GDAMS  Statement on Earth Day

April 22, 2023

We are entering a path of no return for humanity. Rising temperatures are modifying climatic patterns in a profound and extreme way. These alterations have direct repercussions on the habitability of territories and the maintenance of decent and sustainable living conditions for all. Millions of people are already experiencing the disastrous consequences of global warming. We are facing a gigantic challenge, an existential crisis of incredible dimensions that we do not seem to quite grasp. However, these are facts widely accepted and recognized by the scientific community. The pandemic was only a small preview of what our children and grandchildren, and especially the people of the Global South, will suffer.

Atmosphere carbonization, planet warming and environmental crises are out of control, while a large network of interests and global power has become even more apparent,  including and connecting military and fossil energy businesses. By securing and protecting fossil fuel and predatory actors, military security becomes instrumentally responsible for and complicit in their environmental disasters. This web of interests promotes wars for the economic profit of a few, and works, directly and indirectly, to prevent measures that could alleviate both the planetary environmental crises and the suffering of millions of people. The planet and the environment will not be able to heal within this destructive and ecocidal scenario. 

It’s quite a radical dilemma. The real current challenges facing humanity, such as the climate crisis, pandemics, deforestation, floods, loss of biodiversity and many more, are global and cross-boundary, although they have their worst impacts on the regions and peoples that have contributed the least to the climate crisis – particularly in the Global South. There is no way of solving our existential problem as a species if we keep waging wars within and among countries. These emergencies require planetary solutions. 

We therefore:

• Denounce both the large fossil industry corporations that have hijacked and co-opted world governments, and the hidden interests and pressures of the military-industrial complex.
• Urge politicians to act immediately. A real decarbonization plan can’t wait any longer. 
• Demand governments to drastically reduce their military expenditures. An effective decarbonization is impossible without a systematic global demilitarization, and a global reduction of military spending.
• Call on Civil Society Organizations to push  for a new geopolitics that leaves behind violence and threats, creating structures for global governance based on cooperation and ecofeminist principles,  and using dialogue and negotiation tools for conflict resolution.

There cannot be decarbonization without demilitarization, and both require depatriarchalizing our societies and power structures, as well as undertaking radical changes in our outdated, predatory economic system, in order to face a necessary degrowth and fall back into the ecological limits of our planet. Political decisions on military budgets in the coming years will determine the response that we give to the multiple crises in which humanity is immersed. It is obvious by now that our planet can’t afford further militarization and warmongering. War costs us the Earth.

See also the GDAMS Appeal 2023.