Climate justice coalition releases liability roadmap
Scores of civil society groups in Africa, yesterday, joined their counterparts
worldwide to demand that their governments hold big polluters accountable for
the devastation their extractive activities have caused humanity and the
environment.
The Global Make Big Polluters Pay campaign was first launched in September 2019
at the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Summit in New York City.
At the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) in Madrid, Spain, over 200,000
participants from about 63 countries, including those from Africa, urged the
delegates to make a case for big polluters to pay.
That demand was amplified with the release of a liability roadmap outlining
guidelines on how governments could hold polluting industries liable for their
activities causing environmental degradation and climate change.
The issue of liability has taken on new life as countries of the Global North shove
climate justice demands to the back seat in favour of incentives for big polluters in
the wake of COVID-19, leaving majorly grassroots and frontline communities
more vulnerable.
Executive Director of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation
Africa (CAPPA), Akinbode Oluwafemi and the Associate Director, Aderonke Ige, at
the launch in Lagos, said: “The launch of the liability roadmap is timely. It
presents an opportunity and pathway that African governments must seize to
finally hold polluting industries accountable for the environmental and human
rights abuses they have caused in communities across Africa and the world over.”
Regional Director, Corporate Accountability Climate Campaign (CACC), Hellen
Neima, said: “Liability presents an interesting prospect for communities that
have for decades borne the brunt of big polluter’s assaults like oil spills in their
rivers and farmlands, and the noxious gas flares that contribute in large part to
the climate change.
Source: The Guardian
