Belém, Brazil – Climate impacted community members from Peru, the Philippines, and Belgium urged governments at COP30 to commit to a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and make polluters pay at a new interactive climate damages exhibition at the UN climate talks. The exhibition, on unaccounted for climate impacts of the oil and gas industry, also featured the display of a giant Climate Polluters Bill linked to the fossil fuel industry.
Photos and videos of the exhibition "Unaccounted" are available in the Greenpeace Media Library.
Saúl Luciano Lliuya, Peruvian farmer and Plaintiff in a landmark climate lawsuit against German energy firm RWE said: "This climate bill comes from communities that have been severely affected by climate change, but are the least responsible for it. Where I live, in the Andes, the landscape in the highlands is changing very quickly and the mountains are crying as the glaciers melt. My community and others like mine, along with the mountains, will see justice."
To inaugurate the exhibition, Lliuya was joined by Filipino youth activist Charles Zander Deluna and Belgian climate activist Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts as part of the calls for governments to accelerate work on phasing out fossil fuels and to hold the industry accountable. Deluna's community has recently announced the first climate-related personal injury and property damage case against UK oil giant Shell and Van Bunderen Robberechts. Is the founder of "Climate Justice for Rosa."[1]
Beyond the giant bill [2], the exhibition provided visitors the opportunity to indicate on a collective world map, where they were confronted with climate impacts, co-creating an archive of disrupted lives and the growing unaccounted costs of the oil and gas industry.
Other exhibits included a video collage of extreme weather and displacement, showing the widening gap between political pledges and the reality of the climate crisis alongside a poem from Jackie Bernabela, a teacher from the Caribbean island Bonaire who is suing the Dutch government for failing to protect it from climate change.
Abdoulaye Diallo, Campaign Lead, Greenpeace International said: "For too long, the balance sheet of the climate crisis remained invisible. Ordinary people barely survive by swimming through flooded cities, while oil and gas corporations are showered in mega-profits. Negotiators must wake up to the growing public and political pressure to make polluters pay, and agree to new polluter taxes to unlock international climate finance in the final COP30 outcome."
At COP30, Greenpeace is calling for a Global Response Plan to address the 1.5°C ambition gap and accelerate emissions reductions in this critical decade; a new, dedicated 5-year Forest Action Plan to end deforestation by 2030; and the establishment of a new work programme to advance the implementation of the COP29 finance outcome and developed countries' public finance commitments – within which options should be developed on progressive environmental taxation in line with the polluter pays principle and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC).
