the U.K. government was talking up this COP as being the most inclusive COP ever, despite going ahead with it while the pandemic, while the COVID-19 pandemic rages around the world. And far from the most inclusionary summit, we’re seeing the opposite of that, right? So, we’re seeing absolutely the most exclusive climate summit ever, the most white, the most privileged climate summit.
So, we, in civil society movements and Friends of the Earth and in the COP Coalition, we called for the COP to be postponed, because we didn’t think it was safe to go ahead, given the really quite high rates of COVID here in the U.K., right here in Scotland, here in the Central Belt of Scotland, but also around the world, and obviously also to do with the COVID vaccine apartheid, so, you know, seeing the very, very unequal rollout of the COVID vaccine globally. You know, the continent of Africa, for example, has less than 5% coverage of vaccination. And yeah, people in the U.K., people here in Scotland, we’ve got quite a high level of vaccination, but the virus is still circulating at really high rates. So, we don’t think it was safe to go ahead with the conference. The U.K. government has pushed ahead with it anyway. The preparations for the COP, the logistics for the COP — I mean, I think Dipti and Asad have touched on this — the preparations have been last-minute. They’ve been chaotic and shambolic. They’ve been ever-changing. It’s almost as if,
— source democracynow.org | Nov 01, 2021