People’s Climate March: A ray of hope

The People's Climate March (PCM) took place in Manhattan, New York on September 21, 2014 on the eve of UN Climate Summit called for by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to discuss the imminent danger posed by human-induced climate change. According to the New York Times, over 300,000 people (over 600,000 by some account) from all walks of life, representing over 1,200 organisations from 146 countries organised the protest rally to voice their concerns over the lack of action by world leaders to address the pathways that various countries must take to mitigate the climate change by curtailing greenhouse gas emission.

The PCM was live telecast by numerous TV channels and was covered by journalists from all around the world. The rally stretched over 2.2 miles and took five hours to march about 30 city blocks. Accompanied by drumbeats, wearing costumes and carrying signs, thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of Manhattan and other cities around the world to urge policymakers to take action on climate change. The PCM started at Columbus Circle and continued through Midtown, Times Square and the Far West Side of Manhattan. It was a spectacle even for a city known for doing things big. There were 2,646 solidarity events organised in 162 countries.

This march will go down in the history of environmental movement as the largest public solidarity event ever organised in the world on the issue of climate change. Up until now, most of the climate change discussions were limited to academic analysis, news and media reporting, independent protest rallies in various countries to demand climate justice; and the negotiations are primarily confined among the world leaders under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This was the first time that a coordinated event involving environmentalists and activists from all around the world took to the streets in a united voice to demand actions by world leaders in finding a solution the greatest threat humanity and our planet have ever faced.

The participants were organised in six different categories; the group representing the most vulnerable communities and direct victims of climate change, such as people from low-lying island nations and the victims of Hurricane Sandy, were put in the front. I joined the PCM as a representative of Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN), which is a member of the South Asians for Climate Justice. Our group was put in the front section by the organisers as Bangladesh, being a low-lying and densely populated country, is considered ground zero of the impact of climate change.

Once the march started, I walked around freely to meet with members of other organisations and exchanged views with them. I met people from Pennsylvania who were carrying banners with messages against hydrofracking of natural gas well drilling and environmental justice. The mood of the rally was very festive and the participants were singing, dancing, chanting slogans, and carrying festoons and banners. Although the main focus of the PCM was to voice concerns about the dangers of climate change and to demand actions from world leaders, the participants chanted slogans such as "Flood Wall Street, Not Kashmir", "End CO2lonialism", "Bangladesh and Manhattan will Drown Together", "Don't Frack with US" etc. Many world leaders and celebrities from around the world expressed solidarity with the PCM. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon joined the PCM to express his solidarity. In a short speech, he said that the heat and pressure from the PCM on world leaders will hopefully help keep the planet cool.

Many world leaders who attended and delivered speeches at the UN Climate Summit that took place on September 23 mentioned the importance of the message delivered at the PCM. Leaders from several countries, including Germany and Sweden, made concrete promises to do their share for the UN Climate Resilience Fund. World leaders will meet again next year in Paris at the Conference of Parties (COP21) under the UNFCCC to negotiate a plan to tackle increase in greenhouse gases and to address adaptation measures against climate change. All the eyes are on COP21, because it is the last chance for world leaders to agree on a mitigation plan to limit greenhouse gas emission that will arrest the rise in the temperature below 20°C as compared to the pre-industrial period. A failure in Paris would almost certainly put the 20°C limit out of reach.

According to the most recent assessment report (AR5, 2014) published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a less than 20°C increase in atmospheric temperature by the year 2100 is absolutely needed to arrest the adverse impact of climate change. In order to achieve this 20°C limit, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has to be limited to 550 ppm. Limiting the increase in temperature by 20°C is still doable, as long as the global community agrees on a "Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities" (CBDR-RC) plan to curtail greenhouse gas emission through deep decarbonisation of the energy sector that heavily depends on fossil fuel. The current concentration of CO2 has already increased from 315 ppm in 1955 to 400 ppm in 2014. It should be noted that the atmosphere has already warmed up by about 10°C during the last few decades.

The participants of the PCM know that one rally will not be enough to force the world leaders to agree on a viable plan to mitigate and adapt against climate change to secure climate justice for the most vulnerable nations and ecosystems; however, they left the march with a sense of unity and power of the people as a catalyst for change. One of the banners at the PCM read "We can build our future." Let's hope that the people of the world will rise above nationalistic interest to save the common future of the humanity and our only home – the Planet Earth.