Catholic aid agencies unite for climate change justice

A coalition representing more than 170 Catholic development charities, including CAFOD and SCIAF, joined bishops from around the world to highlight the plight of the world’s poor at UN talks in Poland to agree a post 2012 deal on climate change.

Campaigners gathered at the site of the UN Framework Climate Change Convention negotiations in Poznan to launch a worldwide campaign calling for government leaders to take urgent action to help developing countries cope.

From 2000 to 2004, 262 million people were affected by climate disasters annually, 98 per cent of which were in the developing world.

The current negotiations are the latest in the process of developing a post-2012 agreement, to be concluded next December in Copenhagen. The final agreement will set out a new global framework for tackling climate change.

SCIAF’s Campaigns Officer Lexi Barnett is in Poznan and said, "While wealthy countries have consumed vast amounts of energy to power their economies it is people living in poverty in developing countries who are suffering the consequences.

"Changing rainfall patterns, storms and droughts are drastically increasing the challenges faced by people already struggling to escape extreme poverty. Through our work in the world’s poorest countries we know that demand for relief efforts and emergency food supplies has grown rapidly over recent years.

"We have a moral obligation to make sure developing countries receive the economic and technical assistance they need to adapt to the challenges being brought on by climate change. The new treaty has to ensure that we do this.”

Liz Gallagher, CAFOD's Policy Researcher on Climate Change said many poor people were already struggling to survive in the face of climate change.

"Climate change is here, and it will get worse," she said.

Many poor people are already struggling to survive, losing their livelihoods and lives as a consequence of extreme weather events. Developed nations are responsible for nearly three quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted since the start of the industrial era.

She accused EU member states of "short-sightedness ... in using the financial crisis as a smokescreen means they could now fail to deliver at Poznan and beyond".

"This would condemn poor people and all of us to even greater climate catastrophe down the line, and cost us much more in the long-run.

"We need to be courageous and remain firm on our commitments, avoiding dangerous climate change, and we need to reassert that people living in poverty are at the heart of the debate," she said.

The new climate justice campaign is spearheaded by Caritas and CIDSE, two alliances of Catholic aid agencies. The campaign will bring together hundreds of thousands of people to call on their governments to negotiate a socially just post-2012 climate agreement which addresses the impact of climate change on developing countries.

The campaign calls for industrialised countries to recognise and support the right to sustainable development of people, in developing countries, provide sufficient and secure funding and technical support for developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change, and commit to at least a 30-40 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by industrialised countries by 2020