From the lush forests and dry savannahs of Senegal to sacred Indigenous wild rice fields in the Midwest United States, fossil fuel exploration and production cast a polluting shadow over communities, ecosystems, and ancestral territories.
But the tide is turning. People-powered movements for a fossil-free future are gaining unstoppable momentum.
This year, CIEL worked alongside diverse coalitions and frontline communities to hold companies and governments accountable for climate harms and push for a global phaseout of fossil fuels driving the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
On the global stage, at COP28 in Dubai, CIEL played a crucial role in putting the central cause of the climate crisis — fossil fuels — at the center of the international climate negotiations. The massive political momentum we built with movement partners led the majority of the world’s countries to publicly support fossil fuel phaseout.
This momentum strengthened calls for a fast, full, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout — with growing interest in complementary avenues for implementation, such as the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which now counts endorsements from 13 States, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pope, and other influential voices.
Phaseout momentum builds upon a wave that CIEL helped strengthen, including by mobilizing some 75,000 people in the streets of New York City at the UN Climate Ambition Summit. United under the call to #EndFossilFuels, the vibrant crowd sent a powerful and clear message to world leaders: addressing climate change requires ending reliance on fossil fuels and immediately halting the expansion of oil, gas, and coal.
In addition to wins in the courts and the court of public opinion, we are also changing the financial calculus to drive investments away from climate-destructive industries. This included pushing to strengthen the long-awaited climate disclosure rule issued by the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), which, while weaker than hoped, marks an important step toward holding corporations and financiers accountable for their climate impacts and risks.
All of this campaigning is grounded in our support for communities on the front lines fighting oil and gas expansion. In Senegal and the Caribbean, CIEL supported growing local resistance to offshore oil and gas projects, highlighting concerns about the impacts on already-stressed fisheries and fishing-dependent coastal populations to international human rights bodies. In the Great Lakes region in North America and the Great Rift Valley in East Africa, CIEL is using legal tools and communication strategies to amplify local opposition to oil pipelines that would facilitate fossil fuel expansion and entrench dependence on dirty energy, imperiling communities, ecosystems, and the climate.
Whether in the halls of the United Nations or in the homes of community organizers, the momentum to end the era of fossil fuels is palpable.