[3 December 2011] Thousands of people from around the world hit the streets of Durban, South Africa to protest the UN Climate Conference of Polluters. It was an amazing, vibrant and energetic march of people standing up to the chronic inaction of the UN Climate Conference (COP17). The slogan at the COP was “Never trust a COPeration.”

Photo Essay by Orin Langelle/Global Justice Ecology Project and Anne Petermann/Global Justice Ecology Project-Global Forest Coalition.

Note: This was the last time that Global Justice Ecology Project attended a UN Climate Conference. GJEP had attended every climate COP since COP10 in Buenos Aires, meeting with climate justice activists and doing media and communications work for Indigenous Peoples, frontline community representatives and climate justice organizations. During the second week of the climate COP in Durban, GJEP Executive Director, Anne Petermann and GJEP Youth delegate, Keith Brunner were permanently banned from this and all subsequent climate COPs for participating in a youth occupation and refusing to leave when security demanded it, instead sitting down in an act of civil disobedience. Petermann wrote about the incident for GJEP’s blog Climate Connections. You can read her post here.