Radio Mundo Real

Real World Radio is at the COP 15 on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark. There, we interviewed Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, who described what a socially and climate just agreement in Copenhagen would entail.

He said it should neither include false solutions nor offsetting.

He emphasized that the industrialized nations should cut their emissions without offsetting.

They should repay their climate debt, and this begins by providing funds for mitigation to the global South and to build resilience in the communities affected by climate change.

Bassey said that the Friends of the Earth delegation is the biggest one at the 15 Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change, and that its activists will pressure the delegates, politicians and ministers so that climate justice is the basis of the negotiations.

Friends of the Earth International believes the developed countries (Annex 1 countries of the Kyoto Protocol) owe a historical climate debt to the rest of the world, which should be repaid.

Therefore they must reduce their polluting emissions dramatically, provide climate change adaptation and mitigation funds to the global South as well as transfer technology to that region so that they can develop in a sustainable way.

The developing countries have the right to develop, but they cannot follow the same paradigm of the rich countries, they cannot continue promoting the use of fossil fuels such as crude oil, said Bassey.

They must develop as low carbon economies, but they do not have to pay for this technology transfer. That is climate justice, he claimed.

The chair of Friends of the Earth International said “no deal is better than a bad deal” with false solutions in Copenhagen.