the workers by socialism that will begin to genuinely address the needs of the people of Africa .

Today, between 25-30 percent of the income that is generated in sub-Saharan Africa is from agriculture, while up to 70 percent of people rely directly on farming for their survival. Contrast this with the European Union, where farming is responsible for less than 3 percent of GDP, and creates employment, often part-time, for less than 5 percent of working people. At the same time, irrigated agriculture counts for under 6 percent of all agricultural production in Africa, compared to 30 percent in Europe and 35 percent in India.

The message is not all doom and gloom however. Africa’s agricultural sector has huge untapped potential. Under one-third of Africa’s arable farmland is cultivated, while irrigated production can be increased greatly, meaning there is enormous potential to grow much more than at present. Improved farming technologies, better access to good quality seed, reform of land laws, and the utilization of information systems including mobile phones to give farmers timely information, can all contribute greatly to the growth of Africa’s farming sector. ‘Climate smart’ farming practices will enable Africa’s small-holder farmers to grow food in a way that is sustainable, and will help them to use their natural resources wisely. A reduction in food losses due to better storage and packing, improved infrastructure, and stronger links to markets will make agriculture on the continent more productive.

COP26 Greenwashing

"We are not responsible for the current impacts," said Ugandan campaigner Evelyn Acham of countries throughout Africa. "We emit very little [carbon] but we are suffering some of the worst impacts. People are dying from floods, disasters like droughts that are drying up people's crops, people's food."

"Our voices are not being heard, our voices are being left behind," she added. "We are not on the front pages.... and we do not see that climate finance that was promised to be given to the people that have already been affected by the climate crisis."

Vanessa Nakate from Uganda, who said: "Historically, Africa is responsible for only 3% of global emissions and yet Africans are suffering some of the most brutal impacts fuelled by the climate crisis.

"But while the global south is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, they're not on the front pages of the world's newspapers."

Climate Change Campaigning and Chad

 Around the world, indigenous peoples face the ambiguity of protecting ecosystems, such as forests or coastal zones, while at the same time suffering the onslaught of climate fury unleashed by humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels, like droughts, destructive storms and rising sea levels.

For decades, native peoples have insisted that their traditional knowledge can contribute to the fight against climate change. The emergence of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 reaffirmed the results of treating nature as just another commodity.

“For my people, the effects of climate change are a daily reality. The rainy season is shorter and when it rains, there are floods. And we have suffered from drought,” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Wodaabe or Mbororo pastoral people of Chad.

For the founder of the non-governmental Association of Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, one pernicious effect is the violence generated, because “when resources are lost, people fight for them – for water, for example,”

The Climate Harm

 

The U.N. Environment Programme estimating $140 billion-$300 billion will be needed annually by 2030 for developing nations to cope with impacts. 

At least $30 billion-$50 billion of that is needed just for sub-Saharan Africa, according to IMF estimates. 

Sea level rise and worsening floods are already costing $3.8 billion a year in West Africa, with total losses across the continent running at about $7-8 billion a year, said Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank Group. That includes $2 billion in damage in southern Africa from cyclones in recent years, as well as losses of a million hectares of crops to locusts and other damage from floods in East Africa and more land becoming desert in the Sahel, he said.

President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the current head of the African Union, said finding funding to help Africa cope with the rising harm was crucial. "The fight against climate change cannot be won unless it is won in Africa," he told an event on accelerating African adaptation at COP26.

Another Building Collapses in Nigeria

 The collapsed Lagos high-rise building death toll is now 22 people. Many others are feared to be buried under the debris. The 21-storey building was still under construction when it crumbled on Monday in the upscale Ikoyi neighbourhood of Nigeria’s commercial capital.

Two other smaller buildings in Lagos also collapsed on Tuesday following heavy rains in the densely populated city a day earlier, though no one was killed, he said.

Building collapses are tragically common in Lagos and across Africa’s most populous nation where substandard materials, negligence and a lack of enforcement of construction standards are major problems.

In one of Nigeria’s worst building disasters, more than 100 people, mostly South Africans, died when a church guesthouse crumbled in Lagos in 2014. An inquiry found the building had been built illegally and had structural flaws.

Two years later, at least 60 people were killed when a roof fell in on a church in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state, in the east of the country.

Will Africa Continue to Suffer?

 Africa contributes just 4 percent of global total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—the lowest of any region—yet its socio-economic development is threatened by the climate crisis. In other words, Africa contributes the least emissions but suffers the brunt of the consequences.  

Climate change is wreaking havoc on economies, lives, and livelihoods in Africa. Last year, tropical cyclone Idai and Kenneth swept under the economies of Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe with USD $2 billion in losses. Eight hundred people died.    

Just four years ago, El Niño devastated East and Southern Africa with severe droughts. It is estimated that this year Africa will lose USD $7 billion to $15 billion per year due to climate change.  

