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The Black Hive is at the heart of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) climate and environmental justice (CEJ) efforts. We are a cohort of Black CEJ experts who use our collective experience and knowledge to assess how climate change and ecological destruction impact Black communities in the U.S. and across the Global Black Diaspora. Together, we organize for cleaner, better, and safer futures for Black lives.

COP30 Statement
The Black Climate mandate

THE BLACK CLIMATE MANDATE

CLIMATE CRISIS

The Climate Crisis is NOW.

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HEALTH

(Right to Breather)
Health is a human right.

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LAND

Free the land.

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WATER

Water is life.

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ENERGY

Energy is essential.

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LABOR

No human is replaceable.

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ECONOMY

(Climate Reparations)
Black people demand a just transition.

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DEMOCRACY

(People Power)
All power to the people.

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DIASPORIC SOLIDARITY

(Global Black)
We stand in solidarity with the Global Black Diaspora

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DOWNLOAD THE MANDATE

WHO WE ARE

In 2021, M4BL introduced you to our new Black-centered climate and environmental justice initiative: the Red, Black, and Green New Deal. Since then, our climate work has expanded to include the voices of more than 200 organizations representing Black climate and environmental justice (CEJ) leaders, organizers, advocates, and strategists from every region in the United States and Global Black Diaspora.

 

M4BL’s climate initiative, the Black Hive, is remixing and reintroducing our Black Climate Mandate, which recommends, among many things, investing in equitable climate solutions that center Black communities’ concerns. It outlines the urgency for a Black climate agenda and investment in transformative strategies that protect Black people

OUR HISTORY

In 2021, M4BL launched the Red, Black, and Green New Deal, which has now expanded beyond this policy platform into the newly launched climate-change and environmental-justice collective , the Black Hive. The Red, Black, and Green New Deal is our blueprint for a sustainable, renewable future in defense of Black lives, and promotes rigorous and urgent legislative action toward climate and environmental justice (CEJ), in addition to holding policy makers accountable.

 

In 2022, the Black Hive recently set forth an updated Black Climate Mandate, which protects not only Black communities, but all communities in the U.S., and outlines the urgency and need for us to take action before we are locked into 1.5 climate change and its devastating and deadly impacts. Our mandate calls for dismantling the status quo and investing NGO and government resources in transformative climate-change strategies that protect the most marginalized in society.

The Climate Crisis is NOW. So we start here, at this moment in our collective human history that cannot be denied, silenced, or forgotten. Extreme weather events are the new normal for the world and directly impact Black communities the most. Our planet’s climate is experiencing human-accelerated change that threatens all life on Earth. It threatens our physical health, mental health, air, quality, water access, food systems, and shelter, and is destroying the land that feeds our communities. Climate change impacts us all, but it affects some of us much more than others.

