Hundreds Protest, Demand Action At UN Climate Summit

Hundreds of activists called on industrialized nations to pay for the impact of climate change and to speed up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, in the largest protest yet at the UN climate summit in Egypt.

Photo Insert: Protests have mostly been muted at the conference, known as COP27, which is taking place in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Protests have mostly been muted at the conference, known as COP27, which is taking place in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Activists blamed the high cost of travel, accommodation, and restrictions in the isolated city for limiting the number of demonstrators.

The protesters marched through the conference’s “Blue Zone,” which is considered a UN territory and ruled by international law.

They chanted, sang, and danced in an area not far from where climate talks and negotiations are taking place. The protests came at the end of the first week of the two-week summit, when typically protest action at climate summits is at its biggest.

“Pay for loss and damage now,” said Friday Nbani, a Nigerian environmental activist who was leading a group of African protesters. Many protesters, alongside several vulnerable countries, have called for ‘loss and damage’ payments, or financing to help pay for climate-related harms, to be central to negotiations.

“Africa is crying, and its people are dying,” Nbani said.

Protesters also called for drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions being pumped into the atmosphere. Emissions continue to rise but scientists say the amount of heat-trapping gases need to be almost halved by 2030 to meet the temperature-limiting goals of the Paris climate accord.

Activists chanted “keep it in the ground” in reference to their rejection of the continued extraction of fossil fuels.

On Friday, some activists heckled US President Joe Biden’s speech and raised an orange banner that read, “People vs. Fuels” before being removed. One of the activists, Jacob Johns, had his access to the conference revoked as a result.

“It’s just a great way to silence Indigenous voices nationally and globally,” said Johns, a member of the Akimelo’otham and Hopi nations in the US.

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