Call for Systemic Change: Shifting Focus from Climate to Economic and Geopolitical Considerations
Captain Forest has drafted this letter intended for the UNFCCC Secretariat. We kindly invite you to review it, share your feedback, and indicate your organization’s interest in signing the final version—once all feedback has been incorporated.
Dear UNFCCC Secretariat,
I’m writing to bring to your attention an important issue, as COP29 has just finished.
The combination of global economic activities and the race for imperialism since the start of the first Industrial Revolution resulted in major environmental and mass misery phenomena with possibly no equivalence in the past.
If we look at the global sustainability issues only from an environmental perspective, from the extinction of animal species, including large animals, to the depletion of resources such as freshwater, soils, minerals, energy sources, or forests, to the destruction of entire ecosystems in oceans or mountains, to the desertification of increasing portions of land and to widespread pollution, no text could fully capture the scale of the planet’s destruction.
More than a century ago, concerns about pollution, deforestation, and soil depletion were raised in early environmental writings, with figures like George Perkins Marsh in 1864, who warned about the consequences of human activity on nature in his book Man and Nature.
In 1916, Albert Howard highlighted the detrimental effects of chemical fertilizers and monoculture farming on soil health and the broader environment. He argued for a more sustainable, organic approach to agriculture.
Plastics, first mass-produced after 1930, began raising environmental concerns as early as the 1960s. This growing awareness highlighted the long-lasting effects of plastic waste, particularly in marine environments, with notable studies documenting the accumulation of plastic debris in oceans and other ecosystems.
The resulting Agenda 21 from the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 represented a major milestone in recognizing the global environmental crisis and laying a roadmap for addressing sustainability globally. At that same summit, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) was adopted, and the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change was already emerging.
We are now in 2024, and the environmental situation has worsened compared to decades ago when alerts were made and governments from all countries gathered to discuss mitigation action plans.
For over a century, scientists, experts, NGOs, lawyers, activists, and policymakers from the North and the South have worked tirelessly to provide critical data, evidence, and analysis on key environmental issues—such as the impacts of pesticides and GMOs, carbon emissions, plastics, deforestation, biodiversity extinction, and many others.
Despite their efforts, these voices have often encountered resistance from corporate lobbies, which have sought to minimize the significance of these issues in order to delay or block the adoption of necessary environmental regulations.
A question arises: why would corporations harm the environment and prevent the adoption of environmental laws?
The corporations we refer to are multinationals operating in a global capitalist/neoliberal world, and they are mostly from the five permanent UN Security Council member countries, with the majority coming from the USA and Western Europe, followed by China, and then Russia.
The capitalist/neoliberal system is a system that prioritizes the continuous accumulation of capital through several mechanisms, among which is the infinite pursuit of GDP growth. These goals often drive policies and practices aimed at expanding markets and increasing production and consumption, almost always at the expense of environmental and social sustainability.
Such a global economic system, based on extraction and exploitation, clashes with two realities: first, the planet has finite resources, rendering infinite growth impossible, and second, the exploitation of the countries of the South—through neocolonialism—exacerbates the phenomenon of inequalities and mass poverty/misery, making infinite growth ethically hard to accept.
Since their inception, capitalism and colonialism have been deeply interconnected, making it impossible to discuss the global economic system without acknowledging its geopolitical dimensions. Similarly, addressing the environmental crisis cannot be separated from tackling the social crisis, as the two are inherently linked.
If environmental impacts are the left side of the face, the social impacts are the right one.
Nonetheless, despite the existing academic literature about environmental degradation and global inequalities, most of the weight is given to the climate crisis rather than other alarming environmental and social impacts directly related to the nature of capitalism/neoliberalism and the race for imperialism.
As a result of how the climate crisis is framed, most people believe that the greatest challenge of the first half of this century is to mitigate global warming and reduce the likelihood of extreme climate events. This perspective emphasizes first reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, and then preserving biodiversity and adopting a circular economy as primary solutions.
While all these goals are noble and must indeed be achieved, pursuing them in silos without connecting them and without considering the reality of the global economic system and imperialism will be in vain because, first, corporations’ lobbies will always act in their interests, and second, what puts ecosystems and human life at risk is extractivism and exploitation of the entire living world to meet the infinite growth imperative of capital accumulation.
Let’s explain through concrete examples why reducing carbon emissions and biodiversity and waste impacts in silos does not solve the environmental and social crisis.
A random technological company producing smartphones and computers—call it C— hired the best-in-class consultants to succeed in optimizing its carbon emissions and reducing its biodiversity and waste impacts. Is C sustainable?
Consumer electronic products need to be replaced every 2 to 5 years at most due to constant innovation and planned obsolescence. Making devices that last at least 50 years would have been more environmentally friendly, but that would ruin the company’s business model.
Besides, there have been significant concerns about the links between the supply chains of C and armed groups that benefit from mineral exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Also, investigations point out the responsibility of not only C but several renowned USA giant technological companies—claiming their net-zero achievements—in the funding of the genocide in DRC.
Similarly, other agro or petrochemical giants could take pride in being carbon neutral, replacing metal fences with hedgerows, or cleaning up Ocean plastics to conserve biodiversity, but what about phasing out pesticides or plastics?
The prevailing narrative today—emphasizing reduced emissions, stronger biodiversity protections, better recycling, and innovation for good—fails to address the underlying economic system and the (neo)colonial realities shaping global dynamics.
Similarly, the claim that immigration from the Global South to the North is primarily driven by the climate crisis disregards the fact that many civilians in Africa, South America, and Asia are fleeing wars, poverty, and systemic hardships. While climate change exacerbates desertification in these regions, other critical factors—such as over a century of colonialism, extractivism, poor land management, or deforestation—play an even greater role.
Furthermore, the idea that our behavior today prevents future generations from accessing resources obscures a reality: a majority of the planet’s population is already denied equitable access to resources. This is not just a future problem—it is an urgent crisis in the present.
In conclusion, the climate change narrative dangerously oversimplifies the environmental and social crises. It leads the public to believe that reducing carbon emissions, mitigating biodiversity extinction, and recycling waste are the primary actions required to sustain our living standards and prevent future extreme climate events.
This narrative also perpetuates misleading ideas, such as attributing immigration to climate change, and claiming to protect future generations while neglecting the current inequalities in access to wealth and resources.
Climate change policies often uphold the status quo by offering limited environmental improvements that address issues in silos, failing to recognize their interconnected nature or tackle the root causes.
As long as these root causes remain unaddressed, the problem will persist, especially with corporations continuing to lobby for their own interests.
To genuinely reduce carbon emissions, protect biodiversity, and prevent waste, shouldn’t we first question the relevance of the current economic system and the neocolonial order?
At the heart of this effort lies a critical issue: the unchecked power of multinational corporations. Isn’t it time to reduce their size and curb their influence?