Between extreme weather events, floods, and global forest fires, we are collectively being exposed to the vulnerabilities in our infrastructure and our lack of governmental preparedness for this new climate reality. Extreme weather events that used to occur once in a lifetime are now happening annually. They consistently reveal how generations of structural discrimination have placed Black communities at the greatest risk. No one should fear physical violence or imprisonment while fleeing a hurricane or a fire. As long as prisons continue to exist, safe evacuation and medical care must be mandatory for incarcerated people during climate-related extreme weather events. Unless we take drastic measures, these kinds of events will continue to devastate our communities, who are already under siege. Our call for CEJ demands more than just a new global governmental response that protects and serves the people. We call for a response that places power into the people’s hands, rather than serving up our lives to the biggest profiteers and polluters.
  • Resources for Black-led agencies, nonprofits, cooperatives, community groups, and Black-owned businesses prioritizing climate preparation, adaptation, alternatives, and mitigation in Black communities
  • Recognition that systemic racism and violence have severely reduced the number of Black-led institutions; for this reason, governments and international bodies must make universally public options available to finance climate mitigation and adaptation, and distribute funds/implement policies in a manner that builds wealth and self-sufficiency for Black communities on the frontlines of climate change
  • Enactment of local, statewide assessments of the vulnerability of Black communities to the impacts of extreme weather or other climate‐related events and environmental risks
  • Healthcare for all as a part of climate disaster mitigation, adaptation efforts, alternatives, and solutions; climate change and toxic pollution are increasingly making us sick, and expanding the care economy will also create many new good, green jobs to transition away from polluting industries
  • No more adaptation apartheid—all governmental agencies across the globe funding disaster responses must establish and adhere to clear equity standards and CEJ guidelines for funding both disaster recovery and pre-disaster mitigation programs; Black homes, communities, and businesses can no longer be passed over for loans and grants from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
  • An update to all policies and mitigation strategies addressing managed retreat related to sea-level rise and extreme weather, from a clear equity standpoint that considers the history of racist urban planning and ongoing climate gentrification
  • Legal migration and property protections, and just funding for those forcibly relocating due to the impacts of extreme weather events, paired with incentives to transform receiving communities into inclusive and sustainable societies
  • Implementation of an inquiry into the historic devaluation of Black-owned land linked to the National Flood Insurance Program, which encouraged “buy-outs” and relocation of Black families and communities
  • Divestment from carceral and police responses to climate disasters and investment in alternative emergency care
  • Creation of alternative emergency-response systems, divorced from police and military services, to respond to climate disasters
  • Cessation of use of unpaid incarcerated labor to fight wildfires, and removal of all barriers for the formerly incarcerated to find meaningful work fighting climate disasters moving forward
  • A guarantee that Black renters are not wrongfully displaced after an extreme weather event, without adequate compensation by flood or resettlement programs; this compensation must also factor in health, education, and healing

 

 “We also need to focus on social solutions . . . educating girls and young women is the sixth most powerful climate solution we have. As women are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis, educating girls equips them with the tools they need to address the environmental challenges they’re facing. . . . We need to get behind solutions that we know will work and that will work right now. . . . My hope lies in the millions of young people who are speaking up and demanding action. Let’s continue doing that, because I know we will win.”
— Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan Climate and Environmental Justice Activist and Founder of Rise Up Climate Movement

 
 

RIGHT TO BREATHE

Health is a human right. Black people continue to die because we can’t breathe—our breath is snuffed out by racist systems and police, and our air is polluted by corporations and the politicians who line their pockets with profit. From over-policing; to food apartheid; to toxic air, water and soil—the intentional targeting and devaluing of Black communities must stop. No longer will we tolerate sacrificing Black lives for white profit and comfort. 

“I can’t breathe” has become a rallying call from the streets for ending the recurring violence and death at the hands of police in Black communities. These were also some of the final words spoken by Eric Garner and resonate deeply, as our communities also cry out at the impacts this climate crisis is having on the air we breathe. We call out the constant corporate violence from extractive and polluting industries that prey on Black communities. From Lousina’s Cancer Alley to Flint, Michigan’s ongoing water crisis; from St. Louis to central Nigeria; from Sierra Leone to the Caribbean; to Richmond, California’s Chevron oil refinery; to all the communities across the Global Black Diaspora that are overburdened by extraction and pollution—we demand climate and environmental justice, as well as health equity for all Black communities. No longer will we accept the continued pollution of our environments, depletion of our clean air, and lawless law enforcement.

  • An end to the poisoning of Black communities for the fossil-fuel industry’s profits, and an end to toxic infrastructure, such as oil and gas pipelines that leak cancer-causing chemicals and damage our bodies
  • A global ban on fracking, which is linked to heart attacks, respiratory illness, and adverse birth outcomes.; no new fossil-fuel leases; an end to all fossil-fuel subsidies in the U.S. and across the globe; no more tax dollars spent on polluting our people
  • Paid restitution by polluting companies for the generations of public-health damage they have inflicted upon Black communities
  • A moratorium on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which pollute our air and water and lead to increased asthma and lung-disease rates 
  • An end to the deforestation of forests for industrial farming and production
  • An end to industrial waste discharge that contaminates our drinking water, our land, and the air we breathe
  • Prioritization of whole-home retrofits for single and multi-family homes and public housing units in Black communities; these retrofits will remove toxic materials such as lead and indoor mold, weatherize units to increase resilience to extreme heat and cold, and electrify homes and household appliances in order to end reliance on poisonous natural gas that kills millions every year through indoor air pollution 
  • Access to trees, green spaces, and nature for Black communities; through intentional design, the places where Black communities live are on average 5 degrees hotter than white ones—Black communities can and must become sustainable, walkable, resilient, green spaces
  • No more false solutions that continue to pollute Black communities, such as carbon trading, nuclear energy that creates nuclear waste, liquified natural gas, and carbon capture storage that risks poisoning Black communities through CO₂ leaks—all of which prolong the life of the fossil-fuel industry
 

