WGC Coordinator Zukiswa White leads the Feminist Bloc in a chant at the March to End Fossil Fuels. Photo by Survival Media Agency
On September 17, just before the UN Climate Ambition Summit, WEDO marched as part of the Feminist Bloc alongside tens of thousands of people calling on world leaders to demonstrate real action to end the era of fossil fuels and protect people and the planet.
WEDO’s U.S. advocacy is anchored in the understanding that the U.S. must act in alignment with its historical responsibility, and contribute its “Fair Share” of climate finance. Despite being the world’s largest historical emitter, the U.S. has often blocked and slowed progress at the global level to scale back emissions, transition to renewable energy, and to ramp up climate finance commitments. It continues to funnel resources into militarism and fossil fuel extraction instead of social protections and climate finance needed to support mitigation and adaptation measures in the countries and communities facing climate impacts first and worst.
Despite pledging billions, it has drastically underdelivered and delayed these critical resources needed for frontline communities and nations that have done little to cause the crisis. The U.S. has played an outsized role in causing and perpetuating this crisis, and only continues to build fossil fuel infrastructure, bending to corporate greed and criminalizing land defenders resisting these projects.
Feminists and gender justice advocates have long understood fossil fuel infrastructure and corporate power to be a critical place of resistance for climate justice. Communities living near fossil fuel extraction and production sites often have devastating health consequences, including for reproductive health. The connection between the oil boom and sexual violence is undeniable, including between fossil fuel sites and the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit peoples (MMIWG2S). A recent report by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) called attention to the ways extractive industries endanger women’s health and well-being, with “fossil fuel derived air, water, and soil pollution impact[ing] women’s fertility, mental health, and daily work and responsibilities.”
All over the world, women and gender justice activists and land defenders are on the frontlines of resisting resource extraction and fossil fuel infrastructure projects.
With an understanding that fossil fuels are harming health, communities, and our future, ending the era of fossil fuels is a gender-just climate solution. Civil society is rising up to demand an end to this hypocrisy and that the U.S. end its role in driving the era of fossil fuels, and step to meet and strengthen its climate finance and action commitments on the global stage.
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Over 75,000 people took to the streets of New York City at the March to End Fossil Fuels, calling on President Biden to declare a climate emergency, stop approving fossil fuel projects, and provide an equitable transition away from fossil fuels.
According to march organizers, this was “the largest demonstration pressuring Biden since he took office and the largest climate mobilization since the start of the pandemic.” Around the world, 700 other actions were held in more than 60 countries.
