At a worldwide convening, women climate leaders and parliamentarians offered strategies, solutions, and calls for action to advance a just fossil fuel phaseout

Global— As the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns of the accelerating climate crisis, global women leaders and experts from across continents gathered for the Women’s Momentum Assembly for a Just Fossil Fuel Phaseout, organized by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). The Assembly was held ahead of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, taking place in Colombia, April 28-29, where committed governments will initiate a concrete process towards phasing out coal, oil, and gas.

A recording of the Women’s Momentum Assembly

for a Just Fossil Fuel Phaseout is available here.

Additional press materials covering the Assembly are available here.

Over 1.4 million people have participated in the Assembly through livestreams across various social media and digital platforms to hear speakers present across a series of panels detailing advocacy and action from the frontlines of the climate crisis, policy strategies to phase out fossil fuels, and women’s leadership for a just and equitable global energy and economic transition. 

To open the Assembly, Osprey Orielle Lake, WECAN Executive Director, highlighted the current tenuous political and ecological context: “Even as the climate crisis slips out of the headlines, pushed aside by the churn of political cycles and competing crises, Nature is not waiting. The atmosphere is not pausing. The oceans are not holding back their rise. And communities on the frontlines are not given the luxury of delay. Fossil fuels are not just an energy source. They are the backbone of a fossil fuel economy that has shaped global inequality, financed militarization, reinforced racial and gender hierarchies, made extraction appear inevitable, and justice appear optional. But, justice is not an add-on to the energy transition, it is the transition. We are not only here to end something. We are also here to grow something new together.”

On the first panel, frontline women leaders made presentations about the harms of fossil fuel projects in their communities and territories. From the extraction of oil in the Amazon Rainforest to rising sea levels affecting island nations, fossil fuels are impacting local biodiversity, economies, and communities globally.

Panelists highlighted the threats of ongoing projects like the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a 1,443-kilometer pipeline stretching across Uganda and Tanzania. Patience Nabukalu, a climate and environmental rights activist from Uganda, representing Fridays for Future Uganda & Fridays for Future MAPA – Stop EACOP, spoke about the impacts communities are facing along the pipeline route: “The harm[s] of the fossil fuel industry are not abstract—they are lived realities. These are stories of communities displaced from their land, farmers losing their livelihoods, and families pushed deeper into poverty in the name of development. The East African Crude Pipeline is one of the clearest examples of this injustice...Already over 14,000 people have been physically displaced, and many more have lost access to their livelihoods. This is not just environmental harm, it is a human rights crisis.”

The second panel, “Government Leaders for a Fossil Fuel Phaseout,” convened parliamentarians and government officials to discuss how governments can take concrete action to initiate a fossil fuel phaseout and build the political will needed to transform global energy systems. This panel was co-hosted by the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, Parliamentarians For a Fossil-Free Future, and Women's Earth and Climate Action Network.

Cielo Krisel Lagman, Deputy Minority Leader in the Philippines House of Representatives, and Global Steering Committee member for Asia, Parliamentarians for a Fossil Free Future (ParlFossilFree) Network, detailed legislative proposals for policymakers and urged immediate action: “Our planet is being pushed beyond its limits. With global greenhouse gas concentrations at record highs, the changes we make now will have repercussions for hundreds, potentially thousands, of years. The evidence is undeniable. Fossil fuels are the primary culprit. Our collective voice must now shift from asking why, to determining how. We need a fair, well-managed phaseout that ensures the Global South is not left to carry the burden alone.”

Célia Xakriabá (Xakriabá), Federal Deputy in Brazilian Congress in the State of Minas Gerais, and Co-founder of National Association of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestry (ANMIGA), highlighted the linkages between gender-based violence and extraction of fossil fuels and transition minerals in Brazil and globally: “The environmental agenda needs to be treated as a humanitarian agenda, as well as the violence against women needs to be treated as a humanitarian agenda. Because when they kill a woman, when they kill the land, it is a crime against humanity. We are killing the “today” and the “tomorrow”, and that is future-cide.”

Recent data shows that every 1°C rise in global temperature will lead to a 4.7% increase in violence against women and girls. While discussing a transition away from fossil fuels, speakers reiterated the importance of a rights-based approach to policies and projects.

To close out the Assembly, climate leaders on the final panel offered analysis and directives to advance Just Transition pathways. Panelists highlighted the need to ensure climate justice principles in the transition away from fossil fuels and provided critical updates on civil society efforts leading up to the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.

Mela Chiponda, Executive Director of the SHINE Collab, a feminist network working across Africa and the Global South, called for a reframe on how we think about the energy transition: “The questions we have to be asking ourselves is how we shift the energy system and who defines the transition and who benefits, who bears the cost and what forms of life are centered and erased. Therefore, we need to be challenging the dominant, the technocratic, the extractive model of green transitions, and insist on justice, care and redistribution at every level.”

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation), Founder and Director of the Woven Project, and President of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) based in Canada, shared Indigenous protocols and guidelines for a Just Transition, and how centering Indigenous rights in solutions can address intersecting political and ecological crises: “Indigenous rights are asking and demanding that we re-evaluate how we center our value systems in that interconnection. This will allow us to really reframe our solutions frameworks to be much more broad and to have more respect for our lands and territories and the knowledge systems that we have maintained since Time Immemorial to keep these lands protected.”

Throughout the Assembly, panelists highlighted critical strategies to amplify at the upcoming First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands. This historic convening will take place April 28-29, and catalyze action toward an orderly fossil fuel phaseout, while complimenting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Already, 45 countries are committed to participating in the Conference.

Tzeporah Berman, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, contextualized the momentum leading to the conference in April: “While we're seeing the violence and vulnerability of the fossil fuel system, it's also at a moment when we know that it can be replaced. The majority of fossil fuel uses can be replaced, and in fact, many countries are already doing so. And, I think that while the scarcity and price shocks are devastating, I also think that they are starting to push even more countries into thinking about fossil fuel phaseout, even not from a climate perspective, but from a perspective of recognizing that cleaner, safer energy systems also lead to national security and energy security.”

Yuvelis Natalia Morales Blanco, Member of Alianza Colombia libre de Fracking, shared how grassroots organizations in Colombia are viewing the upcoming conference: “This is a message of hope. Because every single collective struggle that we carry out on behalf of nature is a struggle that requires hope. We here, from Colombia, from this Magdalena river, from this latitude, we want to give you a green light to keep on speaking to go away from fossil fuels. We are also giving a light for the hope to never abandon us. Today, we are fighting against fossil fuels, and you are fighting for life, and all together we are fighting to save nature.”

WECAN will be participating in all Conference activities in Colombia. For more information or interviews leading up to the Conference, please contact katherine@wecaninternational.org.