Free the land. Land is tied to our existence, dignity, and the survival of Black communities. Land provides for Black communities with nourishment, housing, and healing. As a reparative measure, Black-owned land is a legacy taken in tandem with our stolen labor and hundreds of years of skilled, caring, and successful stewardship. Land determines the destinies of our communities—and our right to access and steward unspoiled, untainted, and restored land sets the conditions for all other access rights.  

We believe in the reclamation of Black people’s stewardship of the land. As we  reimagine land use in a climate crisis, we will rebuild a multigenerational and restorative approach to agriculture.

There must be a schedule for divestment from activities that conflict with restorative and regenerative land practices. We demand national investment in Black stewardship aligned with an acknowledgment of Indigenous ways and practices. The solution is collective, and community control over land use and preservation distribution, while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous family, is our sacred duty. We intend to maintain and strengthen this relationship with the land for the benefit of our future generations. 

  • Unspoiled land allotment as reparations for Black communities, with multigenerational lifetime rights to steward the land
  • The established right to land that is free of toxic chemicals and pesticides from the U.S. government to Black people
  • Multigenerational lifetime stewardship programs for restorative agricultural cooperatives, debt forgiveness for predatory land loss, and land redistribution via community land trusts, all accompanied by a legal guarantee of viable land 
  • An end to all foreclosures and seizures of Black land
  • Federal funding for a national network of Black community land trusts
  • An accounting of government-sanctioned takings and eminent domain proceedings, to determine the generational impact of corporate land grabs as a strategy to alienate historically Black-owned land 
  • Universal basic income for Black land stewards engaged in practices that promote climate mitigation, climate adaptation, healing, and alternatives
  • Safe passage and border crossings for climate migrants, with no imprisonment in prisons or detention facilities
  • A moratorium on deforestation or other extractive land development for the creation of prisons, immigration detention facilities, and institutions
  • Establishment of rights for domestic climate refugees, along with resources and funding for displaced Black communities who have experienced the impacts of the climate crisis
  • Dedicated dollars and programs within Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other agencies, with at least 40% of federal dollars set aside to protect public housing and low-income neighborhoods situated on the “high ground,” to defend against extreme weather events
  • Fully resourced and culturally competent research to address the influence of property-led urban growth strategies on creating and exacerbating the modern affordable housing crisis, in the midst of climate emergency
  • A national mandate to retain and protect forests and wetlands that buffer and stabilize Black communities, and to restore riparian rights for the same 
  • Restoration and protection of more than two million acres of coastal wetlands by 2030, to sequester carbon emissions and reduce coastal flooding
  • Establishment of priorities within the U.S. Department of Agriculture for healthy, culturally relevant food production and distribution in Black communities 
  • Culturally significant, health-promoting food in schools, hospitals, prisons, and care facilities
  • The creation of a Forest Carbon Reserve System to significantly address the climate crisis by safeguarding existing vast carbon stores and increasing biological carbon sequestration in forests
  • A  schedule for divestment from practices that conflict with restorative and regenerative land practices 
  • National investment in Black stewardship aligned with an acknowledgment of Indigenous ways and practices 
  • Collective and community control over land use and preservation distribution 
  • Unspoiled land allotment as reparations for Black communities, with multigenerational lifetime rights to steward the land
  • The established right to land that is free of toxic chemicals and pesticides from the U.S. government to Black people
  • Multigenerational lifetime stewardship programs for restorative agricultural cooperatives, debt forgiveness for predatory land loss, and land redistribution via community land trusts, all accompanied by a legal guarantee of viable land 
  • An end to all foreclosures and seizures of Black land
  • Federal funding for a national network of Black community land trusts
  • An accounting of government-sanctioned takings and eminent domain proceedings, to determine the generational impact of corporate land grabs as a strategy to alienate historically Black-owned land 
  • Universal basic income for Black land stewards engaged in practices that promote climate mitigation, climate adaptation, healing, and alternatives
  • Safe passage and border crossings for climate migrants, with no imprisonment in prisons or detention facilities
  • A moratorium on deforestation or other extractive land development for the creation of prisons, immigration detention facilities, and institutions
  • Establishment of rights for domestic climate refugees, along with resources and funding for displaced Black communities who have experienced the impacts of the climate crisis
  • Dedicated dollars and programs within Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other agencies, with at least 40% of federal dollars set aside to protect public housing and low-income neighborhoods situated on the “high ground,” to defend against extreme weather events
  • Fully resourced and culturally competent research to address the influence of property-led urban growth strategies on creating and exacerbating the modern affordable housing crisis, in the midst of climate emergency
  • A national mandate to retain and protect forests and wetlands that buffer and stabilize Black communities, and to restore riparian rights for the same 
  • Restoration and protection of more than two million acres of coastal wetlands by 2030, to sequester carbon emissions and reduce coastal flooding
  • Establishment of priorities within the U.S. Department of Agriculture for healthy, culturally relevant food production and distribution in Black communities 
  • Culturally significant, health-promoting food in schools, hospitals, prisons, and care facilities
  • The creation of a Forest Carbon Reserve System to significantly address the climate crisis by safeguarding existing vast carbon stores and increasing biological carbon sequestration in forests
  • A  schedule for divestment from practices that conflict with restorative and regenerative land practices 
  • National investment in Black stewardship aligned with an acknowledgment of Indigenous ways and practices 
  • Collective and community control over land use and preservation distribution 

