Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley Addresses COP26

Today on Sojourner Truth: We are in an emergency. Our planet is experiencing an urgent state of crisis. The environmental devastation of our planet, accelerated by climate change, is getting worse by the day. According to the World Health Organization, climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century, surpassing even the ongoing and deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as the global average. Globally, 2020 was the hottest year on record, according to NASA. The warmest years in our planets history have all occurred since 2005. Every year, approximately 75 billion tons of fertile soil is lost to land degradation, according to the United Nations. The livelihoods of more than 1 billion people in about 100 countries are threatened by desertification. Heat waves and wildfires are becoming more frequent, intensive, and extensive. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heat waves increased by around 125 million. During this time, more than 166,000 people died because of heat waves. In 2020, the number of wildfires around the world were up 13 percent from 2019, which was already a record year. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that at least 75 percent of all wildfires are caused by human activity. Increased warming in the Arctic and Antarctica has also contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. On Sunday, October 31, the United Nations Climate Change Conference kicked off the COP26 (Conference of the Parties) in Glasgow, Scotland. Twenty-five thousand delegates from 200 countries are attending, and around 120 heads of state. The conference, which was delayed for a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will run until Friday, November 12. The conference is the 26th COP to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the third meeting of the parties to the Paris Climate Accords. Today, a special on COP26 and the urgent state of the environment. Our guests are Tina Gerhardt and Winnie Overbeek. Tina Gerhardt is an environmental journalist and academic. Her work has been published by Grist, The Progressive, The Nation and Sierra Magazine. She is currently the Barron Professor of the Environment at Princeton University. Tina is the author of the forthcoming book, Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean. She is covering COP 26 for The Nation and Sierra Magazine. Her most recent article for The Nation is At COP 26, Island Nations Demand Action on Funding and Emissions. Winnie Overbeek has been the coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) since 2011, a global network supporting forest-dependent communities in their struggles to defend their territories in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Winnie is based in the Brazilian town of Vitoria in the Espirito Santo state. Before engaging with WRM, Winnie has worked for many years with networks and organizations in Brazil supporting communities affected by large scale tree plantations and other large-scale (agro) industrial projects.