ACT Alliance

With placards, banners, drums and South Africa’s ubiquitous plastic trumpet, the vuvuzela, protesters from around the world clogged central Durban. They demanded that delegates at the United Nations climate conference take steps to cap global warming and protect those worst hit.

A strong contingent of ACT members and supporters were among the 6,500 marchers at the Global Day of Action on Climate Change, many of them carrying placards emblazoned with the slogan ‘Climate change kills me’ and photographs of people affected by floods, famines, landslides and droughts triggered by a rise in global temperature.

ACT is determined to remind world leaders that people lie at the heart of this issue. A recent UN report shows that 350,000 people a year die as a direct result of climate change, many of them from the world's poorest communities.

The placards were also calling on world leaders to ‘protect’, ‘provide’ and ‘survive’ – to support the poorest people’s efforts to protect their communities from climate change disasters and provide funds for the purpose.

Civil society organisations, environmentalists, faith groups and trade unions came out in force, all voicing their frustration at the slow pace of the two-week COP17 global climate negotiations in the city.

For hours, the noisy and colourful march wound its way through the downtown district, before protestors gave speeches outside the conference centre. The COP17 enters its ‘high level’ phase on December 5, when senior government officials – include thirteen heads of state – roll up in Durban.

'We didn’t come to Durban to shop'

Some ACT protestors said the COP17 talks were not moving quickly enough to address the urgent issue of curbing climate change and adopting measures to help those worst affected.

With four placards tucked into his belt, Mohammed Juma, who travelled in an ACT-supported bus convoy from Nairobi to Durban, said the world was dying and a solution was needed. “We seek justice. World leaders must act now before the Kyoto Protocol expires next year. We must make sure all countries abide by it.”

The people of his hometown, Mombassa, now endure higher temperatures and sea surges because of climate change, he said. By setting binding targets for reducing their climate-changing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, signatories to the Kyoto Protocol have limited extreme weather conditions such as these.

Chanting, dancing and undulating, the marchers warned world leaders that the protest movement would only increase. “The show is getting bigger and bigger. This is just a warm-up.”

“We didn’t come here to shop. We came for justice,” one group yelled.

Simon Muoki, of the Kenya Youth Climate Network, said people were fed up with the COP process, arguing it was taking too long, with too little effect. “The future belongs to the young people. These people are destroying our planet. We want our future back.”

Climate change has exacerbated price hikes for food, reduced food and water supplies, and tough economic conditions for Kenyans.

Durban resident Phumla said weather patterns had changed in her city, with longer spring rains in recent years. Torrential rain in KwaZulu-Natal on the eve of the COP17 talks killed eight people from the Durban region, most of them living in makeshift houses on the perimeter of townships.

Phumla said South Africa needed western world leaders to commit to a second Kyoto Protocol period and to find the funds to enable adaptation for those most severely hit by climate change.

“They have the resources to adapt to climate change. For us, as Africans, as much as we want to start, we don’t have the resources.”