Water is life. And yet, it is arguably the most controversial issue surrounding the global impact of climate on Black lives. As the planet warms, sea levels are rising—resulting in disappearing land and a loss of our ability to grow enough food. And while some places are dealing with too much water, others are experiencing drought conditions, while still others do not have access to clean or safe water. 

Corporations now treat water as a commodity, privatizing and generating profits for shareholders. It is, in fact, freely provided by the planet, and all humans and plants need it to survive. 

For generations, governments have failed to invest in  the necessary infrastructure to provide clean and safe water—especially in Black communities. As new conditions are created by global temperature shifts and rising populations, we must ensure our human right to clean water and sanitation.

There must be protections for Black communities historically marginalized by environmental racism that will provide equitable protections and enable us to build toward a safe and sustainable future. Governments and corporations must be held liable for the deaths on their hands, and provide reparations for the historical harm done, all while acknowledging that water is a human right. They must return water to communities, so it can be a publicly managed resource. 

  • A U.S. national ban on selling off control of municipal water systems to private corporations, including through design, building, and operation 
  • Closed loopholes for the commodification and private prioritization of water, oil, gas production, and aqua ecology vital to the environment
  • Immediate replacement of all lead pipes and lead paint contaminating Black communities 
  • Enshrinement of our human right to clean water and sanitation by making it a health and safety right
  • Investment in universal access to untainted ground water and coastal water systems 
  • Establishment and activation of a national emergency water assistance in priority disaster areas, effectively putting an end to the environmentally racist and unjust practice that prioritizes private access during emergencies, which denies Black communities any decision-making power or agency
  • An immediate end to deepwater fracking and drilling, a ban on all new fossil-fuel drilling and fracking, protection of marine habitats, an expansion of marine-protected areas, restoration of vulnerable marine ecosystems, and investment in the protection and repair of fisheries
 
 

Energy is essential. Specifically, energy that is renewable, reliable, affordable, and universally accessible. We affirm that water, health, human dignity, and the ability to engage in meaningful work are all interconnected with energy in modern life. We urgently need energy justice that empowers self-sufficiency for communities and relies on non-extractive energy sources. Oil, gas, coal, and other forms of extractive energy have caused unmitigated harm to our communities around the world. As society relies more on technology, energy is essential and is still not equitably provided to many communities, exacerbating poverty and inequality. There are so many sources of clean energy that doesn’t harm, pollute or kill—energy that can be generated by the planet, not extracted from it. Fossil fuels have created this climate crisis. The time to stop our reliance on them is now. We must individually and collectively do our part to end our reliance on and change our consumption of fossil fuels, before it’s too late.

