At Rio 92, the UN conference on the environment that created the basis for the COPs, some of the main goals were to save pandas, blue macaws, and whales from extinction. There was Dr. Jorima Wernick, Amnesty International’s Brazil director.
More than 30 years later, she says the endangered animals have been protected, but “we’re the ones who are running out of steam.”
According to Wernicke, COP30 Special Envoy on Climate Change and Environmental Racism, the UN climate change conferences have forgotten that the central point of the crisis is humans, who may cease to exist.
“It feels like we are at a global Faria Lima meeting,” the activist says, referring to the São Paulo street that houses the financial market’s offices, criticizing the amount of talk about numbers at the conference due to the lack of urgency in pointing to concrete solutions.
For her, it is not enough to announce resources for different funds without implementing solutions for those who are on the front lines of extreme climate events – women, Black people, indigenous people, quilombola people, and riparian people.
He says that it is these most vulnerable groups that offer different solutions to the crisis. In preparation for her role as COP30 envoy, Wernicke joined Envoys Denise Dora (Human Rights and Energy Transition) and First Lady Ganga (Women) to hear from women from traditional communities from all the country’s biomes.
Despite the difficulties caused by the climate emergency, she says, completing the project had a positive outcome: “Women will not let the world end under any circumstances.”
In the Vozes do Bioma project, you have followed reports on the impacts of the climate crisis on black women in all biomes of Brazil. What caught your attention the most in this process?
Even though we already knew that we were the ones on the front line, that we were the ones creating the structures needed to sustain communities, it really moved me to see, for example, a Black woman leading Operation Waterfarmers (reforestation projects to combat drought). It had a very positive impact on me to see these solutions.
Of course I felt a negative impact. They are finding solutions because the situation is very bad for blacks, indigenous people, fisherfolk and women from traditional communities. We visited a riverside community, made up mainly of black women, who did everything on their own.
We also visited riverbanks that were thriving with investments. The point is that those who thrive with investing are a minority of what we find.
But the balance is very positive, because women will not let the world end under any circumstances. The world is under threat now and they are doing what they can to save it.
How do you intend to serve as COP30 Special Envoy on Environmental Racism and Peripheral Zones based on this experience?
Tell (what we heard) to the negotiators. We have already delivered the letter (with the demands and solutions in each biome) to the heads of state, but all other representatives need to read it. It’s a message from women. If they don’t read it on paper, they’ll read it orally, because we’ll talk.
Our effort is exactly that. Insist, demonstrate, teach, with great patience – because this is the 30th COP, they have had 29 opportunities to do it right.
What does human rights representation look like at a conference focused on economic negotiations?
A conference that forgot that human rights exist.
They have a duty to remember that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is more than 70 years old. Let’s keep talking to remind them that COP is about people. It is the rights of nature as a whole that are defended, because humans also have the right to live in nature and in a healthy environment.
It’s like we’re at a Faria Lima meeting, because they’re just talking about background and money, I don’t know what.
Is the climate crisis also a human rights crisis?
It is a human rights crisis, but with an existential dimension. It is the survival of humanity that is at stake. We had the Secretary General of Amnesty International who said: This is a deep crisis, and everything is under threat. Different species are threatened, but in the end, when everything is destroyed, we are also destroyed.
There is a movement in civil society that says there is no Planet B, there is only Planet A. We will not be renewed. Everything else goes, we’ve seen that other times. The forest is reborn. Pandas, I always think about pandas, because in Rio-92, we wanted to save pandas, whales and blue macaws. They have been renewed. do you understand? They are back. We are the ones who finish.
It is with this level of urgency that we need to act. If we think humanity is a wonderful thing, it’s a good idea to get our hands dirty.
Do you think the delay in recognizing the urgency of the climate crisis is rooted in the fact that extreme events are mainly felt in developing countries?
It’s because they always saw us dying. It comes from the experience of the economic model, the experience of conquest and colonialism. It is the Global South, those countries that have been invaded, colonized and expropriated. Our death, genocide, has always been there.
We have achieved transformations: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights represents an important consensus, stating that we also exist as human beings. Declarations of indigenous rights, recognition of traditional communities, gender action programmes, and the fight against racism were progress. But they seem to have swept it all under the rug.
What counts as a victory for human rights at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30)?
From a strict perspective, it was recognized (in the letter) that human rights are an essential part of decision-making processes. But this is not discussed directly because it is something that should be clear.
I think the technical victory will appear out of quote. How does it appear? We must move from the universal language of Faria Lima to the language of human rights. Language is not words on paper, but the way in which a problem is confronted, a solution is described, and it is implemented.
The victory for us will be to make a just transition, take into account communities, give them leadership and priority, and actually put women in leadership.
Will we face environmental racism? like? Are we going to solve the problem of sanitation that was taken from here (from Parque da Cidade) and placed in the slums (from Belém)? Are you leaving here with this commitment? I say the example of Belém, but it is for the whole world.
We will not reach that level, but the victory is that our commitment is complete, and better articulated in documents and policies.
X-rays | Jorema Wernick, 63
Doctor, activist, author and holds a PhD in Communication and Culture from UFRJ. She is the founder of the NGO Creola, which has been working since 1992 to ensure the rights of black women in the country. In 2017, he took over as Executive Director of Amnesty International Brazil.
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