For COP30 in Brazil TPNS activities included a new report, updated briefings and an official side event, all addressing military emissions, military spending and climate finance.
PUBLICATIONS
Report “Climate Reparations for Military Emissions”
Key findings: In this report, we estimate that the global top 20 military spenders alone are responsible for at least 10 billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) of military-related emissions during the first quarter of the 21th century. This has accrued from the US$40 trillion spent on their militaries since 2001. We estimate that collectively they owe the world, especially the poorest and the most climate vulnerable countries, US$2.67 trillion in reparation for their military-GHG-emission-related climate costs (as measured by the social cost of carbon). This is more than 8 times the new climate finance pledge of US$300 billion to developing countries set at Baku COP29.
This report includes our work on the reparations owed by Israel to Palestine from 1948 to the present day genocide, co-authored with The Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy.
The struggle for climate justice is increasingly overshadowed by a global arms race even though global temperatures are reaching record highs. States that should be working together to invest in urgent climate action are instead spending record sums on the military (over $2.7 trillion in 2024). This spending produces huge emissions, drains resources from climate action, and escalates geopolitical tensions that make multilateral climate action more difficult. Published by Tipping Point North South jointly with the Transnational Institute and Stop Wapenhandel.
BLUE ZONE OFFICIAL SIDE EVENT
DISARMING THE CLIMATE CRISIS: THE TRUE COST OF MILITARISM
13 NOVEMBER
This official side event, co-hosted by IPPNW, Peace Boat, Peace Track Initiative, and WILPF brought together diverse speakers that addressed the deep connections between militarism and the climate crisis — from hidden military emissions and the vast gap between military spending and climate finance to the catastrophic risks nuclear weapons pose to the planet. The event concluded in spotlighting avenues for peace and climate justice – including the Fossil Fuel Treaty to the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.
Deborah Burton’s contribution was addressing the urgent need to fund public climate finance over military spending.
Read transcript here.
This side event followed on from a press conference the previous day: Disarming the Climate Crisis: Putting Militarism on the Agenda at COP30
ECO ARTICLE
Day 5 COP30
ECO is Climate Action Network’s (CAN) widely read daily newsletter is distributed on the ground to delegates each morning, and is an important advocacy tool for civil society. As an active member of the Peace and Demilitarisation Working Group of the Women and Gender Constituency, TPNS contributed to the drafting of Militarism is fueling the climate crisis– COP must confront it.
We call for: (i) Stepping up ambition: Include military emissions in updated NDCs before COP31 (ii) Reallocation of military budgets: redirect spending to close the climate finance gap (iii) Integration of peace and justice: recognise that true climate justice cannot coexist with war and structural violence. Ending militarisation begins with stopping aggressors and demanding accountability.
https://climatenetwork.org/resource/eco-5-cop30/
QUNO PRESS CONFERENCE
Our colleague at Quaker UN Office (Geneva) Lindsey Fielder Cook spoke on the interconnections between peace and climate change at a COP press conference organized by the Interfaith Liaison Committee, addressing in part, the issue of military emissions and spending. The press conference can be viewed here.
Also Deborah participated in a webinar organised by QUNO just before COP.
FLAGGED AT THE COP30 OPENING CEREMONY BUT NOT – YET ANYWAY – ON THE OFFICIAL UNFCCC AGENDA
“Spending twice as much on weapons as we do on climate action is paving the way for climate apocalypse. There will be no energy security in a world at war.” — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Leaders’ Summit.
At the Opening Summit of COP30, President Lula condemned massive global military spending as a misallocation of resources that should instead be channelled into climate solutions for global south countries. He said:
“If the men who wage war were at COP30, it would be much cheaper to spend $1.3 trillion a year to end the climate problem than $2.7 trillion to wage war as they did last year.”
Outside the formal negotiation rooms, momentum kept growing on the recognition of the intersections between militarism and the climate crisis– from multiple official side events, press conferences, radical spaces at the People’s Summit, staged actions and protests, and coverage in outlets from ECO to the Guardian.
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro called out NATO members’ commitment to allocate 5% of their GDP to “investing in more weapons,” arguing that “Russia is not the enemy; the climate crisis is the enemy.” Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkēvičs highlighted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “takes away human lives and inflicts harm on nature,” while also “limiting climate investment as resources are redirected to defense spending.” Honduras’ President Xiomara Castro called for the cessation of all wars devastating the planet and demanded accountability for the genocide against Palestinians, presenting this as part of her seven-point climate justice proposal launched at COP29.
Despite the undeniable real-world impacts of militarism on the climate—from Ukraine to Gaza—the rising strength of climate and peace movements exposing these intersections, and even world leaders’ acknowledgments of the issue, this reality has yet to enter the official negotiation spaces of the climate talks.
Perhaps Turkey – COP31 – is where that will change and the military-fossil fuel complex will be fully in the spotlight.
This is what we work towards in the coming year.
COP30 BRIEF NEWS ROUNDUP
Finance outcomes at COP30 were deeply inadequate. ‘Developed’ countries repeatedly refused to provide the finance required across adaptation, mitigation, and the just transition, weakening the overall outcome and undermining trust rooted in their historical obligations. Parties have left Belém with no meaningful action but a vague pledge to triple adaptation finance by 2035, and a lack of commitments to grant-based, non-debt-creating finance. For communities bearing the brunt of the crisis, these outcomes bring no hope.
Equally disappointing is the absence of a global response to the so-called ‘ambition gap,’ exemplified by countries’ lack of concrete plans to phase out fossil fuels. The final COP30 decision offers no roadmap for a just, equitable, and fully financed transition away from fossil fuels—a stark failure of the only existing multilateral process tasked with addressing the climate crisis.
Read More:
TPNS activities for COP30 supported by Movement for the Abolition of War.
https://oilchange.org/news/cop30-makes-progress-on-just-transition-but-misses-on-everything-else/
However, on the topic of military emissions and – vitally – military spending – it was clear that both are now widely recognised as important elements of the mitigation as well as the climate finance debates. Wider global civil society is now including military spending as part of its overall climate finance demands at COP; a number of states also linked military spending to climate finance.
TPNS was delighted to be invited to speak and participate at the Climate Action Network’s Annual Strategy Meeting, held in February in Mombasa, Kenya. We took the issue of military emissions, spending and climate finance into a number of key spaces at the conference including a panel presentation on new issues to be potentially considered as part of CAN’s climate finance ‘escalation’ work in 2024.
Mitzi has long pushed for the climate movement to address militarism. She co-ordinated this action at COP28 before heading over to join our 4 December official side event.
Tipping Point North South 