Engaged for nearly twenty years in climate justice movements, the Briton Asad Rehman is a figure in the galaxy of Anglo-Saxon environmental movements. He heads the NGO War on Want to fight against poverty, created in 1951. Today, he was alongside the sister of Alaa Abdel Fattah, as part of the support campaign for the Egyptian activist. For him, the fight for the climate is not only a question of carbon and polar bears.
Collected by our special correspondent in Sharm el-Sheikh
Beyond the fact that Alaa is a citizen of the host country of the COP, which sheds light on his situation, how is his case a question of climate justice?
Alaa embodies, not only in Egypt, but all over the world, that human rights defenders and those of the climate cause are criminalized, imprisoned and killed. Two environmental defenders are killed around the world every week.
The term climate justice arose from the history of the struggles of movements in the South and environmental justice movements in the North. Everyone understood that the climate crisis was not just about carbon, but that it was a structural crisis that manifests itself in different ways. It not only expresses the injustices and inequalities that already exist, but accentuates them. As it got worse, these movements noticed that people whose homes were destroyed, who had no regular resources to live on, who had no safety nets, no public services, were also most vulnerable to climate change. And the more they demanded rights, to feed themselves or end poverty, the more repressive governments became. So human rights are a structuring element in the fight against climate change. Because one of the most basic rights is to live with dignity.
More than a hundred Heads of State have just spoken for two days. Did you listen to the speeches? Is it still blah-blah-blah » do you think?
Words are cheap! We will now see what will be decided concretely during these two weeks. It must be understood that these climate negotiations are a space of confrontation between the most powerful countries in the world and those without power, between those who have benefited from an economic system, not only liberal or capitalistic, but resulting from colonialism.
When I arrived in these spaces for the climate, quite a few years ago, the discussions revolved around polar bears, we were talking about carbon. Today, heads of government use the term “climate justice”. You have the Prime Minister of Barbados saying we won’t let colonialism happen again through climate justice, flooded Pakistan using the word reparations. All this shows that we have come a long way. The fact that rich countries can no longer ignore the demand for “loss and damage”, as they have done for 30 years, also shows that the pressure put on them has worked.
You were center stage in Glasgow with the COP26 Coalition that you co-founded, which brought together various actors from civil society. What is your assessment of the past year?
From the States, I do not see the action we need coming. But we see more and more people connecting the links of a chain, to understand the price that climate change is costing them, to realize that it is not only an energy crisis, that it is an energy crisis fossils and ask for alternatives to guarantee a healthier, more sustainable life.
Just before COP26 in Glasgow, reports from the IPCC warned that humanity was on a tightrope. Just before this COP, reports say we are on course to move away from the 1.5°C target [de réchauffement, prévu par l’Accord de Paris]. When countries say from the podium, especially the rich ones, that they take the climate crisis seriously and that during the year they have in fact all increased their consumption of oil and gas while making agreements with of the countries of the South to block the energies, and that they still have not paid the promised money.
Do you remember anything positive?
Today at least we have the “loss and damage” on the agenda. We have seen the developing countries finally speak once to ask for the creation of a financial mechanism. And we have a civil society increasingly mobilized behind intersectional demands for justice and climate. It gives me hope.
You say you were influenced by social movements in the South. How is it different in the North, which nevertheless tends towards the same objectives of reducing the greenhouse effect?
In the North, there has always been this luxury of seeing the problems in isolation, of seeing climate change as a problem separate from the issues of poverty and inequality, of being able to fight against taxes and markets while having enough of food. But the movements, in the South, are forced to see things in an intersectional way: injustices are intertwined, the very reality of people’s lives is intersectional. The lenses can no longer be seen through a single lens of the scope. More and more movements understand the need for this approach, the only way to achieve the change we want.
Do you think we have to live through the climate crisis to be able to fight it?
I do not think so. Years ago, I heard governments at these COPs say things like: When the United States and Europe face climate catastrophes, they will react. But they face it and do nothing. The crisis does not necessarily mean that the change will be positive. What makes it positive is to ask ourselves if we have the ideas, the policies, if we build power around them by ensuring that this transformation is fair. It is certain that the climatic upheaval opens the eyes of always more people, it is very good. Awareness is crucial. But then the question is, what do we do with it? This is the battle we have not yet won in the North.
The ecological fight sometimes tends to become more radical, through civil disobedience. Not only today, it is a historical constant of the movements for the environment. Your remarks and positions can be seen as quite radical. What do you think of the methods of civil disobedience? Do you participate in these initiatives?
Change has never been allowed without a part of civil disobedience, people taking to the streets, people demanding the right to have a union, the right to vote, the end of slavery, of colonialism. Why do scientists chain themselves up and get arrested? This is because for years they have warned, but have not been listened to. Now they are forced to leave their laboratories and take to the streets. It is considerable. If it wakes people up, if it shows them the urgency to act, then I am for civil disobedience. It is the piece of a puzzle, that of the evolution of our movements. Even in the North, they want to restrict the right to demonstrate and the means to protest…
For instance ?
In my country, in the UK ! If a protest makes noise, it can be declared illegal… They say it targets environmental activists, but in fact it only criminalizes and reduces the fundamental right to protest.
How did your commitment to social justice in general, and then to climate justice, come about?
I come from the anti-racist movement, at a time when we were subject to violent fascist attacks and racist murders. I grew up in the north of England, in an area where the extreme right was very strong. My house was burned down, we were attacked in our house, in the streets, at school. We had to defend ourselves in our communities. I have always taken the side of saying that the cause is state violence, this violence which leaves people without hope and in misery. People are dying because of inequalities in the world, people are drowning in the Mediterranean.
By joining these anti-racist movements, I quickly learned that the power is not in the “I”, it is in the “we” and that what happens to us, happens to others elsewhere in the world, and that we must make common cause. We were internationalists, because racism is international. Having worked on racism, human rights, the globalization crisis, I immediately understood that climate change was going to make all these battles even harder. I also understood that if we left the climate fight to the environmental movements that I would describe as “mainstream”, they would only have a narrow vision of the climate, whereas the climate cause recommends putting on the table the economic, social , racial.
The movements that historically pushed these dimensions the most were understandably mostly black, mixed-race, working-class, poor, compared to the environmental movements in the US and UK. The concept of climate justice emerged in the 1990s and the climate justice conference in 2002 laid down the principles. Bali COP [en 2007] marked the moment when the climate justice movements formally separated from the environmentalist mainstream and established themselves as a real network.