Tearfund is urging people to write to David Miliband, the Secretary of State for the Environment, ahead of the next UN conference on climate change to take place in Nairobi from 6 to 17 November.
Delegations from 180 countries will come together for the major conference that will focus on determining a strategy to tackle climate change and its consequences.
Stop Climate Chaos, a growing coalition of the UK’s leading environment, development and women’s organisations, activist and faith-based groups, recently announced it is to stage an event called ‘I Count’ in London’s Trafalgar Square on 4 November 2006.
Tearfund and Christian Aid members are expected to join in the event, alongside concerned people from across the country, to ‘be counted’ and to demand politicians take action on climate change.
The event will be part of the wider ‘I Count’ campaign to stop climate chaos, to launch at the beginning of October.
According to Tearfund, people will be travelling to the event from across the UK in ‘ingenious low-carbon ways’.
Ashok Sinha, Director of Stop Climate Chaos, said: “Climate change is affecting us all, now. We urge everyone who is concerned to join us on Saturday 4th November and ‘be counted’. Whether you’re a gardener suffering with unpredictable weather, a parent worried for your child’s future, someone concerned about drought and famine in Africa or a nature-lover watching our native species disappear, ‘I Count’ is an opportunity for us all to come together and make our voices heard.”
Everyone who signs up to the campaign via text message or by logging onto the campaign website (to be launched in October at www.icount.org.uk) will be counted ‘virtually’ on the day. A live counter will clock up those in Trafalgar Square and those who care but couldn’t come.
The ‘I Count’ event precedes the next round of climate change negotiations in Nairobi, Kenya, that start on 6th November.
‘I Count’ campaigners will call on the UK government to provide action for justice in the UK and the world as it takes its place at the negotiating table.
Stop Climate Chaos members include Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Oxfam, People & Planet, RSPB, Tearfund, UNISON, The Wildlife Trusts, National Federation of Women’s Institutes and WWF.