In 2020 flooding was particularly extensive across many parts of East Africa, with the Sudan and Kenya the worst affected. At the same time, long-term drought continued to persist in parts of Southern Africa, particularly the Northern and Eastern Cape Provinces of South Africa. Tropical Cyclone Gati, originating from the Bay of Bengal, became the strongest storm ever to hit Somalia.  

Last year, approximately 98 million people suffered from acute food insecurity and needed humanitarian assistance in Africa, almost a 40% increase from 2019. Approximately 12% of all new displacements worldwide occurred in the East and Horn of Africa regions, with over 1.2 million new disaster-related displacements.

The negative effects of climate change in Africa have become so severe that they cannot be left to individual countries to address. A collaborative approach is what the continent needs.

 Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, asked for collaboration, to build a more climate-resilient Africa.  

“Unless Africa accesses and obtains substantial funding for renewable energy, deforestation for fuelwood will severely and irreversibly destroy the environment. The Great Green Wall of the Sahel risks becoming a wall of fuelwood for charcoal.” said Adesina. “That is why the Bank has launched the Desert to Power initiative to develop the world’s largest solar power zone in the Sahel. This will provide power for 250 million people.”  

“Let us together mobilize the USD $7-15 billion a year that Africa urgently needs for climate adaptation. Africa has been short-changed by climate change. Now, Africa should not be short-changed by climate finance.”

 The African Development Bank (AfDB) puts a rough estimate of between USD $20-30 billion that will be required per year for climate change adaptation in Africa until 2030.  

What Africa Needs to Win the Climate War (diplomaticourier.com)

The World Socialist Movement agree it is necessary for cooperation and coordination to extend beyond individual nations but we do not share the hope that African governments holding out their begging bowls will succeed. Pleading with the rich nations has never resulted in sufficient finances being provided to end hunger and disease, so why should it be any different with the climate, after all, being a minimal emitter of greenhouse gases doesn't make African nations a priority in their agenda to cut emissions

Atrocities in Tigray

 All sides in Ethiopia's Tigray conflict have violated international human rights, some of which may amount to crimes against humanity, a joint investigation by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the UN Human Rights Office says.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said the conflict had been marked by extreme brutality. 

The report details a series of violations and abuses, including unlawful killings and extra-judicial executions, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, violations against refugees and forced displacement of civilians.

"There are reasonable grounds to believe all parties to the conflict... either directly attacked civilians and civilian objects, such as houses, schools, hospitals, and places of worship, or carried out indiscriminate attacks resulting in civilian casualties and destruction or damage to civilian objects," the report states.

Unlawful or extrajudicial killings and executions have also been recorded.

The report details how a Tigrayan youth group known as Samri killed more than 200 ethnic Amhara civilians in Mai Kadra in November last year. Revenge killings were then committed against ethnic Tigrayans in the same town.

Members of the Eritrean Defence Force (EDF) killed more than 100 civilians in Axum in central Tigray later that month, the report says.

"War crimes may have been committed since there are reasonable grounds to believe that persons taking no direct part in hostilities were wilfully killed by parties to the conflict," the report says.

It also cites cases of sexual violence including gang rape.

Ethiopia's Tigray crisis: Report says war crimes may have been committed - BBC News

Protecting the trees

 More than 100 global leaders late Monday pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade

Gabonese President Ali Bongo said effectively protecting forest also required overcoming other challenges such as combatting the organised crime rings that help drive deforestation in his African nation.

Preventing forest loss "requires consistent vigilance" as well as new technology, cash and skilled forest managers, Bongo said in Glasgow.

Ensuring Africans benefit from their forests is also key to their protection, said Bongo, whose country remains 88% forested as a result of concerted conservation efforts.

Will COP26 deforestation pledge be game-changer or broken promise? (trust.org)

Chinese Imperialism in the Congo

  

The Democratic Republic of Congo should renegotiate its $6 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal with Chinese investors, according to the draft of a report commissioned by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which tracks revenue flows in the oil and mining sectors and counts more than 50 countries, including Congo, as members and is a global anti-corruption body of governments, companies and activists.

The draft describes the deal that was first signed in 2008 as "unconscionable" and urges Congo's government to cancel an amendment signed secretly in 2017 that sped up payments to Chinese mining investors and slowed reimbursements of investment in infrastructure.

Under the 2008 deal struck with the government of former President Joseph Kabila, Chinese state-owned firms Sinohydro Corp and China Railway Group Limited agreed to build roads and hospitals financed by profits from Congo's Sicomines cobalt and copper joint venture. Critics say few of those projects have been realised.

The draft says the Chinese companies' 68% stake in Sicomines is too high since the Congolese contributed all the mining assets and 32% of the initial capital.

Under the 2008 contract, all of Sicomines' profits would initially go to reimbursing investments in Congo's most urgent infrastructure projects. It was on that basis that parliament agreed to exempt Sicomines from all taxes, the draft says.

It condemns the previously undisclosed 2017 amendment. Under the amendment, only 65% of Sicomines' profits must initially go toward reimbursing the investments while 35% goes to shareholders.

