DEMANDS FOR ECONOMIC
AND ENVIRONMENTAL
JUSTICE

In the pandemic year, people still protested however they could. Many of the year’s protests came as people responded to the impacts of emergency measures on their ability to meet essential needs. In country after country, people left living precariously and in poverty by the pandemic’s economic impacts demanded better support from their governments and an end to corruption. For some, economic disruption forced a reckoning with deeply flawed economic structures, as people resisted plans to restart economies in ways that threatened to impact most adversely on those who already had the least, while doing little to challenge entrenched elite wealth. The harmful consequences of the present economic model were confronted every time people resisted environmentally devastating development projects, and insisted that climate action must come before business as usual. People continued to mobilise in every way possible to keep the climate crisis on the agenda and demand urgent action.