Climate action: The Road to COP26

Words and non-committal targets aren’t going to cut it – we need them to rewrite the rules of global business so companies stop financing and profiting from the destruction of our planet.

The message from scientists, climate experts and activists is clear: We are running out of time.

Just 100 corporations are responsible for 71% of global emissions. In their dash for quick profits and unsustainable growth, companies are leaving a trail of destruction. They are responsible for mass deforestation, toxic waste and air pollution. In 2018, fossil fuels caused more deaths than malaria and tobacco combined; and yet these polluters are still offered a seat at the table, where decisions to protect our planet are made.

Governments are failing to act. Too often they are actively complicit in environmental destruction, by supporting greenwashed corporate practices and funding -with taxpayers’ money- new fossil fuels projects that our planet simply cannot afford. They’re also turning a blind eye when banks and financiers in their jurisdictions keep financing the destruction of climate-critical forests.

Governments are failing to protect those who stand up to climate-wrecking industries around the world. In 2019, more than 200 land and environmental activists were killed and countless more were attacked for opposing projects, too often backed by powerful global corporations, that threatened their communities and livelihoods.

The action we want to see

Global leaders must make bold decisions to deliver a climate action model that works for people and the planet - not just for the powerful and wealthy - through commitments to:

• End the destruction of climate-critical tropical forests, including looking at the flow of finance to projects ripping up forests.
• Stop the increase in global use of fossil gas – the last fossil fuel – by cutting off governments' support for it and push back against the attempts of the illegitimate fossil gas industry to claim this is a greener energy source. It is not.
• End the era of unaccountability for corporate abuses of power, and introduce a new set of global standards to ensure the future of our planet is safeguarded from rapacious profit-makers and investors.
• End corporate corruption and improve governance in the natural resources sector.
• Stop the killing of land and environmental defenders, and ensure those who commit or are complicit in violence against them face justice.
• Significantly increase investment in real, impactful and ethical renewable alternatives (not false solutions) that benefit those in the global south as well as poor and marginalised communities those in the global north.
• Attain a just and equitable transition: for those most vulnerable globally, for the communities that currently rely on climate-wrecking industries and which also seeks to addresses climate injustices in the global south.