February, 17 2023, 11:31am EDT
As the African Union Summit kicks off in Ethiopia, Civil Society Organizations across Africa are calling on the African Union to play a more ambitious role towards a fossil-free energy future in Africa.
AFRICA
As the African Union Summit kicks off in Ethiopia, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) across Africa are calling on the African Union to play a more ambitious role towards a fossil-free energy future in Africa.
In support of the call, CSOs are circulating to Heads of State and Ministers attending the AU meeting the “Fossil Fuelled Fallacy Report Fallacy Report”, which outlines how expanding gas production in Africa would undermine almost every element of development – increasing risks of stranded assets and expensive energy, encouraging foreign ownership of African resources, creating fewer jobs, and harming health and livelihoods across the continent.
The report – initially launched by Don’t Gas Africa, in cooperation with the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, at COP27 – makes it clear that the ‘dash for gas’ is nothing more than a short-sighted strategy to profit from the energy crisis, where the fossil fuel industry has misappropriated the language of climate justice in order to legitimize a huge expansion of fossil fuels across Africa.
The AU Summit presents an important opportunity for the continent to expand energy access and accelerate the transition to clean, renewable energy. Yet there is a risk the AU Summit will be used to entrench reliance on fossil fuels. CSOs are particularly concerned about a proposal put forward by energy and infrastructure Ministers for an African “common position” on energy which CSOs have showed:
- Will not address the Committee’s stated aims relating to energy access and transition.
- Is inconsistent with the Paris Agreement’s warming limit of 1.5 °C and the existing African Common Position on Climate Change.
- Risks levels of global heating with catastrophic consequences for Africa; and
- Is inconsistent with Africa’s wider development objectives, putting Agenda 2063 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals at risk.
With over 300+ CSO signatures from across Africa, the letter expressing these concerns received no acknowledgement or response from the African Union regarding the proposed “common position”.
The upcoming AU summit provides African leaders with the opportunity to define and set a common narrative that will call for a rapid transition to people-centered, clean, renewable energy for the continent and the whole world.
Civil society organizations call on the African Union to reject fossil gas production as a bedrock for Africa’s energy future and to also put an end to fossil-fuel-induced energy apartheid in Africa, which has left 600 million Africans without energy access. Faced with a climate emergency, it has never been more urgent to shift away from dependence on fossil fuels, and leapfrog towards a renewable energy future that is cleaner, safer, and more economic. A rapid and just transition to renewable energy is a golden opportunity for Africa to reinvigorate its development and achieve its Agenda 2063 vision.
Africa cannot be misled by three false promises of fossil gas: i) jobs, ii) energy access, and iii) renewable transition: i) On Jobs, gas expansion will not lead to a boom in jobs. According to the Fossil Fuel Fallacy Report: Jobs in fossil fuel production are estimated to fall by around 75 percent by 2050 in a “well below” 2°C warming scenario, with 80 percent of the employment losses associated with declining upstream fossil fuel production. ii) On energy access, gas expansion will not increase energy access for the 600 million Africans left without. Gas expansion plans are primarily for export deals with Europe, and many will take 10-20 years to come online. These plans ship our energy, and our profits out of Africa while doing nothing for the Africans without energy today. Renewable investments on the other hand can be brought online in a matter of months and start delivering energy directly to the people this year. Africa has enough wind power potential alone to meet our current electricity demand 250 times over. iii) On renewable transition, gas expansion is not an investment into a ‘transition fuel’. Rather, gas investments displace investment that could be going directly into distributed, clean, and affordable renewable energy systems. Gas expansion does not help us transition to the future, it simply further locks us into the past.
African leaders need to use the AU Summit to initiate a process of transparent and meaningful dialogue with citizens and policy-makers across the continent to build a shared African energy narrative and an agenda to tackle the interlinked challenges of climate, energy and development. Based on these dialogues, the AU should initiate a science- and evidence-based African common position on energy access and transition. This position must break the vicious cycle of energy system dumping, whereby dirty, dangerous, and obsolete fossil fuels and nuclear energy systems no longer wanted in Europe are dumped into Africa in the name of ‘investment and partnership’. Africa must not become a dumping ground for obsolete technologies that continue to pollute and impoverish.
