Young protesters at Cop27 demand climate damage fund

As the UN's Cop27 climate talks were extended by a day, Fridays For Future protesters at the event demanded that big-polluting rich nations agree to loss and damage financing for vulnerable countries already ravaged by the climate crisis – a major obstacle to a final deal.

Young activists from around the world shared their stories with journalists at the Children and Youth Pavilion before marching down a road inside the conference's Blue Zone, where negotiations are happening behind closed doors.

Waving banners and chanting slogans including “pay up, pay up”, “it's now or never” and “we are unstoppable; another world is possible”, the protesters used the final Friday of the summit to ensure their voices were heard.

“Today we are specifically addressing the leaders of the global north because you have established a capitalist system and colonial system where we exploit people and the planet for the 1 percent to make profit,” said Alexia Leclercq, a 22-year-old French-Taiwanese activist living in Texas.

“You have led us into this climate catastrophe.”

Talks deadlocked

Rich and poor countries are at a deadlock over climate damage funding. The EU wants high-emitting countries such as China – considered to be “developing” under a 1992 UN framework – to contribute.

Fatemah Sultan, from the Fridays For Future movement in Pakistan, said the lives of cattle herders hit by floods in her country, and those of the children prevented from going to school, were “a reflection of the losses and damages that Pakistan has faced”.

Meanwhile Ugandan activist Patience Nabukalu, who campaigns to end land degradation, said young activists from the global south were being denied a seat at the negotiating table despite being those worst affected by the climate emergency.

“Let me remind you that Africa is responsible for less than 4 percent of total global emissions but it is hit the hardest with the devastating impacts of climate change,” she added.

Talks extended

Negotiations were prolonged to Saturday in the hope a solution could be found to what UN Secretary General Antionio Guterres described as a “breakdown between north and south”.

Leclercq said the young protesters would keep on pushing global leaders to act on climate justice.

“We will continue putting pressure on you because it is a matter of life and death and we have no option but to keep fighting, to keep pushing and to keep chanting,” she said.