Caribbean Organizations Call for Urgent Action on Fossil Fuel Extraction

Caribbean civil society organizations are pushing through with two breakthrough initiatives on fossil fuel extraction, human rights and climate change, at COP26.  Thirty-two Caribbean networks and organizations from nine countries within the region have launched a declaration for an oil-free Caribbean Sea. Belize has banned offshore oil and gas activity, while Guyana is advancing large-scale exploitation, even though there is increasing awareness of the high environmental risks involved. The extraction of hydrocarbons in the region implies high conflict and serious environmental impacts. Today News Five spoke with the regional organization Freedom Imaginaries.

Malene Alleyne

Malene Alleyne, Founder, Freedom Imaginaries

“The first initiative is this declaration, a Caribbean led declaration calling for an end to all new fossil fuel projects and the second is a landmark hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the impact of extractive industries on human rights and climate change in the Caribbean.  What’s interesting with both of these initiatives is that they are linking fossil fuel extraction to the climate crisis and they are grounding it as an urgent human rights issue of existential concern.  So I think it’s very timely leading up to COP and those two initiatives send a very strong messages.  One: Caribbean voices and perspectives are extremely important in the global discourse on climate change and two: fossil fuel extraction is an urgent threat that compromises fundamental human rights, especially of vulnerable communities such as indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, rural communities and people who depend on the environment for their cultural and physical survival.”