  • A schedule for cessation of coal, oil, and gas aligned with the Treaty for Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation and its global registry
  • A U.S. national ban on all new domestic oil and gas drilling; those enforcing this ban must be accountable to Black communities for loss and damage, domestically and globally
  • Governmental divestment from the mining, fossil-fuel, and fuel-agribusiness industries, which are responsible for fomenting climate change 
  • An end to government funding for false solutions, such as carbon capture storage, blue and gray hydrogen, nuclear, wood pellets, solid waste, geoengineering, construction, and demolition debris—these energy sources are harmful to Black communities and must be excluded from the world’s energy transition
  • Total ban on new fracked gas—we must decouple energy production from extractive wholesale and retail industry practice 
  • Total ban on new oil or gas pipelines, no new export terminals, and the end to excuses for not moving society to sustainable, safe energy sources when they already exist. 
  • Proportional funding and finance for justly sourced, non-polluting, sustainable, non-hazardous renewable energy that is cooperatively and community-owned
  • Equitable support for Black nonprofit businesses that research, develop, and distribute clean energy
  • Equitable restructuring of utility regulation and removal of utility monopolies in favor of public-owned utilities and decentralized systems to provide sustainable, affordable energy access for all
  • Federally backed incentives to community control of local energy resources that are decentralized, collectively governed, climate-resilient, and modern
  • Payments by the U.S., as promised to the Global South in Paris Climate Accords and other global agreements aligned with outstanding commitments and in acknowledgment  of the continuing harm of U.S. energy consumption
  • Proportional investment in Black-led innovation, resources for CEJ funding through community-led nonprofit organizations, community-based financial institutions, certified community development financial institutions, low-income credit unions, minority depository institutions (MDIs), and depository institutions for the rapid deployment of low- and zero-emission products, technologies, and activities—energy must be affordable and available to all
  • Support for Black community energy-justice solutions in the U.S. and the Global Black Diaspora, in the form of direct grants rather than loans or colonial aid—funding must solely support renewable solutions such as wind, solar, and geothermal
  • An end to U.S. imperialism—the U.S. military is the largest polluter in the world and must withdraw its nearly 600 military bases, which produce unchecked pollution and unconstitutional violence in Black communities around the Global Black Diaspora; it must also withdraw from its colonial holdings, such as Guam and Puerto Rico; further, it must take responsibility for full life-cycle pollution cleanup and remediation, and provide comprehensive healthcare compensation for affected populations

No human is replaceable. The U.S. economy was built on the unpaid, enslaved, and forced labor of Black people. The globalized economic system is rooted in the exploitation of labor from the Global Black Diaspora, and has only benefited the white and wealthy few. Constant productivity is not sustainable for any worker, nor for the planet. An economy built on care and sustainability means prioritizing health, rest, joy, and purpose for all workers—and it means rejecting extractivism, and slave and manual labor, which harm our bodies, mental health, and communities.

Our global economy was built upon the colonialist frameworks of oppression and subjugation, and is maintained by exploited domestic workers, caretakers, teachers, manufacturers, miners, nurses, sex workers, and other underpaid and underappreciated labor roles. There must be dignity, pride, and just compensation for all labor roles. 

Healthy working conditions—with living wages, restorative health benefits, and culturally relevant healing support—are needed to repair hundreds of years of generational harm. Workers’ rights, rooted in a Black queer feminist framework that centers CEJ at its heart, is the only way we can work our way out of this climate crisis.  

  • Reformed policies and programs to support individuals working in traditional care; and manufacturing and labor roles with life-affirming support structures, such as paid family leave, holistic health care, liveable wages, retirement plans and vacation days, universal childcare, and the right to organize 
  • Formal recognition of the care economy and this workforce, with quantifiable value and compensation via universal basic income as a recognition of their economic contributions to society 
  • Immediate end to corporate reliance on and use of carceral labor as modern slave labor  
  • Proportional investment in impacted workers and support for upgrading the broken infrastructure to a sustainable and clean system inclusive of equitable hiring processes and contracting opportunities for Black workers; healing support for all workers harmed by unfit work conditions  
  • A guarantee that all coal, oil, and gas workers be given at least five years of wages taken from shareholder profits, to support them in job retraining opportunities, insurance coverage, pension support, early retirement offerings, healing, and priority placement in alternative-energy jobs

