Vanuatu Strike for the Climate Emergency
Dear Climate Activist!
Thank you for joining Vanuatu's nation-wide campaign on Friday 20 September. We had nearly 1000 individuals, businesses, civil society agencies, and government officials! Vanuatu is now the first country in all of Asia / Pacific to formally Declare a Climate Emergency! We are not alone, but are standing with millions of people around the world as part of the Fridays For Future, the Global Climate Strike and Extinction Rebellion movements.
Here is a Google Drive link with Images and Information: https://drive.google.com/open?id=154l0GPyioU6710I5jf7x4q4I8yup__nA
Email: VanuatuClimateActionNetwork@gmail.com
Tel: +678 25786
Mob: +678 5343273 +678 7337950
Website: https://www.nab.vu/event/vanuatu-strike-climateemergency
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Vanuatu-Climate-Action-Network-
282765569083366/
or
www.facebook.com/climatechange.vanuatu
Twitter: @VanuatuClimate
Here is the Honorable Deputy Prime Minister's speech:
Statement by Honorable Jotham Napat
In Response to Call by Civil Society for a Vanuatu Declaration of Climate Emergency
20 September 2019
To all our young people here today, I stand with you in full solidarity as Acting Prime Minister of the Republic of Vanuatu.
Let me be clear that we are now facing the single greatest threat to our sovereignty, our health, our livelihoods, our security, our wellbeing, our culture, our human rights, our economy and our future in the current Climate Crisis.
Vanuatu’s women and girls, people with disability and rural populations disproportionately suffer the catastrophic effects of this climate emergency. Vanuatu’s young people are being condemned to live in an unsafe world, due to the compounding and continuing failures of adults to take climate science seriously. 1.5 to stay alive is not just a chant, it is our survival.
I stand with you, our students, our businesses, our NGOs and our government civil servants to call, in the strongest terms, for all countries to acknowledge the Climate Emergency.
Make no mistake that this Emergency is not of Vanuatu’s making, but the blame can be firmly laid at the feet of the fossil fuel companies, and the Governments that continue to subsidize them. The only safe future is one in which all coal remains fully in the ground, we industry puts an end fossil fuel development and illegal government subsidies cease.
More can, and must be done. And it must be done NOW. The days of endless negotiations with negligible progress are over. Vanuatu has assembled a team of legal experts now exploring pathways to hold polluters to account in the court of law, be they global fossil fuel companies or complicit governments. Vanuatu’s catastrophic climate Losses & Damages will be compensated in full.
I stand also with those vulnerable people in other countries now suffering from the impacts of climate change in nations whose leaders do not take this climate crisis seriously. To you, know that the people of Vanuatu are your brothers and sisters in this existential fight.
Rest assured that I, as acting Prime Minister, will continue to demand highest levels of climate ambition from all nations, my own civil servants and our development partners.
Vanuatu will continue to tirelessly work towards the restoration an optimal safe global climate and to Respond to the Climate Emergency in new and transformative ways.
Thank you especially to our Young Climate Activists who continue to push us all towards climate justice. You are the hero’s this planet needs right now. Keep fighting with all your energy. Humanity’s future depends on you.
God Bless You All
