Paris Climate March Will Go On, Say Activists

Civil society rejects French government’s restrictions on public demonstrations during COP21

graphic depicting a leaf with the silhouette of the Eiffel tower

It is often said that the twentieth century began, not in 1900, but in 1914 when the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand IV threw us into World War I. Before the Friday attacks in Paris, I was saying — perhaps a bit glibly — that the climate conference in Paris would mark the real beginning of the twenty-first century. At this point, I’m not even sure I want to be right. For if this indeed our fate, it will not likely be an easy one.

Exhibit A is France’s decision to suspend many of the civil society events that are planned to take place outside the conference hall.

And the recent decision — just taken today by the Coalition Climat 21 — to respectfully demur. The demonstrations, the coalition says, will go on.

Climate protestors in San FranciscoPhoto by Peg HunterClimate activists’ in San Francisco demonstration against Bank of the West, a subsidiary of the French bank BNP Paribas which is a top financier of the coal industry and also one of the corporate sponsors of the United Nations climate summit in Paris.

Yesterday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced that due to new security measures following Friday’s coordinated terrorist attacks around Paris that killed 129 people, the nation would limit the upcoming United Nations climate summit to only the core negotiations, and ban any marches, rallies, concerts or other events related to the twenty-first Conference of Parties (COP 21).

“A series of demonstrations planned will not take place and it will be reduced to the negotiations ... a lot of concerts and festivities will be canceled,” Valls told a French radio station, according to a Reuters report.

According to UN estimates about 60,000 people, including envoys, journalists and civil society members, will descend on the embattled French capital for the conference that is slated to begin in two weeks.

But by Tuesday morning (Monday afternoon in the US) the Coalition Climat 21, an umberella group that has been organizing a major climate march on November 29 as well as several other demonstrations, announced that all the events it had planned would go on as usual. Other demonstrations include a “People’s Summit” on 5 and 6 December and civil disobedience action on the last day of the talks.

From the Coalition’s press release:

“While taking into account the exceptional circumstances, we believe that COP21 can not take place without the participation or without the mobilizations of civil society in France. Thus, we will implement all our efforts to hold all the mobilizations currently planned. In consultation with the authorities, we will continue to ensure the security of all participants is guaranteed.”

Prior to the Friday attacks, the group — that includes more than 130 diverse labor, human rights, religious and environmental organizations such as Awaaz, 350.org, Oxfam, and Greenpeace — had been expecting about 200,000 people to turn up for the November 29 march. To what extent last week’s events will impact the turnout isn’t clear yet, but it seems the organizers are pressing ahead full steam.

Coalition partner Attac was even more emphatic about keeping on. From Attac’s press statement in response to the French government announcement:

“We reject in advance any restriction on the right to protest and fight against this decaying world, in favor of the alternatives that peoples of the South and the North put forward together. From November 29 to December 12 in Paris on the occasion of the COP 21 and with our citizens’ mobilizations , we will show that another world is possible, necessary and urgent.”

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