CLIMATE REPARATIONS

Black people demand a just transition. The underlying philosophy of the global economic system is extraction and exploitation in pursuit of profit. This includes the kidnapping and enslavement of Black people from Africa, and hundreds of years of our unpaid labor, as well as rampant colonialism and postcolonial capitalism. The U.S. is also founded on the exploitation of immigrant labor—a practice that our global economy still depends on today. The U.S. and Global North are responsible for building a system that violently takes and makes profit for the few, without repair, reparations or support in healing from these atrocities for the many. This system has pushed us into a global climate emergency that presents immense challenges that our generation must solve. But beyond that, we have arrived at the make-it-or-break-it moment, in which everyone must act collectively to transform our world on behalf of our connected global humanity and survival.

Over the past 400 years, since the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and accelerated by the Industrial Revolution, we have been pushing our planet toward the edge of the cliff. Globally, we are in such deep debt, pain, and conflict, yet so little of it is created by Black people. The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population continue to pursue increasingly consolidated wealth and power at the top. Meanwhile, 80% of our people are starving, dying, and struggling to feed their families. Reparations are one way we can generate economies and build wealth in ways that don’t harm our communities, but rather, strengthen and heal our people and land. 

Now is the time to reverse the generational tide of the extractive economy and to replace it with restorative reinvestment in Black communities toward the next generation of non-extractive finance, living-wage jobs, and sustainable infrastructure. A transformation of our economy is the basic level of what is required to ensure equity across different types of labor and throughout the globe.

Climate reparations for Black people require truth, reconciliation, and alignment with the following demands.

  • A just transition from extractive economies toward a sustainable future 
  • The immediate cessation of environmental and related economic harm, the restoration of land, and investment in Black communities, with proportional  investment of capital stolen from Black labor compounded with interest 
  • Establishment of easily accessible resources for cultural healing of trauma impacts to Black physical and mental health
  • Black community control over preservation of natural resources, while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous family
  • Access to and control of food production sources, adequate and climate-resilient housing, restored and healthy land, clean air, and clean water for Black communities 
  • Restorative, retroactive, and enforced environmental legislation that protects Black health in this new climate reality
  • Acknowledgment of ongoing harm from the perpetrators to the victims  
  • Reparation for stolen land and labor—Indigenous land must be returned to Indigenous peoples; the vast amounts of wealth extracted from Black communities and Black labor must be paid by the companies, institutions, and governments that benefited from generations of unpaid labor and profit 
  • Direct financial compensation in the form of money and real investments in community development, education, workforce opportunities, and trauma-informed services; as well as further enactment of debt cancellation  for Black people from the Global South to the Gulf South
  • Rehabilitation for Black communities, beginning with taking stock of the harm in our bodies from wage theft, physical and emotional abuse, systems of toxic exposure, sacrifice zoning, and underinvestment; subsequently addressing that harm through free training, therapy, decarceration, and support, which will mean spending more money on community investments rather than militarization through police, incarceration, and weapons
  • Satisfaction of economic and civic disenfranchisement;  a guarantee and an enforceable promise from polluting industries and our government to use the full force of law to stop the harm and keep slavery, Jim Crow, unequal access to social programs, and state-sanctioned violence from being used against our community ever again
  • Tangible support from the U.S. and Global North, in the form of actions to secure loss-and-damages  (climate reparations) funding from the wealthiest nations through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); as the world’s largest historical perpetrators of climate harms, the U.S. and Global North must cease interference and delay, and make good on their obligation to advocate and demonstrate  support for the Global South’s demands for climate reparations—which, like reparations for slavery and colonialism, must be addressed through tangible financing rather than any false promises of loans, aid, dialogues, or forums
 

All power to the people. The idea of a fair and just government is a vision that has never been a reality, least of all for Black people across the Global Black Diaspora. Although we are told the government was designed to represent and protect its citizens, Black people experience the opposite far too often. This is especially true when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. In order to meet the urgency of the climate crisis, we need an equitable  system that prioritizes our civil, environmental, and human rights. This includes the right to civic space, community ownership, and civil disobedience.

