PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 11 November, 2021

During the last week at COP26, youth activists including Vanessa Nakate, Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Luisa Neuerbauer, and hundreds of others from 31 countries aim to disarm the world of coal, oil and gas with a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

10 November - Inside the Glasgow Science Center in the final week of the UN Climate Talks are 7 Fridays for Future activists, representing 150 other youth leaders from around the world calling on world leaders to negotiate a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Their open letter decries fossil fuels as their “generation’s weapons of mass destruction,” demanding that governments step up and phase out the primary cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuels.  Activist, Mitzi Jonelle Tan, from the Philippines, said:

“The people most affected by climate change have been pushed into the floods by years of failure from wealthy countries who refuse to stop expanding fossil fuels. Each day that the coal, oil and gas industry is allowed to exist is another stone tied to us, weighing us down. To address this global and systemic injustice, countries must work together with a global and systemic approach to end the fossil fuel industry once and for all. That’s why youth around the world are today calling for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Despite this, national governments, including the COP26 hosts themselves, plan to continue to approve new fossil fuel production – putting the world on track to produce more than twice the fossil fuels by 2030 than is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5ºC target.

In their letter, youth say: The willful ignorance of our leaders and their predominant fixation on profit, everlasting growth, and the fossil fuel industry’s role in this is causing untold damage across the planet. Young people are not just inheriting a burning, flooded, melting planet - we’re already living in it, being born into it.

Vanessa Nakate, another signee from Nigeria, added

“We cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil, we cannot breathe so called natural gas!”

The proposed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty is critically needed to facilitate the international cooperation required to manage a fair and fast global transition away from coal, oil and gas. According to  Farzana Faruk Jhumu, FFF MAPA, the

“As a developing country, we many times use fossil fuel as the way of development. But real development is far from fossil fuels, because of other bad effects it creates. We need to move to clean and just energy to obtain real development”. 

The open letter outlines the youth’s call to world leaders, calling for a new international mechanism with three key pillars: 

• End new expansion of fossil fuel production in line with the best available science as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme

• Phase out existing production of fossil fuels in a manner that is fair and equitable, taking into account the respective dependency of countries on fossil fuels, and their capacity to transition;

• Invest in a transformational plan to ensure 100% access to renewable energy globally, support fossil fuel-dependent economies to diversify away from fossil fuels, and enable people and communities across the globe to flourish through a global just transition.

The open letter, publicly released today at COP26, sees youth activists join 2,600+ scientists and academics and 900+ civil society organisations who have called for a new global treaty to phase out fossil fuels. Their demands also align with 120 nationally-elected parliamentarians who called for “new international commitments and treaties, complementing the Paris Agreement, to address the urgency of a swift and just transition away from fossil fuel energy“ earlier this week. 

The full letter and list of signatories is available at https://fossilfueltreaty.org/youth-letter.

Media contacts:

Viviana Varin (Glasgow) viviana@fossilfueltreaty.org +33 6 63 48 52 67

Jemma De Leon (Chicago) jemma@fossilfueltreaty.org +1 909 536 9714