The Stockholm +50 Coalition tackles the intertwined crises of defunct development models, environment, climate, peace, health and global injustice
Now is the time to build unprecedented power for systems change across movements and issues
Join civil society and social movement mobilisation for environment and global justice, before and during the 50-year anniversary of the first UN environment conference in June 2022
Overview of Stockholm +50 days
For information about the formal UN Stockholm +50 conference see www.stockholm50.global!
Issues, themes and demands
The Stockholm +50 Coalition invites movements across issues, sectors and geographies to strategise and take action together. The following areas provide an indication of the kinds of issues and demands that unite us.
ADVANCE
Visions of Equitable Societies with Well-being for All
Replace outdated growth-obsessed development models that put profit before people. Envision 100% renewable energy, food, forest, transportation and other systems that are people-centred and environmentally sound.
SET
Equity and Global Justice at the Core of All Actions
Repay colonial and climate debts. Ensure just transitions across all sectors, fulfil past promises and commitments, and vastly scale up public financing from the Global North to the Global South. Advance genuine, participatory democracy and challenge dominance and any abuse of power.
TACKLE
The Root Causes of Climate Change
Rapidly phase out fossil fuel production with equity, differentiated responsibilities and just transition at heart. Curb over-consumption. Phase out large-scale monoculture farming and stop deforestation. Transition to real zero emissions – reject off-sets, geoengineering, hollow net-zero targets and other dangerous distractions.
UPHOLD
Uncompromisable Rights of People and Nature
Unite in struggles for intersectional justice and the rights of women, workers, indigenous peoples, youth, LGBTQ, people with disabilities and other groups fighting oppression. Fulfil the right to development for all. Respect the Rights of Mother Earth, fight racism, and defend the right to resist environmental and social destruction.
CURB
Corporate Concentration of Power – Replace the Broken Economic System
Break corporate monopolies. Overhaul the global financial architecture, unfair trade rules, patent systems and market obsessions. Assess and ban dangerous technologies. Support the establishment of a UN convention to regulate the activities of transnational corporations.
CUT
Military Spending – Invest in Health and Social Protection
Dismantle the military-industrial complex. Build health and social protection systems that ensure healthy lives in dignity and sufficiency for everyone, everywhere.
Stockholm +50 Coalition Platform Text
Check out this background text that sets some context for the Stockholm +50 Coalition activities. PDF-version here. You can also expand by clicking the banner below.
Click here for background, context and framing of the Stockholm +50 Coalition. This text is evolving .
Intertwined crises
We are facing an unprecedented set of existential crises that threaten human societies and many of the planet’s ecosystems. In this context, we welcome the Stockholm +50 UN conference on a healthy planet with prosperity for all. We share this vision, but recognize the need to go much further than governments are ready to do.
Many human societies have been faced with overwhelming ecological, social, political, economic and war related challenges. Sometime these where possible to overcome, while other times they resulted in collapse. We have much to learn from the catastrophes and exploitations that many indigenous peoples, cultures, ethnic groups and colonized areas and discriminated groups have suffered, and are still confronting.
Humanity now faces a situation where several accelerating, destructive processes undermine the very core functions of our climate and biosphere. Uncountable ecosystems are at risk. We risk making the planet unhabitable for humans.
The impacts of the climate crisis, species extinction, arms races/militarisation and global injustices all impact people in vastly different ways. Wealthy people who have caused the problems are much less affected than those who play little or no role in creating the problems (also blatantly clear and further exacerbated by the way the Covid pandemic has been managed). This fundamental difference of responsibility and who need to be prioritized is central for how we need to tackle the global environmental and social crises.
Increased spending on militarism, arms races and lack of investments for peace to handle conflicts also lead to less resources for social and ecological transformation. We appeal to all social movements to resist destructive forces at play, and to jointly act for real solutions.
Peoples Forum
The Stockholm +50 Coalition will be organizing the Peoples Forum for Environment and Global Justice in end of May and beginning of June 2022. This Peoples Forum takes place fifty years after the first UN conference on environment and development was held in Stockholm in 1972, which was also the birthplace for the parallel civil society meetings and manifestations that have been held during UN summits ever since. Social movements with strong representation from the global south challenged, critiqued and helped broaden the discourses at the formal meeting – including emphasis on health, social rights and deeper development critique. It laid the ground for independent civil society engagement around UN meetings for half a century to come.
Sweden and Kenya co-host the this year’s formal UN Stockholm +50 conference. At the same time, social movements are planning parallel activities to highlight principles, demands and actions that respond to the depth and seriousness of the crises we are facing – with global justice and challenging of power relations at the core.
Fifty years of international negotiations show that neither states nor market mechanisms are equipped to tackle the intertwined crises we are facing. Rather, we need transformative processes through massively strengthened popular engagement and broad mobilization. We need a combination of resistance against dangerous distractions and false solutions, and a mobilization of people based force for change that foster existing and emerging alternatives that celebrate cultures of peace and cooperation rather than competition.
We may have different views, priorities and motivations for what is most important, and in what order we need to transform our societies. We may also have diverse views on the role and importance of states, markets, entrepreneurship, collective ownership and community power. What is key, however, is to emphasize interconnected root causes and the need for broad and deep systemic change within all societies. As in 1972, a key role of civil society is to expose how discussions and proposals among governments in the formal UN meeting are generally too shallow, and tend to maintain inherently unsustainable and unjust development models. All societies/countries need to transform – there are no “developed” countries.
Ways forward
We need to highlight alternative development visions that spell out real alternatives. The power of large corporations both nationally and internationally must be curbed, and the integrity of the UN system maintained. Short-term profit must be trumped by real alternatives to the current economic order based on precaution, sufficiency, justice, human rights, equality, and respect for nature.