The climate crisis threatens our vision for people power and our future existence. We must build alternatives to our current economic and political systems and uproot  neoliberalism and white supremacy. A Black queer feminist praxis and practice will push us toward a world of safety, self-determination, healthy communities, and Global Black Liberation.

  • Public financing of elections and the end of money controlling politics through ending super PACs and unchecked corporate donations.  Eliminate the influence of fossil-fuel corporations, their corporate associations, and profit-driven groups in elections; our governments must follow the will of the people, and not the polluters and profiteers influencing politicians
  • An end to the vicious attacks and murders of frontline CEJ activists in the U.S. and in all countries
  • Repair of the harms from regressive and violent policies that continue to harm our planet and people 
  • Legal recognition and protection of the Rights of Nature doctrine
  • That  D.C. be the 51st state, as D.C. statehood is a necessary component of ending the modern-day disenfranchisement of Black Americans and rebalancing political power toward CEJ 
  • Expansion of the right to vote and an end to voter suppression of Black people; establish election protection, electoral expansion, and the right to vote for all people, including: full access, guarantees, and protections of the right to vote for all people through universal voter registration, automatic voter registration, pre-registration for 16-year-olds, same-day voter registration, voting-day holidays, online voter registration, enfranchisement of formerly and presently incarcerated people, local and state resident voting for undocumented people, and a ban on any disenfranchisement laws
  • An end to or significant weakening of the power of the U.S. Senate, which has continually served as a barrier to progress and a friend to entrenched white supremacist power from the days of slavery, to Jim Crow, to the civil-rights era to the 21st century—as it frequently stands in the way of both democratic reform and truly ambitious CEJ policies 
  • The end of international funded wars and military conflicts, driven by profit and the greed of corporations, that pollute the environment, fuel climate change, and undermine peace and human rights globally 
  • An end to U.S. interference with democracy in the Global Black Diaspora—the U.S.’s repeated coups and covert actions have toppled democratically elected leaders who would have materially benefited Black communities across the Global Black Diaspora 

We stand in solidarity with the entire Global Black Diaspora. In this fight for climate and environmental justice, we are in a position to address the climate crisis internationally—to work together, undoing the damage done to our communities by colonialists and corporations. The climate crisis knows no borders and continues to have devastating and deadly impacts. Lackluster, white-led NGO efforts at climate mitigation have sent the world on a trajectory for an extinction-level event. As Global Black communities, we have been land stewards for millennia. We are calling for solutions that include rematriation; open borders for climate migration; reparations; and bringing an end to false, technocratic solutions that rely on markets and profit rather than community agency and stewardship.

We must adjust to this reality immediately if the human species has any chance at adaptation and surviving. We will do this by advancing toward greater ecosystems of care, community organizing, and building alternatives, while calling for  tangible and bold changes to the current system in which we exist.

We build upon a Black queer feminist, pan-African political framework, and honor the Black radical traditions of our ancestors and elders, who have, for generations before us, shared strategy, and built solidarity and wins against colonial and corporate powers across borders. Forwards ever, Backwards never.

  • The cancellation of all international debt and support for Black communities in the form of reparations from colonial governments and corporations that have created the mess in which we live
  • Climate migrant visas for all Black people from the Global Black Diaspora crossing any border, and protections from incarceration, detention, and abuse at the hands of federal and state forces
  • The cessation of all global oil and gas exploration and development, including a boycott of all banks, insurance companies, and asset management companies that fund or make profit from extractive projects
  • An end to the export of all plastic waste to poor countries and the dumping of toxic energy outputs into water systems across the Global Black Diaspora
  • Reparations for all Global Black Diaspora and African nations still dealing with the devastating impacts of colonialism and post-colonialism
  • The United States and Global North Nations must throw tangible support behind actions to secure Loss & Damages (climate reparations) funding from the wealthiest nations through the UNFCCC. Climate reparations, like reparations for slavery and colonialism, must be addressed through tangible financing rather than any false promises of loans, aid, dialogues, or forums for all Global Black Nations
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Movement 4 Black Lives Inc is an independent 501(c3) organization, EIN. 88-4261393