Kick Big Polluters Out

1. No more writing the rules.

Big Polluters must not be granted access to climate policymaking. This allows them to continue to unduly influence, weaken, and undermine the global response to climate change, and it’s why we are on the brink of extinction. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change must urgently establish an Accountability Framework to end this corporate capture. As an immediate next step, all participants must be required to publicly disclose and declare their interests. People deserve to know who is at the policymaking table, and what their real agenda is.

2. No more bankrolling climate action.

No Big Polluter partnership or sponsorships of climate talks or climate action. Not now. Not ever. Major polluters must not be allowed to greenwash themselves and literally buy their way out of culpability for a crisis they have caused. Already, two major polluters have been named as COP27 partners- Coca-Cola, the  world’s largest plastics polluter and a major political blocker of action; and Microsoft, the world’s largest tech partner to the oil and gas industry. The UNFCCC will always fail to deliver so long as this is deemed acceptable.

3. Polluters Out- People In.

While civil society has always participated in the COP process, governments have made it more difficult each time for NGOs and climate justice movements to have their voices heard. We need equitable, meaningful inclusion. Climate action must center the leadership and lived experience of the people, especially those on the frontlines of the climate crisis. With frontline communities in the lead, we must end the funding and validation of dangerous distractions and false solutions that promote Big Polluters’ profits, enable their abuses, and guarantee decades more of fossil fuel use.

4. Reset the system.

Capitalism is destroying life as we know it. It’s time to build a new way of living and collaborating that works for people, not polluters, and that restores, rather than destroys, nature. We need real, just, accountable, gender responsive, community-led, nature-restoring, and proven and transformative solutions to be implemented rapidly and justly. We need a total and equitable transition off of fossil fuels. We need real solutions that center the rights of Indigenous peoples, local communities and the protection of those speaking up for justice. We need an end to the impunity of corporate abuses.