More than 70 groups sign up for action including civil disobedience to fight for climate justice in Glasgow Agreement

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, is now scheduled to be held in Glasgow from November 1 to 12, 2021.

The agreement commits to create national plans to achieve 50% cuts of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. 

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The organisisers say the organisations also commit to using "adequate tactics, such as civil disobedience, to achieve the necessary shutdowns/retrofitting of infrastructures and reconfiguration of the economy that governments and international institutions have utterly failed to deliver".

The agreement states that "political and economic non co-operation, as well as nonviolent intervention, in particular civil disobedience, are the main tools for the fulfilment of the Glasgow Agreement".

It acknowledges that "the strategy of civil disobedience has long been used, under various names, by many before us, particularly in marginalised communities and in the global South, and we would not be able to join this struggle without these historical and contemporary sacrifices, and continuous action against climate change through struggles to keep fossil fuels underground and resistance to other industrial causes of global warming"

There are more than 70 subscribing organisations worldwide from more than 30 countries and five different continents. They include from the UK, Divest Strathclyde, Global Justice Now, Our Future NOw and XR Cymru (Wales).

The agreement takes the view that the frameworks used by governments, international organisations and the whole economic system to address the climate crisis is failing in keeping global warming below 1.5 or 2°C by 2100.

Glasgow Agreement - Introduction from Glasgow Agreement on Vimeo.

According the agreement text, its purpose is to "reclaim the initiative from governments and international institutions by creating an alternative tool for action (inventory and climate agenda) and a space for strategy and coordination for the climate justice movement".

It says: "Until now the climate justice movement has had a very big focus on pressuring governments to take action on climate, or to push for stronger international agreements within the framework of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 or the Paris Agreement in 2015. Meanwhile, emissions have continued to rise.

"Hence the Glasgow Agreement proposes that civil society proposes its own plan of action, no longer waiting for governments and international institutions to do so. We aim to use a vast array of strategies and tactics, including civil disobedience, to achieve the necessary emissions cuts to prevent a 1.5ºC temperature rise by 2100."

It says: "From its onset, developed countries and polluting corporations like the fossil fuel industry have orchestrated the repeated failure of this institutional framework.

"Instead, an illusion of climate action was created while decisive steps were delayed and greenhouse gas emissions were allowed to continue rising.

"As a result of decades of interference by these actors, weak commitments have been continually dishonoured, and thus the main institutional arrangements on climate change, namely the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, have not produced the reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions required to halt the worst impacts of climate change.

"The Paris Agreement is only a procedure, and will not be able to achieve its stated goal of preventing the worst consequences of climate change."

Three months after the signature of the Glasgow Agreement, the members are due to produce their first national inventory of main greenhouse gas emitters.

Based on that, the organisers say, they will create a climate agenda with "priorities for action on shutdown, transformation and social justice".