Declaration on a Green COVID-19 Recovery

The following text was collectively drafted and co-authored by attendees at the 2021 GEC Global Meeting: Code Red for People & Nature. If you or your organisation would like to sign up to the Declaration, please contact us.

We call for a green and fair recovery from COVID-19 where no one is left behind. We declare that this will not be achieved without structural transformation to ensure our economies are nature-positive, net zero, fair and inclusive for all.

Decision makers are squandering the opportunity to build back better from COVID-19. Current recovery policies are entrenching inequality, propping up fossil fuel industries and doubling down on the destruction of nature.

COP26 has failed to respond to the Code Red facing people and planet. We are still on course for more than 2 degrees warming – subjecting millions to starvation, conflict, and poverty, while nature is being forgotten. We know that environmental and social injustices share the same root causes – and activism as usual is no longer an option.

Experience has show us that governments will not go far or fast enough without citizens demanding urgent reform. Business cannot move ahead of societal demand for change. And investors need strong social signals to shift their myopic, short term horizons.

Therefore we are uniting as a civil society movement across the world because we see that people, not power, are driving positive change.

We commit to building a mass movement of informed citizens to engage decision makers, and each other, to raise green recovery ambition, broker links with power and share solutions and experience from around the world.

We pledge to hold governments and businesses to account on their promises to build back better – scrutinising their responses, driving transparency, and delivering justice.

We promise to connect with other movements and networks, amplify the voices of activists around the world, and accelerate social change being led by movements of women, youth, indigenous people, marginalised communities and more.

But civic action is not alone enough.

We demand that those in positions of power prioritise structural and transformative measures to build a green and inclusive recover from COVID-19.

• Deliver a green recovery finance package for the global south, on top of existing climate finance commitments;
• Invest in nature, green infrastructure, green jobs and green re-skilling;
• Rewrite the institutions and rules that govern us so they prioritise participation via citizen assemblies and juries, civic dialogue, and inclusive policy;
• End fossil fuel investment, fossil fuel subsidies, and financing that is exploiting nature;
• Build an inclusive, just social contract fit for the 21st century that leaves no one - no person, no small business , no community - behind.

This Declaration was collectively drafted and co-authored by attendees at the 2021 GEC Global Meeting: Code Red for People & Nature. If you or your organisation would like to sign up to the Declaration, please contact us.