Climate Justice Fast!

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Location

Please, join us in the first Ottawa Climate Justice Fast! 

We will demand that Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper do much more to address the need for climate justice. You can participate by going without food for the day down at 24 Sussex, or by simply showing up with a banner or poster demanding "Climate Justice Fast!"

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Perhaps the most troubling fact about the climate crisis is that injustice is at its very core. Those who have contributed least to climate change -- people living in poverty and those in developing countries in the global south -- are suffering its worst consequences.

As Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has noted: "It is the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit." Meanwhile, Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, has said: "The injustice of the whole issue of global warming and climate change lies in the fact that those who have contributed nothing to its genesis will suffer the most from its consequences."

These men refer to the facts that countries in Africa are suffering famines due to drought, millions of citizens in the global south who rely on glaciers for their drinking water are running out of that natural resource, and that poor people in south east Asia are experiencing ever-more deadly typhoons. All of these things are caused by global warming. Meanwhile, in Canada, the Tar Sands mega project is highly polluting, and making First Nations people in the area deathly ill.

Climate Justice Fast - Ottawa [5] is part of an international hunger strike, Climate Justice Fast! [6] to call for strong, just action on the climate crisis. It runs ahead of the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where world leaders will be effectively tasked with deciding the fate of our planet at the UNFCCC COP15.

Fasts are planned in the US, the UK, India, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Honduras, Bhutan, New Zealand, The Philippines and inside the Copenhagen conference itself, with over 70 activists from 14 different countries already involved.

Climate Justice Fast! will demonstrate the commitment and courage required of all nations and all global citizens if we are to equitably solve climate change.

Our demands

We, the participants of Climate Justice Fast!, are undertaking our international hunger strike in order to call upon world leaders to act with courage and good faith for our common, global good, by implementing the most rapid possible transition to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gasses at below 350ppm CO2-e, and by committing to deliver justice for the global poor, who are the least responsible for causing climate change, yet are already suffering the most from its effects.

Justice for the poor can be delivered by funding climate adaptation and mitigation activities in developing nations with at least US$160 billion per year, by a commitment to reduce
over-consumption, wherever it exists, to equitable, sustainable levels and by eliminating developed countries' subsidies of fossil fuels and shifting them to renewable energy.

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