The People’s Summit was a gathering of international civil society groups on climate change from across the world that came together in New York in 2019. The attendees were concerned that the impact of the climate crisis on all of our lives, and most importantly, on the lives of those most at risk and already affected by the climate crisis, was seldom making it on the public and international agenda. The purpose was to reflect, share and act to place human rights at the core of climate activism to demand immediate, bold, people-powered, and human rights-consistent action of unprecedented scale to address the climate crisis. 

The Collective for Climate Rights, an outgrowth of the People’s Summit, is a decentralized group of climate justice activists that work to strengthen partnerships and collaborations between grassroots, national and international organizations to campaign for climate action that respects and promotes human rights. It has since worked on establishing the processes and projects to strengthen the climate and human rights movement. Because we know the climate crisis is here and now from massive rainfall in Indonesia or Germany and scorching temperatures from Canada to Pakistan, the crisis intensifies with each passing day and so do the losses to our human rights: lives, livelihoods, homes, food security and much more.

As COP26 is about to take place, the Collective is organizing a 24 hour/one-day online global video marathon on November 5, 2021, starting in Fiji and ending in Hawaii, on the eve of 5 days of action in Glasgow and across the world to ensure that space is created for all of us to testify of the impact of the climate crisis on our lives and demand that global leaders take action to protect our human rights. The video above is my submission. You can make one too.