QCEA highlights climate breakdown and militarism
‘This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe.’ António Guterres, UN secretary general.
Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) has launched a new report Storytelling from the Frontlines: Forefronting the voices of communities most affected by militarism and the climate crisis.
The report brings a selection of stories from communities in disparate locations of the world badly affected by militarism and the climate crisis. According to QCEA, ‘through storytellers’ eyes, we see how militarisation and securitised responses negatively impact the natural environment that communities depend on to survive and thrive, as well as how militarisation hinders local efforts to tackle climate and environmental issues at the community level’. With voices ranging from people living in Palestine and Guatemala, to the Mariana Islands and Vietnam, the interviews highlight issues such as polluted lakes, displaced communities and a campaign for ecocide to be recognised as a crime.
Published on 10 March, the report was launched just ten days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth assessment report, in which leading climate scientists set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on many of the world’s regions. This includes extreme heatwaves, droughts and floods and ‘irreversible losses’ in ecosystems.
Scientists called the report ‘the final warning’ while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This is the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: ‘This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe’.
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