Action Steps for Governments

1. End Fossil Fuel Expansion and Rapidly Accelerate a Just Transition to 100% Renewable and Regenerative Energy 

It is imperative that governments align their actions with the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming at or below 1.5° C. To do so, policymakers must immediately halt the extraction, expansion, and burning of fossil fuels, and implement a Just Transition to a 100% renewable and regenerative economy and social system. 

• Commit to a binding international emissions reductions plan that limits global temperature rise to below 1.5°C, in line with the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and the 2021 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

• Prohibit new permits and leases for fossil fuel companies.6

• Divest public funds from coal, oil and gas corporations. End all subsidies and insurance allowances to oil, gas and coal projects.

• Implement the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in all climate finance.7

• Decentralize and democratize ownership of renewable and regenerative solutions. Invest in community-owned solar and wind, public green utilities and nationalized energy industries.8

• Support fossil fuel workers to find new employment in renewable energy, transport and land use sectors.

• Ensure dignified conditions for all care workers. Care work, from childcare to healthcare, is an undervalued and underpaid sector that disproportionately employs women and women of color. At the same time, it is a crucial backbone of our economic and social system, and plays a key part in the transition to a renewable, regenerative economy.9

• Reject “net zero” schemes.10

• Reject false solutions, such as fracked gas, nuclear energy, geo-engineering, bioenergy and biofuels,11 carbon capture and storage, and forest offsetting.

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2. Promote Women’s Leadership and Gender Equity 

Due to unequal gender norms, women and gender non-binary people are disproportionately impacted by climate change and fossil fuel extraction. At the same time, they are crucial leaders in the transition to a just, renewable future. Countless studies have shown that when women hold positions of leadership at all levels, entire communities and nature benefit.12

• Ensure women’s full and equal participation in all aspects of climate policy and finance. 

• Realize the Paris Agreement principles that all climate actions must respect human rights, including the promotion of gender equity. Use the UNFCCC Lima Work Programme on Gender and its Gender Action Plan to guide activities.13

• Acknowledge the unique and essential roles, responsibilities, solutions, needs, and desires of women in climate change mitigation efforts.

• Uplift the leadership and solutions of diverse identities across the gender spectrum.

• Given the crucial role of women, and particularly women of color, in the care economy, their rights and well-being must be respected and upheld.14 

• Learn from and respect Indigenous women’s traditional ecological knowledge as central to climate solutions. 

• Honor women’s rights to self-determination in all contexts, from the right to make reproductive choices to the choice of where and how to live and work.

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3. Protect the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The traditional ecological knowledge of agriculture, seeds and biodiversity held by Indigenous communities is indispensable for confronting climate change, even as Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately harmed by fossil fuel development, deforestation, extractive industries and climate impacts. In every step of the Just Transition, the rights of Indigenous Peoples must be upheld and the leadership of Indigenous Peoples respected.

• Uphold all treaties with Indigenous Peoples and immediately halt the violation of treaty rights. Defend Indigenous Peoples’ rights to inhabit traditional lands undisturbed by industrial projects and extractive industries.

• Respect and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent in all cases.15

• Prioritize Indigenous Peoples’ decision-making power at the national and international levels.

• Learn from and follow Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

• Invest in Indigenous People’s global leadership to protect and promote healthy relationships with life-sustaining ecosystems.

4. Protect Forests and Biodiversity

The maintenance of healthy forests and robust biodiversity is crucial to the fight against climate change. Globally, the stewardship of forests and biodiversity lies heavily in the hands of women, local communities and Indigenous Peoples.16 The success of forest and biodiversity conservation depends on immediately halting all deforestation and respecting women’s leadership, local use rights and traditional ecological knowledge.

• Impose a global moratorium on the logging and burning of all old growth forests.17

• Immediately halt the burning of forests to produce cropland or pastureland for ruminative livestock.

• Set forestry management targets that are in line with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.18

• Phase out all agricultural practices that cause soil erosion, depletion and compaction.

• Oppose the commodification of forest carbon through carbon offset schemes. Forest offsets have been widely, scientifically discredited.19

5. Preserve Oceans and Freshwater and Address Water Security

Earth’s oceans and the hydrological cycle are gravely threatened by climate change. Governments must act now to halt the greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and human exploitation that are destabilizing the water systems fundamental to all life on Earth.

• Recognize the human right to sufficient, safe, clean, affordable, and physically accessible water.20

• Outlaw water privatization. Water should be a free, public good everywhere.

• Implement natural ecological water treatment methods.

• Protect vulnerable and threatened fisheries and coral reefs in marine sanctuaries (Marine Protected Areas).

• Clean up the plastic, sewage and trash in the world’s oceans, streams, rivers, and freshwater systems.

• Recognize Integrated Water Resource Management for better understanding of the value of water.

6. Promote Food Security and Food Sovereignty

Hotter temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and extreme weather events are already causing global disruptions to food production and storage.21 Climate change is a primary cause of food insecurity, even as our industrialized food system drives pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.22 For this reason, we must promote the holistic management of our food system, both to mitigate climate change and prevent hunger and malnutrition. Gender disparities in access to land, water, credit, technology and tenure rights inhibit women’s food security. At the same time, women farmers feed the world, and play key roles in maintaining food security. In affecting deep changes to our agricultural system, we must center the leadership of women, Indigenous Peoples and smallholder farmers.

• Support decentralized, “people-run” economies, natural, non-genetically modified foods, and cyclical and sustainable agro-ecological farming practices.

• Outlaw international trade agreements that determine seed “ownership” and “use.” Prohibit the global patenting of seeds.23

• Reject false solutions such as climate-smart agriculture, soil sequestration programs, Ag-NBS (Nature Based Solutions), and payments for environmental services (PES).

• Support communities with skills and financing to take increasing ownership of their local agricultural sovereignty.

• Reduce the production and consumption of industrial meat and dairy products. Industrial animal agriculture produces a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.24

• Support  Indigenous communities to maintain their traditional food practices.

7. Protect the Rights of Nature

The Rights of Nature is a groundbreaking legal framework that recognizes natural systems, such as rivers, forests, mountain ranges and water bodies, as rights-bearing entities with an inviolable claim to protection and preservation. Although the Rights of Nature is new to our legal system, it is based on traditional knowledge from Indigenous Peoples about how to live in harmony with the natural laws of the Earth. 

• Recognize the Rights of Nature in law and practice. 

• End the commodification, financialization and exploitation of all ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, deltas, rivers and wildlife preserves.

• End market-based mechanisms that purport to protect ecosystems, but actually promote the industrial and monocultural destruction of biodiverse regions and hotspots. These include carbon offset schemes. 

• Based on the Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth legal framework, acknowledge that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.25