The adoption of fossil gas as a ‘transition fuel’ by the African Union would lock in both a failure for Africa to uphold the Paris Agreement, and near certain exacerbation of climate impacts and catastrophes for its people. Rather than doubling-down on the obsolete and dirty energy systems of the past, African CSOs are calling on the African Union to move away from harmful fossil fuels towards a transformed energy system that is clean, renewable, democratic, and actually serves its peoples. We urge our leaders at the AU summit to reject the misleading false promises of fossil gas expansions, and embrace the renewable future that will bring Africa true hope and prosperity.
Lorraine Chiponda, Coordinator for Africa Climate Movements Building Space said:
“We urge African leaders to co-create a just development path together with African people that is clean, pan-African, and champions people’s regenerative economies away from fossil fuels. We should not allow further colonial and extractive systems to put Africa on a destructive path of fossil fuel extraction.”
Landry Ninteretse, 350Africa.org Regional Director said:
“We're in a climate emergency that is causing increasingly devastating climate impacts, particularly in Africa where adaptation capacity is still low. African countries cannot bear the world’s challenges on their own. This calls for urgent action to build resilience to climate challenges through the abandonment of fossil fuels and a just energy transition to renewable energy. There is no place for the expansion of fossil gas in the energy transition in Africa, as it would crowd out resources for renewable energy and dull any hopes for the transition. We urge African leaders to reject the push for gas production in Africa and instead galvanize resources from developed nations to support renewable, community-centered, and accessible clean energy systems vital to achieving a just energy transition in the region”.
Courtney Morgan, Campaigner for African Climate Reality Project, said:
"Gas is a bridge to nowhere and will not address energy access challenges on our continent. Decision makers and policymakers should be supporting sustainable solutions; for a fossil free Africa. The Africa we want is one where the energy system is clean and sustainable and brings real access to African people. The neocolonial gas project on our continent will not serve our needs and will exacerbate the climate crisis, we need African led sustainable solutions".
Dean Bhekumuzi Bhebhe, Campaigns Lead for Don't Gas Africa said:
“African land is not a gas station. Millions are losing their homes, don’t have access to food, have their health threatened and are slipping into higher levels of extreme poverty because of the fossil fuel industry. Instead of selling away fossil fuel extraction rights to big multinational companies, African leaders should invest in clean, renewable energies that will directly benefit people across the continent without damaging their health”.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
200 Rights Groups Call On Biden to End 'Cruel' Expansion of Immigrant Detention
"This suffering does not advance any rational policy goal," said the advocacy groups. "It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane, and misguided."
Apr 25, 2024
Citing ample evidence of human rights abuses in U.S. immigration detention centers, 200 advocacy groups on Thursday demanded that the Biden administration reverse course on a planned expansion of detention facilities and said President Joe Biden's "further entrenching" of the government's reliance on detaining migrants marks "an utter betrayal" of his campaign promises.
The president's signing of a spending bill last month provided $3.4 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), clearing the way for the agency to make space to jail 41,500 immigrants per day in facilities across the country.
After Biden campaigned on ending the use of for-profit detention centers, said the groups, he took office at a time when fewer than 15,000 people were being held in immigration detention facilities—which gave him "a remarkable opportunity to wind down a wasteful and abusive system."
But after the president's 2023 and 2024 budget requests signaled an intention of reducing detention funding—with ICE itself recommending that numerous facilities be closed due to "critical staffing shortages that have led to safety risks and unsanitary living conditions"—Biden last year requested supplemental detention funding as commentators and Republicans in Congress hammered the administration for allowing so-called "chaos" at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Your FY2025 budget request sought funding for 34,000 beds instead of the 25,000 sought in the two previous cycles," wrote the groups, including Amnesty International USA, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), and the Texas Civil Rights Project. "The result is unsurprising: the FY2024 spending bill you signed provides ICE $3.4 billion to jail an average of 41,500 immigrants per day, historically high funding surpassing all four years of the Trump administration."
