DURHAM, United Kingdom — Global Citizen, one of the world’s most prominent advocacy organizations, together with the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, announced the launch of its global campaign, Power Our Planet, during its Global Citizen NOW action summit on April 27, 2023, showing the true power of advocacy.
Many influential figures support the campaign which aims to call world leaders to act in increasing financial support for developing countries. Some of them include French President Emmanuel Macron, Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, President of Timor-Leste, Jose Ramos-Horta and Biman Prasad, the Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji.
Tess Lowery at the Global Citizen said of the campaign, “…it’s about shaking up the status quo and the systems that simply aren’t working for all.”
What is the Power Our Planet Campaign?
According to Global Citizen, its brand-new campaign aims to provide financial aid to the world’s poorest countries, so that it can invest in developing long-term solutions to the impacts of the changing climate. The organization said on its website, “The world’s most vulnerable countries and people contribute the least to climate change, and yet are impacted the most by it.”
This is because the world’s poorest lack the resources necessary to combat a change in climate, often a product of the economic activities of the most affluent states. For example, starvation in some African countries is largely due to “drought-induced famine” while small island nations such as Tuvalu are even turning to the digital metaverse in order to preserve their cultural heritage, as rising sea levels threaten to wipe out their territory.
The Power Our Planet campaign revolves around three targets: to keep rich countries to their promises of increasing financial aid, incite development banks like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to improve their policies to increase their funding capacities and encourage the world’s largest polluters to commit to achieving net zero carbon emissions.
The Power of Advocacy: the NOW Action Summit
The key to achieving these lofty goals lies in the power of advocacy. Global Citizen encourages its supporters to lobby their leaders through means such as petitions, Twitter and email. To facilitate greater, immediate discussion, it held a Global Citizen NOW action summit which directly allowed these leaders to connect with these lobbying voices.
In Global Citizen’s second annual NOW summit, which took place over two days in late April, 2023, a variety of speakers came forward to celebrate current global milestones in the fight to end poverty, while also calling for the need for more to be done. To inspire courage and hope in the ability to achieve such lofty goals, Global Citizen CEO and co-founder Hugh Evans announced in the summit’s opening panel that the organization raised $43 billion and as a result, it impacted 1.3 billion lives. He sent a powerful message to the listening world leaders: if the efforts of one ordinary man could produce such a great change in the fight against poverty, so could they.
This is why Power Our Planet is targeting the most powerful people in the world: world leaders, philanthropists, private sector leaders and multilateral development banks. It truly believes in the power of advocacy to enact real social change. And already, apart from having garnered the support of five world leaders, Power Our Planet has also received support from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.N..
Fight to End Global Poverty
Power Our Planet’s ambitions and the NOW action summit are clear signs of the power of advocacy, that it can truly have an impact on the fight to end global poverty. Even the briefest email, simplest phone call or Tweet, lets the world’s most powerful people know that poverty is a great cause for concern amongst their constituents. Lastly, by encouraging world leaders to take up ethics of hope and belief in the power of the simplest actions, they will come to realize the dear value of their financial aid.
– Tiffany Chan
Photo: Flickr