The change could further slow the pace of the infrastructure projects, the draft says. To date, less than $1 billion of the expected $3 billion has been invested, about $1 billion less than projected at this stage, it says.

President Felix Tshisekedi's government is reviewing the 2008 contract and the reserve levels at China Molybdenum's Tenke Fungurume mine after saying Congo was not getting a fair deal.

Prime Minister Sama Lukonde Kyenge told a mining conference on Thursday: "There has to be some adjustment."

The moves represent rare pushback by Congo, the world's leading producer of the battery metal cobalt and Africa's top copper miner, against the Chinese investors who control most of its mining industry.

Congo's $6 billion China mining deal 'unconscionable', says draft report (yahoo.com)

Comment on COP-OUT26

 

Everywhere where the world’s ruling elite have assembled to decide their next step in trying to halt the climate emergency they have been met with protests and demonstrations that have attracted tens of thousands. Thousands of speeches such as have been made, thousands of articles have been written and hundreds of books have been published that explore the aims, objectives and alternatives offered by the environmentalist movement.

What is now clear is that the green campaigns, no matter how sincere and well-meaning, does not seek to replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. At best it attracts a myriad of groups, all pursuing their own reformist agenda. Some call for greater corporate responsibility for the environment. Some demand the restructuring of international banking institutions to end financing fossil fuels. Others call for the expansion of debt cancellation and more aid to assist the poorer nations to adapt to climate change.

 All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems - capitalism. All promote that damnable system which they are seemingly critical of by applauding any meagre reform. The protesters in Glasgow, Scotland at the COP26 might think they are united in a common cause, but in truth, they are only united in supporting capitalism and in their mistaken belief that ecological destruction can be legislated out of existence. They have no blueprint for real fundamental change.

Instead of putting a price on Nature, we need to recognize that humans are part of Nature and that Nature is not a thing to possess or a mere supplier of resources. The Earth is a living system, it is our home and it is a community of interdependent beings and parts of one whole system. We humans are just one element of the biosphere. The capitalist system has gotten out of control and like a virus, it's going to kill the body that feeds it. Only through replacing growth with a steady-state economy can we be sustainable. This, however, does not mean advocating zero-growth worldwide, because that would deny development to a majority of the world’s population in urgent need of material advancement. 

Capitalism is going to make life near-impossible for humans as we know it. we need to recapture nature from the market's grasp, nurturing and legitimising more interconnected human-ecological relationships and understandings, along with tried-and-tested forms of local ecosystem stewardship based on them. We need to overthrow capitalism and develop a system that is based on the world community - a real commonwealth of peoples. It’s time to build a new decentralised, democratic, horizontal model, where all ecosystems are respected. A truly green economy would put an end to harmful policies which put profit before people and also end our obsession with economic growth and unsustainable consumption and embrace a focus on how everyone’s needs can be truly met in a sustainable manner. It means dismantling the corrupt, top-down power structures that maintain wealth for the few and reinstating decentralised, community-controlled economies.

 Only through replacing growth with a steady-state economy can we be sustainable. This, however, does not mean advocating zero-growth worldwide, because that would deny development to a majority of the world’s population in urgent need of material advancement. Instead of applying market rules to nature what we need is to forge a new system based on the principles of harmony and balance among all and with all things; common ownership and collective well-being; the satisfaction of the basic necessities of all. The global response needed to confront the crisis we face requires structural changes.

 We must change the capitalist system, not the Earth's system. The time has come to unite the thousands of struggles, the hundreds of campaigns, all the movements and organisations combating the many different ways capitalism has appropriated our destinies in every part of the planet. Peoples' liberties have been violated, the Earth and its resources destroyed and pillaged while companies continue to commit economic and ecological crimes without constraint. These corporations, driven by their imperative of maximising profit, pit workers from different regions against each other in a race to the bottom. Multinationals operate globally, moving from one country to another, applying the same recipe to generate profit at any cost. It is we, the working class, who bear the costs. Yet resistance is growing throughout the world. Every day, more communities and peoples struggle against these companies. Even so, we have not managed to halt the advance of corporations. When defeated in one place, they adjust their strategies and move to another location.

There is an urgent need for a concerted response. We must unite our experiences and struggles, learn collectively from success and failure, and share our analysis and strategies for putting an end to capitalism. Voting is only one step in taking control of your future. Being politically and socially active is more than voting, however. We invite you to join us in collectively building this process of mobilisation towards a global campaign against the power of the capitalist and coordinate global struggles, combining street protests with education and political action to create a potent movement of solidarity and practical opposition against big business, its apologists and its promoters. The truth and knowing the facts will prevent us from being fooled into believing what’s bad is good.

It is now no longer a utopian fantasy – but a practical, revolutionary proposition – to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. We have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the desire to make that next great historical advance possible; confidence in ourselves as masters of our own destiny and to realise that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to re-fashion a world in our own interests.

How soon this happens depends upon us all – each and every one of us.