[STATEMENT] IMA Statement on International Earth Day

IMA’s (International Migrants Alliance) Statement on International Mother Earth Day

This April 22, 2024, we commemorate International Mother Earth Day, in the midst of "a perfect storm of climate crises, armed conflicts, economic and nature crises that are exacerbating inequality and pushing more people into poverty," according to the World Bank. "For people in developing countries, climate change means skyrocketing food prices, toxic air and polluted water. It leaves countries just one natural disaster away from poverty, forcing parents to pull their children out of school and entire communities to migrate."

For our part, we must point out that this situation is a consequence of the criminal determination of U.S. imperialism to confront the decline of its hegemonic power and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism, through greater financial manipulations, aggressions, wars, blockades and sanctions against all countries and peoples that dare to confront it or that do not submit to its dictates.

The consequences are unleashed on all of humanity and on the ecosystems of the planet we inhabit. Every year, the world loses 10 million hectares of forests; an expanse similar to Iceland. Around one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. And 20 million people are forced to move, to migrate forcibly as a result of this situation every year. According to World Bank studies, climate change could lead to the displacement of 216 million people within their respective countries by 2050, with hotspots of internal migration emerging as early as 2030, spreading and intensifying thereafter.

Ignoring the warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the great capitalist powers continue to postpone the implementation of agreements to reduce global warming, maintaining patterns of production, consumption and energy that bring us closer to the abyss every year. In 2023, the average global temperature was 14.98 degrees Celsius while the warming of the world's oceans also reached a new high. The world is getting dangerously close to the 1.5-degree limit that nearly 200 countries tried to avoid in the Paris Agreement in 2015.  

Far from complying with the financing of the technological changes necessary for developing countries to advance in the energy transition, the capitalist powers engage in wars that not only claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings, but also raise military expenditures to hundreds of billions of dollars.     

It is time for migrants, refugees and displaced people to join our voice and strength to demand and fight for a just, right-based and sustainable economy that puts premium on people and the planet. It is time for us to join the movements that defend waters and territories, as the indigenous peoples, the continental and global platforms and networks for Climate Justice, in defense of Mother Earth and the rights to a Good Life, for all the beings that inhabit it.  

Reference: Manuel Hidalgo, IMA Deputy General Secretary