The groups, which provide legal aid and other assistance to people who have been detained as migrants, said many of their clients "carry lifelong scars from the mistreatment and dehumanization they endured because of the United States' reliance on detention, mostly through private prisons and county jails."
The administration is seeking to expand a system, said the groups, in which the jails and prisons used have been found to "operate under insufficient standards."
The organizations cited a 2018 ACLU reportthat found inadequate medical care contributed to the deaths of more than half of the detained immigrants who died in custody between December 2015-April 2017; a 2021 case in which an LGBTQ+ man reported "physical and homophobic verbal abuse" at a facility in Louisiana; and the finding by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) that the use of solitary confinement in detention centers "regularly meets the United Nations' definition of torture."
Biden signed the spending bill two weeks after Charles Daniel, a 61-year-old migrant from Trinidad and Tobago, died at a detention center operated by the private contractor GEO Group after being held in solitary confinement for four years. ICE has placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times in the last five years, according to PHR, for an average of 27 days each; U.N. experts say exceeding 15 days in solitary confinement constitutes torture.
"This suffering does not advance any rational policy goal," said the groups on Thursday. "Detention does not provide an efficient or ethical means of border processing, and it certainly does not indicate to migrants that they are welcome in the United States. It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane, and misguided—as even the most punitive forms of detention have been proven not to deter people from seeking safety or a better life."
Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks government data, found that as of April 7, more than 61% of ICE detainees have no criminal record, while "many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations."
"Increasing the incarceration of immigrants is a grave mistake," said the groups, "and we urgently implore you to reverse course."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Bernie Sanders to Netanyahu: 'It Is Not Antisemitic to Hold You Accountable'
"Please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government," said the Vermont senator to Israel's prime minister.
Apr 25, 2024
Jewish U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a scathing statement Thursday pushing back against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's characterization of burgeoning protests on American university campuses as "antisemitic," declaring, "It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions."
"No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000—70% of whom are women and children," said Sanders (I-Vt.). "It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless—almost half the population."
"Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people," continued Sanders, who lost family members to the Nazi Holocaust. "But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts."
No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – 70% of whom are women and children.
You will not distract us from this immoral war. pic.twitter.com/oDaiyU4ipD
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 25, 2024
Sanders' statement came a day after Netanyahu
falsely described student protesters speaking out against Israel's catastrophic war on Gaza as "antisemitic mobs" and likened the demonstrations to "what happened in German universities in the 1930s."
"It has to be stopped," Netanyahu said of the campus protests, which have faced violent police crackdowns.
Students at Columbia, Princeton, the City College of New York, the University of Texas at Austin, Northwestern, and other schools nationwide are demanding that the institutions divest from any companies that are participating in or benefiting from Israel's war on Gaza and publicly support an immediate cease-fire.
On Wednesday, hundreds of UT Austin students walked out of their classrooms and marched to the main lawn of the campus before police officers with horses and riot gear
arrived on the scene, arrested dozens, and assaulted some protesters.
"One woman said she saw a large police officer place his entire body weight to detain a young woman protesting," The Texas Tribunereported. "Law enforcement was also seen kneeling on individuals' backs and necks, pulling their hair, and in one case punching a protester in the nose."
Jeremi Suri, a professor of history at UT Austin, toldAl Jazeera that contrary to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's claim, there was "nothing antisemitic" about Wednesday's protests.
"These students were shouting 'free Palestine,' that's all," said Suri. "They were saying nothing that was threatening. And as they were standing and shouting, I witnessed the police—the state police, the campus police, the city police—an army of police almost the size [of] the student group... many were carrying guns, many were carrying rifles, and then, within a few minutes, this group of police stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students."
In his statement Thursday, Sanders emphasized that criticism of Israel's massively destructive assault on Gaza cannot be conflated with antisemitism.
"It is not antisemitic to note that your government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure—electricity, water, and sewage," said Sanders, who earlier this week voted against a foreign aid package that included $17 billion in additional U.S. military assistance for Israel.
"It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza's healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 healthcare workers," he continued. "It is not antisemitic to condemn your government's destruction of all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no education."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Holocaust Survivor Tells Student Anti-Genocide Protesters: 'Just Keep Doing It'
"There is a question of historical responsibility towards injustice, genocide, and fascism," said Stephen Kapos. "If you are indifferent, if you do not take a stand, you acquire a degree of guilt."
