Hundreds of environmental and human rights groups and activists have penned a letter urging the upcoming UN climate conference, COP30, in Brazil to place justice and reparations for people unfairly affected by the climate crisis, colonialism and slavery at the centre of talks.
The signatories, which include Brazil’s Instituto Luiz Gama and the Caribbean Pan African Network (CPAN), urged organisers on Friday to “centre the voices of Africans, people of African descent and Indigenous Peoples” at the upcoming meeting in Maloca, in the Brazilian Amazon, from November 10 to 21 this year.
“We call for justice for the countries and people of the world who have historically contributed the least to climate change, but who are often among the hardest hit by it,” the activists said in their letter.
They called on Brazil as the host of the meeting, alongside other organisers, to “highlight” how climate justice is connected to reparations “for the histories and legacies of colonialism and enslavement”, noting that Brazil is home to the largest population of people of African descent outside Africa and “among the largest populations of Indigenous Peoples in the world”.
The letter also pointed to recent advisory opinions on climate justice from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, noting that both rulings “highlighted the vulnerabilities of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities”.
Crucially, the ICJ said industrialised nations have a legal obligation to take the lead in combating climate change, due to their greater historical responsibility for emissions.
Rich countries agreed to help poorer countries adapt to the growing climate crisis under an agreement reached at COP talks in Paris in 2015, but commitments lag significantly behind the $1.3 trillion developing countries say is needed to pay for loss and damage caused by increasingly extreme weather.
Negotiators at last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan agreed to set a target of $300bn in Loss and Damage financing to help developing nations adapt to climate change.
That figure was an increase from a previous $100bn pledge from rich countries, but was still $200bn less than the amount 134 developing countries were calling for at last year’s COP meeting.
The latest push for reparations comes as countries around the world continue to face increasingly frequent severe weather events.
Countries are struggling to meet the costs of climate change, including Pakistan, which is grappling with flooding again this year following extreme floods that caused some $14.8bn worth of damage and $15.2bn of economic losses in 2022. They pushed some nine million people into poverty, according to the Climate Rate Index report.
Recent research from European organisations and the European Central Bank has also found that climate change is already driving spikes in food prices, including recent price hikes for Brazilian coffee and Ghanaian cocoa.
Other signatories to the letter addressing COP organisers include the Global Afro-descendant Climate Collaboration for Climate Justice, Ugandan youth climate organisation Resilient 40, the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago and the HBCU Green Fund in the United States.
Colombia’s environment minister has also backed the letter, which will be sent to the Brazilian government and the United Nations next week.
Centuries-old demands for reparations over colonial exploitation and slavery have been gaining renewed momentum worldwide, but the backlash against them has also been growing, with critics saying modern states and institutions should not pay or make other amends for historical wrongs.
Anielle Franco, Brazil’s minister of racial equality, told the Reuters news agency last year that the wrongs of the past had long gone unrecognised by those in power, and that reparations were about “building a more dignified future”.
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