The acute climate and environment crises require a never before seen mobilization and multilateral efforts to stop fossil fuel production and deforestation, paired with collaborative measures and repayments of climate and environmental debt to enable formerly colonized areas to transition to renewable and democratized energy systems, sustainable forestry and agroecological, regenerative food production.
We appeal to all social movements to formulate common approaches grounded in participatory democracy and rejection of all forms of undue power, vested interests and mounting inequalities. To revert current disastrous trajectories, unprecedented numbers of people fighting for their future and more just and sustainable societies need to be mobilized, spanning the very local to global levels. Rage and sorrow over irreversible destruction and threatened futures must be constructively channeled into action that confront power while embracing and celebrating shared quests for global justice, including justice between and within countries and towards future generations.
In these efforts it is important to recognize the vastly different realities faced by people in for example rural and urban areas. The increasing gaps between centre and periphery both between and within countries require resources be taken from privileged areas and militarism towards common needs so that no one is left behind. It is also necessary to deal with gender relations, colonialisim and neocolonialism, imperialism, racism and other asymmetries of power in order to form the necessary alliances to build societies shaped by non-dominance, trust and safety.
We are convinced that the primary force behind such an agenda are peoples’ movements that join struggles with others. We hope our activities around Stockholm +50 can facilitate the coming together of a diversity of movements: environmental movements that see labour rights and social justice as integral to the global climate and ecological crises, farmers and landless peoples’ movements, trade unions, community associations, movements for proper health and housing; human rights, women’s and youth rights, anticolonial and anti-imperialist movements, minority rights, economic justice, indigenous, peace, transition and many other movements.
Stockholm +50 Coalition members
Additional Partners
Arbetsgruppen för Hovings Malmgård – Arbetar för bevarande och upprustning av Hovings Malmgård –byggnad och trädgård
Bergholmstorpets Vänner – Kulturell mötesplats. I föreningen finns ett antal grupper, Kafégruppen, antikvariat, författarkvällar, preppargrupp och odlings- och trädgårdsgruppen.
Cykelfrämjandet – Ideell förening som jobbar för bättre, säkrare och mer attraktiv cykling i Sverige
FNEU – Folkrörelsen Nej till EU Storstockholm – Verkar för att Sverige ska lämna EU.
Folkrörelsernas Konstfrämjande – Konst för alla. Konstfrämjandet är övertygade om bildningens och konstens roll, och vill att alla ska ha tillgång till konst i ett jämlikt samhälle
Friday for Future – En global rörelse som startades av Greta Thunberg skolstrejken för klimatet
Färnebo Folkhögskola – Folkhögskola. för människor som vill lära sig om globala frågor, rättvisa och förändringar
Förbundet för Ekoparken – Paraply organisation som motverka det stora exploateringshot som finns mot områdets natur- och Värnar, Vårdar och Visar Kungliga nationalstadsparken
Grand Panthers – Rädda Klimatet för Barnbarnen
Grandparents For Future – Mor- och farföräldrar för framtiden – med eller utan barnbarn!
Greenpeace Sweden – Beskydda skogar, hav, natur och djur i Sverige
Gretas Gamlingar– Vill knuffa på för att få dagens vuxenvärld att skapa en värld att vara stolt över. Ingår i Friday for Future.
Husbyrådet – Husbybor tillsammans med det lokala föreningslivet vill engagera boende och hitta nya vägar för inflytande och delaktighet i Husby
IKFF – Internationella Kvinnoförbundet för Fred och Frihet – Internationella feministisk fredsorganisation
Klimataktion – Vill hjälpa fler människor till ett meningsfullt och givande engagemang för klimatet
Klimataktion Halmstad – Informerar om klimatförändringarna genom opinionsbildning i Halmstad
Klimataktion Stockholm – Informerar om klimatförändringarna genom opinionsbildning i Stockholm
Klimataktion Uppsala – Informerar om klimatförändringarna genom opinionsbildning i Uppsala
Klimattklubben Uppsala – Ideell förening för klimatengagemang med mål att kunna överlämna ett hållbart samhälle och en välmående planet till nästa generation
Klimatsvaret – CCL Sverige – Skapa den politiska vilja som kan sätta stopp för klimatförändringen.och att stärka våra medlemmars förmåga att utöva sitt personliga och politiska inflytande
Norra Järva Stadsdelsråd – Ett förortsråd för röst och makt åt boende och aktiva i Husby, Akalla och Kista
OI-kommittén – En internationell kommitté för unga kritiska forskare. Folkrörelsestudiegruppen.
Parents For Future – En gräsrotsrörelse som stöttar Fridays For Future och agera för våra barn och barnbarns framtid samt en levande planet
People For Future – Gräsrotsrörelse ochttp://Stockholm+40 Oi-gruppenh ett svar på de ungas skolstrejker för klimatet
Researchers Desk – En ideell organisation och plattform som skapar dialoger mellan forskare/experter och allmänheten, skolor och beslutsfattare på nuvarande hållbarhets- och klimatkris
Rise Up Nepal – En liten ideell organisation som ger utsatta barn en möjlighet att skapa sig en bättre framtid
Skiftet – Skiftet mobilisera människor som förvarar ett rättvist, hållbart och demokratisk Sverige
Södermalmsparkernas Vänner – Värna parker och andra grönområden * värna vattendrag och stränder * verka för bra fritidsmöjligheter utomhus * verka för en hälsosam miljö
Teachers For Future – Syftet är att stötta #fridaysforfuture som startades av Greta Thunberg
WhatNext – Sammakalla möten undersöker nya frågor och alternativa syn på klimat, miljö och utveckling till handling.
Våra Barns Klimat – Föräldrar och andra vuxna organisation som vill lämna över en hållbar värld till våra barn