November 9: Global Day of InterAction for a World without Walls
The 27th session of the conference of the parties (COP27) to the UNFCCC will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from November 06-18 2022. Like previous conferences, the conference will start with a plethora of declarations and end with a dearth of action to stop the climate catastrophes befalling people, especially populations in the Global South.
Businesses and states that put profits before people will once again embrace false solutions to the increasing emissions, rising sea levels, flood and the mounting harms on the human and the non-human. The voices of people who bear the brunt of the climate crisis and grassroots movements demanding an immediate and just agricultural and energy transition to a fossil-fuel free future will be shut out.
Social movements and human rights organizations have denounced Egypt’s systematic human rights violations, reflected in the exclusionary nature of the COP held in Egypt. The Egyptian government, known for the suppression of free speech and assembly, is expected to control and limit any meaningful participation of activists and grassroots groups.
The exclusion of oppressed and colonized peoples from the shaping of policies aimed at addressing the climate crisis, is not unique to the COP27. It is intrinsic to all COP conferences and climate politics.
The call for a World without Walls unites with activists across the globe to demand an end to Walls of Climate Colonialism.
World without Wall was initiated in 2017 by Palestinian and Mexican organizations with the intention of bringing together movements across the globe that fight walls of expulsion, exclusion, oppression, discrimination and exploitation. At the COP27, the true builders of Walls of Climate Colonialism will be meeting. They mount false solutions in front of us and bar the path towards climate justice.
We know that the future of our people and our planet are connected.
We cannot liberate our planet from the destructive yoke of extractivism, fossil fuels and unsustainable development, if we don’t free our people from oppression, exploitation, wars and militarization. We have to end climate colonialism, the racist systems that consider some of us dispensable or an obstacle to their greed of conquest and profits.
Apartheid Israel and its corporations that enable and profit from the theft of Palestinian land and resources are among the builders and exporters of the Walls of Climate Colonialism.
As Palestinians, we witness Israeli environmental apartheid everywhere. We fight it in the occupied Jordan Valley, where Mekorot plays a key role in stealing Palestinian water to re-direct it to its illegal settlement enterprise; in Gaza, where Israel’s gas pipeline runs without permission through Palestinian territorial waters and has given rise to a marittime siege and ongoing attacks on Palestinian fisherfolk; and in Masafer Yatta and al-Naqab, where the Jewish National Fund is responsible for the theft of Palestinian land in order to facilitate Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinian villages in these areas.
Israeli apartheid sells models and technologies developed to dispossess Palestinians as false solutions across the globe, exporting climate apartheid.
This technology allows the same elites that have brought us to the brink of extinction to preserve their privilege, continue to make profits and to continue to displace communities around the world. Israel’s water management company Mekorot has been exposed attempting to export water apartheid to Argentina and in India Israel’s Netafim produced a farming model where “farmers are enslaved to corporate farm managers“. African movements are uniting to fight Israel’s water apartheid. Now, Israel wants to join the fossil fuel bonanza and, with the help of Chevron and Siemens, aims to export gas and electricity to Europe.
Israeli agri-apartheid, water apartheid technology and its fossil fuel industry are siphoning off public money from across the world to maintain and further develop their colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian people.
We will join the global mobilizations against the COP27 and call on Palestine solidarity and climate justice groups and social movements across the globe to come together to fight Walls of Climate Colonialism. Join us in building action on and around November 9 – Global Day of Action for a World Without Walls – in order to:
- Denounce the false climate solutions and apartheid Israel’s role in promoting them.
- Denounce how apartheid Israel’s propaganda machine sells false solutions to whitewash its crimes against the Palestinian people.
- Raise awareness and build campaigns against Mekorot
- Raise awareness and build campaigns against Israel’s role in the agri-business. including Netafim
- Raise awareness and build campaigns to Stop the Jewish National Fund from dispossessing Palestinians under the banner of “environmental” action.