From November 6 to 17, national delegates will gather in Bonn, Germany, to take part in the twenty-third session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changes (COP23). Every year, the COP meets “to review and assess the implementation of the UNFCCC and any other legal instruments the body adopts with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate change.”
This will be the first COP since Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which the US signed along with almost 200 other nations in 2015. This withdrawal marked a tipping point in the tentative consensus reached in Paris. Trump alone cannot dissolve the agreement, but his actions have weakened it enough to ask ourselves: is it realistic to expect to slow down emissions and reverse climate change impacts without one of the biggest polluters taking part in the efforts?
As in previous COPs, civil society—including the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—will be present to lobby for the best possible implementation of the Paris Agreement, to debate next steps, and to build connections for the global climate movement. RLS has a full schedule of events planned, both in the UNFCCC’s formal civil society space (the Bonn Zone) and at the People’s Climate Summit (November 3-7). RLS’s program includes sessions on energy democracy, fighting extractivism, just transition, local climate struggles, and gender-just implementation of the agreement, putting the focus on the need for more prominent roles for women of color, peasants, and Indigenous peoples in the climate justice movement.
Together with the Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) initiative and CUNY’s Murphy Institute, RLS–NYC will bring together union leaders from the global North and South with their allies committed to reclaiming and restructuring the energy system. We will focus on the need for radical reform towards a social ownership and control of the energy system that also protects the rights of workers and communities.
We will also be joined by a delegation of Indigenous women climate defenders travelling from Kenya with the support of RLS-NYC and our partner MADRE. The group, formed by Edna Kapyoyo, Margaret Cherop Nguratiang, Alice Lesepen, and Naiyan Kiplagat, will take part in the COP23 to ensure the needs of Indigenous women and communities are taken into account by national delegates and civil society.
RLS Official Side Event:
The contribution of local climate justice struggles to a gender-just implementation of the UNFCCC
When: Tuesday, 14 November, 11:30-13:00
Where: COP23, Bonn Zone, Meeting Room 4
Linking local struggles with the international negotiations, we will present equitable, gender-just, inclusive, resilient, low-carbon solutions and discuss how international agreements can support these solutions and approaches to reduce and compensate for loss and damage.
Speakers: Ndivile Mokoena (GenderCC Southern Africa, South Africa), Dinda Nuur Annisaa Yura (Solidaritas Perempuan, Indonesia), Melissa Moreano (Critical Geography Collective, Ecuador), Dr. Till Bender (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Germany), Sabine Minninger (Brot für die Welt, Germany)
This side event is co-hosted by GenderCC and LIFE.
For other events hosted by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung at the People’s Climate Summit and the UN Climate Summit in Bonn, check here.
Check out the related TUED Working Paper no. 10, “Preparing a Public Pathway: Confronting the Investment Crisis in Renewable Energy.”
