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Latin American parliamentarians call for a future without fossil fuels

Climate change increasingly implies greater certainties. In addition to being a crisis generated by human influence, it is also known that, worldwide, the highest percentage of greenhouse gas emissions come from the energy sector, driven largely by fossil fuels. And although Latin America has not historically been largely responsible for these emissions, it is highly vulnerable to the impacts that the climate crisis is already causing: greater risk of extreme droughts, water scarcity, and even being more prone to food insecurity.

Given this scenario, a group of nine congressmen and deputies from Latin America and the Caribbean met in the Colombian Congress to join, for the first time, the Call of Parliamentarians for a future free of fossil fuels, a movement that was born in Asia, but that has been migrating around the world so that the representatives promote in their countries agendas that seek to gradually eliminate oil, gas and coal. This in order to slow down the environmental and climatic debacle that the world is experiencing.

“We have evidence to say with medium and high confidence that extreme heat has been increasing in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Colombian scientist Paola Arias, author of the most recent report on the science of climate change by the Panel, recalled during the opening of the event. Conference on Climate Change (IPCC) and who gave a class to parliamentarians. “And there is medium and high confidence that it is due to fossils and the change in land use due to human activity.”

Participating in the meeting were Gonzalo Winter (Chile), Carlos Sanchez (Central American Parliament), Mario Alberto Rodriguez (Mexico), Edward Malaga (Peru), Julia Miranda (Colombia), Gabriel Quadri (Mexico), Martina Casas (Uruguay), Gabriel Parrado (Colombia) and Luis Fernando Mendoza (Costa Rica).

Getting parliamentarians and countries in the region to make an explicit call to stop promoting fossil fuels was not an easy discussion. These are countries that are often large producers, but not necessarily large consumers of fossil fuel energy. Among the questions that haunt this debate is who should be called and how to achieve a message that makes the panorama of Latin America clear; or what fossil fuels should be talked about.

For example, while the Mexican deputy Gabriel Quadri, of the National Action Party (PAN), aimed more at appealing to those who demand these energies and not referring specifically to fuels such as gas, Martina Casas, deputy deputy of the Broad Front of Uruguay and Julia Miranda, Colombian representative of the New Liberalism and who called for the initiative, proposed to be clear about the language used with natural gas, an energy that in many countries in the region is seen as green or transitional, but which generates leaks of methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases when it comes to heating the atmosphere.

The draft of the document that the parliamentarians built, finally, was divided into four blocks: recognition, invitation, commitments and considerations. “The Latin American and Caribbean region may suffer irreparable damage due to its high vulnerability to extreme climate changes and the development system based on fossil fuels is the greatest cause of the climate crisis,” reads the first block.

Throughout the statement, they also point out that “there is a serious incidence of greenwashing [cuando se vende una imagen de sostenibilidad que no es real] and the concealment of information”, that “there must be a differentiation that recognizes the historical responsibilities between countries and populations” and they invite other parliamentarians to join this initiative. Regarding their commitments as parliamentarians, they give several important signals: mobilize their teams to try in every possible way to eliminate subsidies to the oil, gas and coal industries, punish those who pollute and benefit those who bet on cleaner modes and that the entire transition is fair and includes the best practices so as not to generate inequality.

The final version of this document, which will tentatively be edited, signed and approved by the nine parliamentarians from Peru, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Colombia, will be sent to the presidency of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27) which, this year, will be in the hands of the Egyptian Sameh Shoukry and will be held in the city of Sharm El Sheikh between November 9 and 18. The idea with which this call reaches COP27 is not only to communicate a Latin American vision of climate change, but also that these requests can permeate the agenda of the most important climate negotiations at the political level. As the parliamentarians recalled during their meeting, in the same Paris Agreement, the most ambitious international guide to combat climate change, the words fossil fuels are not mentioned.

Source: EL PAIS

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