Read the demands here.
Youth climate activists from around the world are demanding justice and finance for climate-induced loss and damage (L&D) from the G7. Their campaign is on social media, using the hashtag #LnDFinanceNow.
Loss and Damage refers to the most severe impacts of climate change. From Bangladesh to Guyana, countries and communities around the world are currently experiencing Loss and Damage from climate-induced disasters. These disasters compound the existing health and economic crises caused by COVID-19. Still, developed country governments who have benefited from pollution are blocking the provision of finance to pay for loss and damage.
The campaign is organized by members of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition (LDYC), a new global alliance of young people demanding action on the most severe impacts of climate change.
The demands are:
- L&D Finance Facility: Establish a new finance facility to address Loss and Damage in developing countries
- Public Finance for L&D: Provide new and additional public finance to address Loss and Damage at the scale required to cover the impacts of Loss and Damage
- Vaccine Equity for All: End restrictive patents and vaccine hoarding by Global North countries, and provide urgent support to all countries and communities to ensure equal access to COVID vaccines
- Climate Damages Tax: Create a new tax on fossil fuel extraction, shipping, and/or aviation and direct the proceeds to addressing Loss and Damage — a Climate Damages Tax
- Climate Reparations Task Force: Create a task force of young people from the Global South and North to advise on how climate reparations can help address climate injustice
Loss and Damage Youth Coalition Contact:
Sadie DeCoste and Ineza Umuhoza, Co-Directors of Loss and Damage Youth Coalition
lossanddamageyouthcoalition@gmail.com
Quotes from LDYC Members:
“Loss and Damage from climate change is already causing substantial harm around the world, especially to people who did little to cause it. The G7 have historically been and continue to be some of the world’s biggest polluting countries, and yet have been blocking action and finance on loss and damage. We are asking the G7 governments to take action by providing finance for developing countries and communities to address loss and damage.” — Sadie DeCoste, Co-founder and co-director of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, Canada/UK, sadie_decoste@hotmail.com
“The current extent of climate change impacts result from the past climate injustice that the world designed. A result of vulnerable countries being powerless in ensuring inclusive participation on the decision-making table. We are a generation that doesn’t want only to blame; we want to influence concrete change on the political, community and society level. It is not a secret that the G7 countries can play a substantial role in bringing hope to the world. We want that this time it will be youth-inclusive and take the frontline vulnerable community seriously.” — Ineza Umuhoza Grace, Co-founder and Co-director of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, Rwanda, gracineza@gmail.com
“Developing countries are disproportionately suffering the socioeconomic and environmental strains of climate change in the aftermath of decades of disadvantage. These states are also leading efforts to overcome this burden. It is high time that developed countries pay their debt by elevating their ambition to thwart Loss and Damage. The G7 and the guest countries invited to this year’s summit are among the top 20 carbon emitters. They must lead action on this neglected cost of climate change.” — Kervelle Baird, member of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, Trinidad and Tobago, kervelle.bard@uconn.edu
“Strengthening international cooperation and expertise in order to understand and reduce loss and damage must be a priority to the G7 countries. Tackling loss and damage will require a human-rights centred approach that promotes justice and equity. Enhanced efforts today would ensure that we respond to calls from environmental justice movements everywhere for a mobilization that takes account of poverty everywhere, and to the demands of young people for intergenerational equity. ” —Doménica Jaramillo, member of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, Ecuador, domenica.jaramillo08@gmail.com
“Our country is working on adaptation, and resiliency is becoming a part of our growth strategy. However, the effects of climate change are already beyond our ability to cope. That is why we need the rest of the world to not only feel our pain, our unrecoverable loss, but also to act. Creating successful court proceedings might have been a good way to start placing pressure on wealthy polluting countries to take action on loss and damage.” — Jefferson Estela, member of Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, Philippines, jeppestela@gmail.com
“Marginalised people are suffering the consequences of climate change and forest destruction due to the logging, mining and oil Industry. The water access is a disaster in many regions and radical groups in the Rainforest endanger the security of our ethnic heritage. Many groups are migrating outside of their territories because the lack of basic resources don’t allow them to stay safely in their homes and they need to cross Guerrilla territories. COVID19 has put a great challenge to each nation, but especially in Indigenous communities. We need to protect and support them: a fund to save their lives. Because Indigenous Lives Matter too.” — Darien Castro, Ecuador, Member of LDYC