ACT Alliance has signed onto a landmark declaration alongside over 200 representatives from grassroots networks, environmental, and human rights groups, calling on governments and corporations to tackle the climate crisis.

The declaration was adopted at the first-ever Peoples’ Summit on Climate, Rights and Human Survival (18- 19 September). The Declaration highlights the threat that climate change poses on human survival, the environment, and on the enjoyment of human rights for current and future generations.

A part of the declaration reads:

We envisage a world where people thrive as part of nature and where human rights –including the rights of Indigenous Peoples – and the environment come before corporate profit, in an era in which people are more connected with each other and with the planet. 

We want to live in safe, equal, peaceful and just societies. In societies where every individual and all communities enjoy fair, secure and sustainable livelihoods; participate in decision-making on matters that affect their lives, and have access to information and justice.

“Tackling climate change requires the full involvement of climate-vulnerable people and communities – not only because they are the most affected, but because they are knowledge keepers of the sustainable solutions needed to tackle the crisis,” says Isaiah Toroitich, ACT’s Head of Advocacy and Development Policy.

As a signatory of the declaration, ACT Alliance pledges to strengthen its efforts to ensure that human rights remain at the core of climate activism. 

ACT Alliance participated in the Peoples’ Summit which took place ahead of the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit. The Summit was organized by the United Nations Human Rights Office, Greenpeace International, Amnesty International, Center for International Environmental Law, Wallace Global Fund, and the New York University School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. 

The full Declaration is available here