ECO 8, SB62

War, Genocide, and Climate Collapse: The Same Fight for Survival

Delegates in Bonn woke up to the devastating news of the US bombing of Iran – a unilateral, illegal act of aggression that plunges the world into one of the most dangerous moments in recent history. This is not an isolated crisis. It is the latest eruption of a system built on domination, the same system that fuels climate destruction. The ongoing genocide in Gaza by Israel, backed by US and with European complicity, is not a distant tragedy but a direct assault on the possibility of climate justice. How can we speak of “resilience” and “adaptation” while funding the annihilation of entire communities? How can we negotiate carbon budgets when the budgets of war machines remain unchecked?

The US’ and Israel’s war on Iran, shielded by impunity, continues to shred international law. This follows decades of destabilization – from Iraq to Libya to Yemen – each war serving the same goal: control over land, resources, and people. The climate crisis is not separate from this violence; it is accelerated by it. Bombs and bulldozers in Gaza, oil rigs in the Arctic, and deforestation in the Amazon all obey the same logic of extraction and erasure.

Yet, inside the sterile halls of the UNFCCC, silence prevails. No emergency session, no condemnation, no recognition that the same powers greenlighting genocide are the ones hollowing out climate agreements. The climate talks grow more detached by the day, not just ignoring the fires outside, but fanning them.

The crisis of multilateralism is a crisis of complicity

International climate collaboration is being strangled by the same forces that wage war. The US may have left the Paris Agreement, but its fingerprints are everywhere: in the obstruction of fair and equitable climate finance, in the bullying of Global South nations, in the relentless push for false solutions like carbon markets that let polluters profit from crisis. This is not negligence, it is sabotage.

The UNFCCC once promised a space for collective survival. Now, it risks becoming a grotesque performance, where the architects of ecocide pose as climate champions. The same governments arming Israel’s genocide are the ones watering down climate targets, shielding fossil fuels, and silencing dissent. This is not just hypocrisy; it is strategy.

The UNFCCC must choose: Solidarity or Surrender?

Genocide is an abhorrent failure of humanity and a climate issue. The destruction of Gaza’s water systems, farmlands, and infrastructure is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, it is environmental warfare. The emissions from Israel’s US-supplied warplanes, the toxic rubble of bombed cities, the forced displacement of millions. These are war crimes, these are climate crimes.

Yet, too many in the climate space still treat war and occupation as “distractions.” This is a fatal error. There is no 1.5°C future on stolen land. No “just transition” while billions flow to weapons dealers. No decarbonization without decolonization.

To reclaim the UNFCCC, we must break the silence:

• Name the systems: The climate crisis is not an accident, it is the result of capitalism, militarism, and colonialism. These cannot be reformed; they must be dismantled.
• End the hypocrisy: No more climate conferences sponsored by fossil fuel giants and war profiteers. 
• Fight for reparative justice: Climate finance must include reparations for wars and occupation – for the oil spills in Iraq, the scorched earth in Gaza, the uranium poisoning in Palestine and beyond.

The stakes could not be clearer or higher. The fight for climate justice is the fight against genocide, against apartheid, against empire. There are no sidelines.

ECO believes in the defiant power of true multilateralism; not as a bureaucratic ritual, but as the last, best hope for our collective survival. The UNFCCC cannot be allowed to wither into irrelevance while the world burns. This is our moment to reclaim it, not with hollow words, but with radical solidarity. We must shake off the paralysis of denial, confront the deadly inertia of complicity, and breathe fire back into this process.

The path forward is clear 

First, we must open our eyes to the genocide unfolding before us, not as a distant tragedy, but as the defining moral crisis of our time. There can be no climate justice on top of mass graves. Second, we must tear down the artificial walls separating war, oppression, and ecological collapse – they are threads of the same noose tightening around humanity’s neck. And third, we must resurrect the original promise of these halls: a space where the powerless can hold the powerful accountable.

This is not about saving a broken system, it is about building the kind of multilateralism that doesn’t just “address” crises, but dismantles the systems that create them. One where Gaza’s martyrs, Iran’s bombed communities, and the Global South’s climate victims are not footnotes, but the beating heart of our fight for climate justice.

The time for silence is over. ECO stands with the oppressed, the occupied, and the unheard. We demand an immediate end to all wars, all genocides, and all acts of environmental warfare, because the fight for a livable planet cannot be won without the fight for a just world. Together, we will transform these halls into a sanctuary for justice. The future belongs to those who dare to dismantle the systems of destruction; and dare we must.

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