Apr 25, 2024
A Holocaust survivor opposed to Israel's war on Gaza on Wednesday told U.S. student protesters they're on the right side of history, and that the global wave of demonstrations against the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians will soon force Western leaders to face up to their complicity in genocide.
Stephen Kapos, 86, was 7 years old in 1944 when he was separated from his family during the Nazi extermination of Jews in his native Hungary. Most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust but Kapos survived and moved to the United Kingdom after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.
Kapos is part of a small group of Shoah survivors and their descendants who "demonstrate disagreement with the use of the Holocaust experience as a cover by the Zionists and the state of Israel." They attend protests wearing signs around their necks reading, "This Holocaust Survivor Says Stop the Genocide in Gaza!"
"As a Holocaust survivor, my message to the brave student protesters in America is just keep doing it. Don't give up," Kapos said in video published by Double Down News. "We are doing exactly the same, and in the long term we are going to prevail."
Holocaust Survivor Message to US Campus Protesters:
This survivor of the Holocaust is against Genocide in Gaza & conflating Jewishness with Zionism, which does nothing but increase antisemitism.
Your protests are so persistent, large and global that eventually the Western… pic.twitter.com/IDCH0NTO6m
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) April 24, 2024
Kapos' comments came amid a growing wave of pro-Palestine student protests—many of them Jewish-led—on dozens of U.S. university and college campuses in response to Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice in January found "plausibly" genocidal and which many Israeli and international experts say is undoubtedly a genocide.
According to Gazan and international officials, more than 122,000 Palestinians have been killed or maimed during 202 days of near-relentless Israeli attacks. This figure includes around 11,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. Starvation and dehydration caused by Israel's bombardment and blockade of Gaza are killing children and other vulnerable people.
Instead of condemning Israeli leaders, the Biden administration has lavished them with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid while providing diplomatic cover for Israeli crimes and blocking recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
As the suffering in Gaza continues, U.S. students have set up encampments or staged other forms of protest, some of which have been brutally repressed by police—who have also attacked and arrested journalists and bystanders.
On Wednesday, far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored U.S. authorities to crack down even harder on the students, whom he called an "antisemitic mob."
Highlighting video footage of Netanyahu comparing the student protests to what happened at German universities during the rise of Nazism, Kapos said that "the way that the Israeli government is using the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify what they're doing to the Gazans is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust."
He said he is also protesting "the conflating of Jewishness with Zionism, which is what the Israeli state is trying to do, which does nothing but increase antisemitism."
Kapos predicted that "today's marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it, and I think we are not far from that."
"Today's marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it."
"There is a question of historical responsibility towards injustice, genocide, and fascism," Kapos asserted. "If you are indifferent, if you do not take a stand, you acquire a degree of guilt without any doubt and I think it is imperative to assert opposition and even some degree of disadvantage and risk if you want to be guilt-free when history judges what's happening."
Kapos and his comrades are part of a long history of Holocaust survivors speaking out against Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Long before today's growing acknowledgment that Israel is an apartheid state, the late Suzanne Weiss—whose parents were murdered in Nazi-occupied France—said in 2010 that "the Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing and apartheid" and that "the Israeli government's actions toward the Palestinians awaken horrific memories of my family's experiences under Hitlerism."
Hajo Meyer, who survived 10 months in the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, argued during his lifetime that "what is happening to the Palestinians every day under the occupation" was "almost identical" to "what was done to the German Jews before the 'Final Solution,'" and that instead of making Jews safer, Israeli policies and practices were stoking the flames of antisemitism.
Holocaust survivors who stand up for Palestinian rights have been condemned by critics as "antisemites" and "self-hating Jews" who, in Meyer's case, allegedly abused his status as a Holocaust survivor.
Kapos, who has experienced such slurs, is undaunted and says he has no plans to stop protesting. During a recent rally in London he vowed, "I'll keep doing it as long as the bombing and apartheid and the injustice is going on."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular