Climate Crisis, Black America, & the Global African-Origin Community
Reflections on COP27
by Jacqui Patterson
[This report is by Jacqui Patterson, long-time lead thinker/activist on environmental and climate justice for the NAACP and now the founder and director of The {Shirley} Chisholm Legacy Project. She led the Chisholm Project’s delegation to COP27 in Egypt.
[She is a member of the newly formed Advisory Council of The Shalom Center. (See below this essay for the list of present members.) Though there was no prior consultation between Ms. Patterson and Cherie Brown, President of the Board of The Shalom Center, both their reports, written from very different standpoints, spoke powerfully about racism in COP27, especially among the Carbon Corporate delegations and especially aimed at Africa. (Read Cherie Brown's reflections on COP27 here.)
[In the Q&A format here, the Questions come from staff of the Chisholm Legacy Project to its director, Ms. Patterson. The Shalom Center begins 2023 with this report on how racism and uncontrolled capitalism unite to poison and kill in modern crematoria without chimneys. — AW. ed.]
Going into COP27, what were you hoping for?
Going into COP27, our hopes were truly twofold: one, we wanted to continue to consolidate the relaunch of the Global Afro Descendant Climate Justice Collaborative (GADCJC). We had launched it in 2015 in a collaboration between the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, and the NAACP when I was there as the director of the Environmental and Climate Justice program.
At that time, it was the first year of the UN decade of people of African descent. We thought it would be fitting to launch this initiative that pulls together people of African descent from throughout the world who hold common realities in terms of the challenges of colonization, and that hold realities in terms of forced migration — whether it was through the transatlantic slave trade, or through the modern day, forced migration from climate change, or through what's happened over the years in terms of displacement because of wars fueled by the extractive economy.
We thought there was common cause around the colonialism, racism and forced migration we've all experienced; that there was common cause in terms of the other myriad impacts of the extractive economy; that there was common cause around the differential impacts of climate change on people of African descent; and that there was common cause around the ways that we're already leading in our various nations and regions globally on the type of solutions that we need to address climate change.
Drivers navigate a flooded roadway in Benin.
Photo credit: “Flooding in Cotonou” by Theresa Carpenter, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
With that as the backdrop, we decided to launch the GADCJC. But we didn't really have that much capacity to carry it forward. So, we decided to begin to look at ways that we can build that capacity, and really, truly provide a container for the exploration of common cause, and the exploration of joint advocacy around the systems change that we need to not only advance Just Transition and Black liberation, but Just Transition and global human rights.
One of the things that we were looking to do at COP27 was to continue to have conversations and to build momentum, unity, and power around the GADCJC. The second thing we were hoping to do was to launch and advance a resolution on race, racism, and climate reparations in the UN Framework Commission on climate change.
The centering of this challenge around colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the ongoing ways that we see modern day racism has been largely missing from the discussion altogether. I went entire COPs without seeing anyone from the dais talking about racism and colonialism. We were really hoping to unify the global Afro descendant people with this resolution, and we were also looking to concretely establish a pathway to see a racial justice constituency group and a racial justice focal point formed within the UN Framework Commission on Climate Change.
As you traveled to Egypt, did you have any concerns about the way the COP might play out?
Even though it's officially called the Conference of Parties, many people call it the Conference of Polluters, or the Conference of Privateers. That is the reality with which we enter these COPs — knowing that the amount of progress that would happen is always going to be tempered by who is in power. Our concern is that those who are in power are too often the corporate interest and the industrialized nations that are beholden to those corporate interests.
We didn't have high hopes in terms of how the official negotiations would play out. We had the concerns that we always had — that those low “un-hopes” would be realized, and that any higher hopes would be unrealized.
But, when we go, we go with a secondary agenda, which is to come together with other frontline communities, formations, and movements in the context of this global conversation. It is to build unity, build common cause, and build power together to advance systems change. In some ways, COP is a venue and a convening point for that. But we continue with low expectations about what's going to happen in the official negotiations.
The theme of loss and damage was front and center at the COP. Why do you think this resonated so strongly this year? How did a coalition of partners come together to call for it?
We saw that theme as being advanced by the people. We talk about the coalition of partners who come together: the civil society who's on the front lines of sea level rise that is overtaking our land, on the front lines of the disasters that are decimating our people, and on the front lines of the drought and the resulting shift in agricultural yields which is both starving communities and displacing folks who are agrarian in nature, and who need to be able to follow where the food is.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change has set the clock ticking that we're all experiencing on the front lines. Our options are limited in terms of being able to turn the tide of climate change if we do have this conference of privateers and conference of polluters withholding the types of decisions that we need to address climate change.
Given what we haven't seen from the COPs in terms of a true commitment to the types of emissions elimination that we need, we must turn to addressing the loss and damage that we're experiencing daily, and that we're going to continue to experience at a much more extreme level because of the failure to really commit to the real change. That is why it resonates so strongly - because everybody knows that that's where we are at this point.
A man guides his cattle through neck-deep floodwaters in Nigeria.
Photo credit: “Livestock in danger” by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The 1.5 target seems to be shifting, and the fact that renewable energy didn't make it to the final statement was surprising to many. What is your take on the impact of these decisions?
Unfortunately, the lack of renewable energy in the final statement was surprising only to those who don't follow this process closely, and don't have the decade-plus of dashed hopes from all the past 26 COPs. We know that with a fossil fuel lobby controlling so much of what happens there, that the lack of renewable energy was not surprising.
The impact is that we must deepen our focus on loss and damage, because that's exactly where we are in terms of the impacts of climate change, because of what we're failing to do in terms of shifting away from the fossil fuel economy into the clean energy economy.
Fire along the River Congo between Kinshasa and Lukolela, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Photo credit: “Livestock in danger” by Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The COP process has its place, but many analysts are increasingly questioning whether the time for negotiations is drawing to a close, to be replaced by a time for implementation. Much of this energy comes from the grassroots. How are communities solving the climate crisis? What are some innovative solutions being developed by your members?
In terms of solutions, the good news is — and this is a spoiler alert as well as a shameless plug — we are putting out a report in January 2023 about Black Americans and climate change: 15 ways we're differentially impacted, and 45 ways we're leading on solutions. You will see in that report the ways that we in the United States as Black Americans are leading our solutions, and the ways that some of our allies and comrades throughout the world are leading on the solutions.
Those solutions are everything from shifting away from a fossil fuel-based energy economy, to shifting towards local production of food. It’s shifting away from wasting energy, wasting water, and having a proliferation of waste, and moving towards a more regenerative economy. It’s moving towards having durable goods versus disposable goods. It’s moving towards centering human rights.
We're seeing how that's already happening — from the one million trees that are being planted in the Gambia, to the solar rays that are being erected by the Navajo nation in in the western United States, to the local food that's being proliferated by groups like the Soul Fire Farm, to the zero-waste initiative being advanced by folks from Zero Waste Detroit. We are already leading on the types of solutions that we need. And, if you watch out for that report that's coming out in January, you'll see even more.
[Jacqui Patterson shares membership on The Shalom Center’s Advisory Council with Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. and for half a century an indomitable leader of the feminist movement; Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, the most effective global activist working to prevent climate disaster and a co-founder of Third Act, a multi-issue organization of activist elders; Heather Booth, founder of the Midwest Academy to train progressive organizers and herself a legendary organizer of many activist events and projects; Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary. and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign; Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Rev. Jim Winkler, most recent general secretary and president of the National Council of Churches; Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, point person for the National Council of Jewish Women in its campaign to protect abortion rights; and Ahmet Tekelioglu, executive director of CAIR-Philadelphia, the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.]