'It's the same fight': Pleas for Palestine at UN climate summit

Campaigners stage 'ceasefire now' demonstration on day one of Cop29 in Baku

Activists stage a pro-Palestine protest at the Cop29 climate change summit venue in Baku, Azerbaijan. Reuters

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Pro-Palestine campaigners brought their cause to a UN climate change summit on Monday, depicting the two issues as a common struggle for justice.

Banners that read "ceasefire now" and "stop fuelling genocide" were held up at a demonstration inside the Cop29 venue in Baku, Azerbaijan. Several delegates wearing keffiyehs appeared on stage in a press conference hosted by the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

The Palestinian and Israeli governments are both represented at the summit, which marks the second round of UN climate talks since the Gaza war began. Pro-Palestine activists say the conflict has an environmental cost owing to pollution and loss of water in the enclave, as well as reflecting a wider lack of respect for the people of the world.

Asad Rehman, a delegate representing anti-poverty charity War on Want, said the war showed the lives of people in the Global South "are worth less than others” to some nations in the developed world. He said the view justified the "policies of exploitation and extraction that have taken the planet to the edge of catastrophe”.

“This is the same fight. This is a fight about humanity,” he told The National.

“At the heart of these negotiations is the question about whether we are going to be able to prevent climate genocide, about the systematic dispossession and destruction of our planet, about the sacrificing of people. If we can’t prevent an ongoing, live televised genocide that is taking place on our iPhones and on our television screens, what hope will we have of stopping the climate genocide? If the very governments that are fuelling and arming and financing that genocide are unwilling to act on climate but are willing to fuel genocide, what hope do we have?”

Israel denies the allegation of genocide, saying it is defending itself against Hamas after the October 7 attacks. Protesters previously used the Cop28 summit and climate talks in Germany to call for a ceasefire in the besieged enclave. Azerbaijan appealed for countries to stop fighting during the summit in a "Cop truce", but war rages in Gaza and Ukraine, with hostilities also continuing elsewhere.

Dozens of people held banners demanding justice in the corridors of the Cop29 venue. Outside the UN-managed Baku Stadium, where talks are taking place, a young activist declared a school strike for the climate, while others supported a vegan lifestyle.

Aya Khourshid, an Egyptian-Palestinian member of the Wisdom Keepers Delegation, which represents indigenous people, told The National that “what Palestine faces is not separate from the climate crisis”. She said the crises reflected a “parasitic world view of extraction and separation of accumulation and expansionism”.

“This is the year of climate finance and for some reason we are salvaging for billions, yet billions are released on a whim for Israel with no accountability, with no process – we come here from all around the year to gather just to agree on a number,” she added. “And we have been in this process for years to agree on a loss and damage fund. So let us hope that this Cop will be one that finances regeneration, finances life and may our legacy not be one that finances destruction.”

Abeer Butmeh, a representative of Friends of the Earth Palestine, said countries meeting at Cop29 should describe Israel’s war as “ecocide”. The conflict has caused “devastating human loss and lasting environmental destruction”, she added.

“Israeli operations have polluted land, blocked water access and created food scarcity, all in violation of Palestinians’ right to a healthy environment," Ms Butmeh said. "Israeli crimes should be recognised by the international community and at Cop for the ecocide it is."