1st Draft

Mar 5, 2020

Glasgow Agreement

The institutional framework used by governments, international organizations and the whole economic system for the climate crisis has failed in all aspects. This institutional framework was built to fail. The main institutional arrangements on climate change, namely the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement have not produced the reduction in the global greenhouse gas emissions that is required to stop climate change.

Hundreds of governments, municipalities and organizations have declared climate emergency and massive protests in the streets all around the world have repeatedly called for decisive action for climate justice inside the timeline of 2030 and the scientific consensus on the need for a 50% cut of greenhouse gas emissions in this period.

This powerful climate justice movement needs new tools to address these fundamental contradictions and to reverse the global narrative from institutional impotence into social power.

As such, the undersigned organisations and social movements assume:

  1. The need to collectively cut greenhouse gas emissions, taking responsibility into their own hands and abandoning the single focus in institutional struggle - namely the focus on negotiations with governments and the United Nations;
  2. That political and economic noncooperation, as well as nonviolent intervention, in particular civil disobedience are the main tools for the fulfilment of the Glasgow Agreement, and define civil disobedience as “ “
  3. The political framework for these required cuts and climate action will be that of climate justice, which is defined as “ “
  4. The production of an inventory of main sectors and emitters of greenhouse gases and future projects in each country, that will be nationally and internationally advertised and defined as priority for shutdown;
  5. To define their own local and national strategies on how to stop new projects and major national greenhouse gas emitting sectors and infrastructures, and calling for support of other organisations appertaining to the Glasgow Agreement (nationally and internationally);
  6. To support other member organisations of the Glasgow Agreement with tools for achieving the objectives of the agreement.

The Glasgow Agreement will come into effect when at least 400(?) organisations and social movements from 50 (?) countries in all continents have signed it.


Notes:

The objective is to officially sign the Agreement in the countersummit during the COP-26 in Glasgow, in December 2020.

The indication of the nationally required cuts will be based on methodologies such as the Climate Equity Reference, Climate Fair Shares or Paris Equity Check that propose equitable national contributions based on historical emissions and capacity.

Two months after the signing all members of the Glasgow Agreement will have produced their first national inventory of new projects and main emitters with an order of priorities for shutdown. In each country the members will produce this list collectively. This information will be centralised in a public website of the Glasgow Agreement and directly reported to all members. This website will also receive communication from all organisations on required assistance.

There will be a template for this inventory.


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