Just Transition for climate ambition

/ Just Transition for climate ambition

Trade unions, social movements and climate activists across the world are embarking on an historic week of mobilisations to demand climate action, starting on 20 September. Millions of people are set to stop work, engage in workplace actions and take to the streets and put pressure on governments to commit to the ambitious measures necessary to address the climate crisis.

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“People everywhere recognise that the world must act, urgently and together, to stop catastrophic global warming. We are facing a climate emergency, and governments need to take ambitious and comprehensive action. They must heed the demands of the young people who are at the forefront of the campaign for action, and they must understand what the science tells us. Time is short to keep the global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees, but the transition to a zero-carbon, zero-poverty world can be achieved,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

“It’s a matter of political will. The economic transition must be just, to ensure that the working people who made economic development possible and whose livelihoods are on the front lines of climate change are not left alone to face the crisis. Unions everywhere are proactively reaching out to governments and employers to find climate solutions that bring everybody along. Now is the time for real and ambitious commitments,” said Burrow.

Working people will be participating in climate demonstrations in unprecedented numbers. Unions in workplaces and at the sectoral, national and international levels have come out in support.

This global week of climate action comes three months after the ‘Climate-Proof Our Work’ day of workplace action in which workers and their unions reached out to employers in a bid to jointly build emissions-reduction into the business models of companies.

The mobilisations are intended to exert maximum pressure on the United Nations’ Climate Summit on 23 September. Governments are being called upon to increase the ambition in their emissions targets, which they must review over the next six months.

“This is a wake-up call to the world. Young people have shown us the much-needed ambition, and it is our common duty to all future generations that we act decisively. Just Transition must be at the heart of tackling the climate emergency, which is already destroying livelihoods and communities and which will only worsen in the absence of decisive action,” said Burrow.

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