Waste pickers at COP21: creating solutions to climate change

Waste pickers made their voices heard at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), held in Paris in December of 2015. They participated in the debate panel titled “Solutions to Climate Change”. For several years, organized waste pickers from around the world have participated in these conventions, where they’ve hosted press conferences and lectures and participated in demonstrations and events. As they’ve argued since COP15 in Copenhagen (2009), we need to support funding mechanisms that promote just and equitable solutions to climate change. The waste pickers’ main demands are: to recognize the crucial role played by the informal sector in the mitigation of climate change and the promotion of the solidarity economy; to approve a Global Climate Change Fund that will invest in resource reuse, recovery, and recycling and guarantee decent wages for this sector’s workers; to guarantee that these opportunities be directly accessible to waste pickers’ groups and other informal workers; and to ban technologies such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other funds that destroy valuable resources and do not support workers. Access the article (in Portuguese).