Photo: Leehee Goldenberg
An NIF-backed Israeli delegation attended the COP27 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt last week. The delegation, which was led by representatives from Shatil and NIF grantee Heschel Center for Sustainability, connected the struggles for environmental and social justice and demanded that the countries participating in the conference put forth a more just policy on climate.
Members of the delegation stressed that cosmetic solutions to climate are insufficient. Rather, a movement that links the fight against the climate crisis to social struggles will ensure that we develop solutions that tackle systemic problems rather than ones that will only benefit the wealthy and widen global inequality.
Shatil national projects director Ella Yedaya was a member of the delegation to Egypt. She said, “It’s not that I have any illusions about the Sharm global climate summit where the countries promise a lot and, in the end, do very little.
“This delegation was the culmination of a process we led this year to bring civil society organizations into the conversation about the climate crisis and to think together about how different populations will be harmed by the climate crisis, how this harm can be reduced while also increasing equality and solidarity and improving all of our lives.”
Yedaya added, “In these days when we are more worried than usual about the future, any government will have to deal with the climate crisis and its consequences. This is a campaign that we cannot ignore. It is going to affect and change everything. It is vital that we understand that there is a different social profile for those harmed by climate change and that we need to form new economic and social concepts to deal with the crisis.
Based on this thinking, Israeli social change activists have begun to study and work, together with representatives of communities and social change organizations, in seven groups (supported by Shatil, Heschel and the Adva Center). From these groups, about 20 initiatives for a just transition were created and submitted to the Israeli Climate Forum led by former MK Dov Khenin and sponsored by President Isaac Herzog.