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Groups Representing Millions Have A Message To Those At UN Climate Talks In Bonn
June 18, 2025
Climate justice and human rights activists gather to condemn the UN climate talk's failure to end the corporate stranglehold over climate action.
Climate justice groups, women and gender activists, youth, Indigenous and local community leaders, artivists, and members of the global campaign to Kick Big Polluters Out gather outside conference venue where Big Polluters and Global North governments seek to orchestrate their get out of jail free card and escape accountability for the climate crisis.
Today, the climate justice movement, youth from around the world, human rights activists, women and gender groups, and members of the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition joined forces to protest outside of the UN climate talks taking place over these two weeks. The start of the climate talks happening in Bonn were delayed due to an agenda fight where polluting Global North governments like the EU refused to even discuss the need for them to do their fair share of climate action. While the United States– the worlds' largest historical emitter–is notably absent from these talks, their fingerprints of obstruction and undermining are all over these halls, as is the poisonous influence of the fossil fuel industry, industrial agriculture, and other polluting industries. While corporations and governments that are knowingly fueling the climate crisis and directly enabling systemic violence in Palestine, Sudan, and elsewhere act as though it's 'business as usual,' activists rallied to make clear that they refuse to be silenced.
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During the protest, people dressed up in suits as corporate executives were slowly covered in coal, oil, blood, and money–clearly illustrating Big Polluters' deadly profit-at-all-costs agenda. The protest featured visuals by the Artivists Network.
'We implore the UNFCCC to let us know who you really serve. Do you have us come from all corners of the world and all walks of life with little to no resources or support…just to be reminded that when we enter these halls, we are expected, yet again, to play your games?' said Analyah Schlaeger dos Santos of Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light. 'What sort of business are you doing behind closed doors? Our lives are not pawns for you to move around, letting us think that we come here to actualize real solutions, only for you to allow for the ones that have caused these problems to slither silently through the halls.'
Civil society and protestors also called out the organizers of the talks specifically for their decades-long failures to address the undue influence of Big Polluters. For three decades, the UNFCCC has done next to nothing to protect these talks from undue influence. Even more, they invite Big Polluters to sponsor and bankroll the climate talks, and to have a heavy hand in the outcomes of the talks. This is a primary reason for the failure of global climate collaboration.
According to Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network: 'The UNFCCC must shift its focus away from the false solutions of the fossil fuel industry and towards centering Indigenous Peoples and our solutions. Fossil fuels as well as agribusiness and pharma have no place in these decision-making halls. The UNFCCC must be about people-centered solutions from the world's majority and not a handful of powerful executives.'
The activists, who hail from all around the world, are echoing their demands for:
An Accountability Framework that ends the ability of Big Polluters to write the rules of climate action. Next steps must include requiring a publicly available conflict-of-interest disclosure for all participants in climate talks, discussion between governments and civil society on how to protect these talks, and agreeing a Roadmap to Accountability that can reinstill faith and integrity of this process by ensuring Big Polluters cannot continue to undermine and obstruct.
No more allowing Big Polluters to bankroll the climate talks.
End Big Polluter-fueled genocide and systemic violence, including a Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.
Center the lived experiences and expertise of communities on the frontlines and reset the capitalist, colonial system so it protects people and the planet.
'We are still here fighting back. We are still here to raise the voices of our communities from back home,' said Pang Delgra, Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development. 'We know that if we do not hold the line, if we do not continue to speak the truth, they are going to lock us into extinction.'
Note:
Kick Big Polluters Out is a coalition of more than 450 organizations across the globe united in demanding an end to the ability of Big Polluters to write the rules of climate action. We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine as well as with all those who face systemic injustice and fossil-fueled violence around the world.
