ICCC Weekly Newsletter

6 min readMay 26, 2021

ICCC Weekly Newsletter

25 May 2021

Young Adults Demand Climate Action, Now!

German court declares the country’s 2019 climate legislation puts more burden on future generations and not enough on the present. Effective climate protection has to be implemented now and not in 10 years when it’ll be too late.

Ever since Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist, stood outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018, with a placard that said, ‘School strike for climate change, the world has begun to realize that the impact of climate change will be disproportionately more on future generations. There is a grudging acknowledgment that the present generation has to sacrifice more to ensure that the future generation is not unduly burdened with the problem.

On April 29, the Constitutional Court in Germany sided with nine young Germans against the German federal government in a case about climate change.

The court agreed the country’s landmark climate legislation, passed in 2019, put too much of a burden on future generations and didn’t take enough responsibility in the present.
“The provisions irreversibly offload major emission reduction burdens onto periods after 2030,” the court ruled, ordering the government to change the legislation.

Many courts have turned out to be receptive to that argument. The first breakthrough came in the Netherlands in 2019, when the Supreme Court ordered the government to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by the end of 2020.

***Young Canadians for climate action***

The attorney representing the young Germans exulted that the verdict recognizes for the first time that freedom must be guaranteed not only here and now, but also intertemporally and globally — that is, across generations and state borders. Germany’s Minister of Economy and Energy Peter Altmaier agreed, calling it “epochal for climate protection and the rights of young people.”

According to a CBC report, the German court’s verdict is a big morale booster to 22 young Canadians who are pursuing a similar case against the Canadian government. The lawsuit is sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust. The suit is intended to force the federal government to adopt more stringent emissions targets.

Globally, young people are awakening to their rights and their future and are not interested in being obedient to their parents' generation. This rebellion is slowly building and transcending to other issues besides climate change.

Young climate activists beat Germany’s government in court (link)

Germany must tighten climate law to protect young people’s future (link)

15 Canadian kids sue their government over climate change (link)

Greta Thunberg profile (link)

Disha Ravi profile (link)

Insight

IMF’s proposal to end the Covid-19 pandemic

By Kristalina Georgieva, Gita Gopinath, & Ruchir Agarwal

Many countries have stepped up in the global fight against the pandemic, as have institutions such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, Gavi (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), the African Union, and others.

Yet, more than a year into the COVID-19 crisis, new cases worldwide are higher than ever. Urgent action is needed to arrest the rising human toll and economic strain.

As the IMF has warned, economic recoveries are diverging dangerously. The disparities will widen further between wealthy countries that have widespread access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, and poorer countries still struggling to inoculate frontline healthcare workers. As of the end of April 2021, less than two percent of Africa’s population had been vaccinated. By contrast, over 40 percent of the population in the United States and over 20 percent in Europe had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

It is well understood that there can be no lasting end to the economic crisis without an end to the health crisis. The pandemic policy is thus economic policy. It is critical for global macroeconomic and financial stability, which makes it of fundamental importance to the IMF and other economic institutions. Ending the pandemic is a solvable problem but requires further coordinated global action.

The latest research by IMF staff analyzes multiple dimensions of the fight against the pandemic and proposes realistic targets to bring the pandemic substantially under control everywhere — and the means to achieve them. Building on the work of other agencies, the proposal aims to:

vaccinate at least 40 percent of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022,
track and insure against downside risks, and
ensure widespread testing and tracing, maintain adequate stocks of therapeutics, and enforce public health measures in places where vaccine coverage is low.

Importantly, the strategy requires not just commitments but upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations, and “at-risk” investment for the world to ensure against downside scenarios.

To read more, click here

An Appeal for India

As a Canadian organization, the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce adheres both in letter and in spirit to Canadian laws and values and supports and respects the cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity of the Canadian society. In the spirit of non-partisanship and accordance with Canadian values of multiculturalism, the ICCC provides a list of organizations that are at present working on raising resources for India to fight the resurgence of Covid-19.

The ICCC encourages its Members and stakeholders to contribute directly to any of these organizations.

Read more: Appeal for India: Updated List of Organizations

Past Program

Oxygen for India