“Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified”
- Mohammed El-Kurd¹

   The world is burning. Extractive industries are devouring our ecosystems, military conflicts are poisoning our land and air², and climate breakdown is accelerating³. The conditions that sustain life on Earth are being systematically destroyed. This is not by accident, but by design: the inevitable outcome of a global system built on fossil capitalism, imperial domination, and endless war.

   Palestine today is a manifestation of the deadly contradictions of the system we live in. Its occupation, dispossession, and resistance reflect the violence inflicted on lands and peoples worldwide. How we perceive Palestine reveals how we perceive each other and the world around us. Recognizing Palestine as a microcosm of global injustice acknowledges that all oppressions are interconnected, and that our collective liberation hinges on solidarity.

   This Manifesto calls for recognizing that climate justice is inseparable from ending occupation, apartheid, genocide, and ecocide. We call for all who fight for justice - be it ecological, social, or political - to come together, resist, and end the system of empires that legitimizes war, sustains exploitation, and plunders our planet.
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   The Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy issues this Manifesto as a map for those who refuse to separate the struggle against occupation from the struggle against climate collapse and global capitalism. It is a tool for mobilising a worldwide movement whose aim is ecological survival and ending colonisation. It speaks to Palestinians first, and to all peoples resisting imperialism, militarism, and extractive capitalism. We must (re-)build a world that moves past the silence, past the passivity, and past the theoretical critiques and epistemic appropriation of resistance⁴. Instead, we must lay down concrete action toward self-governance, social justice, and a climate-safe future.

   This is a rallying cry. A reimagination of a just, rights-based, collective future.

This Manifesto is endorsed by

RECOGNIZE

→THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF OPPRESSION / THE ARCHITECTURE OF EXTRACTION

“It’s crucial to refuse narrowly defined concepts of climate change limited to biogeophysical transformation … because climate change actually results from fossil capitalism that is inseparable from colonial violence.”
- TJ Demos⁵

We must recognise the intertwined roots of today’s climate and ecological crisis as more than just increased emissions or intensifying extreme weather events. Their origins lie in the political-economic system that breaks down life into profit through relentless extraction and exploitation. This system requires a constant source of capital to maintain profits, which necessitates the continued expansion and use of fossil fuels and natural resources. In this system, the Earth and all life forms⁶, especially those in the Global South⁷, are treated as expendable resources to be price-tagged and consumed⁸. This is fossil capitalism, where human and non-human life forms are consumed and destroyed for power and profit. It is borne of colonial violence⁹ and maintained through militarism.

Western colonisation was the ultimate expansion of territorial control in search of new resources to maintain profits. The large-scale land theft and the enslavement of peoples are the foundation of today’s exploitative global economy. It has left humanity with massive amounts of resources, factories, materials, and fossil-fuelled energy, but not for everyone. Today’s system produces and maintains vast disparities in wealth, living conditions, and access to resources. Almost half of the human population lives in conditions of poverty and deprivation, and more than half of those cannot meet basic needs¹⁰.

[Military violence mustn’t remain business as usual, climate justice mustn’t remain business as usual,photo credit: Mahmoud Jamal Makhamreh]

Historically, Western empires have entrenched a racialised global hierarchy that deems some lives worthy and others disposable¹¹. These colonial logics endure in today’s global economy, where “free trade” agreements, structural adjustment programmes, and institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintain extractive relationships between the Global North and South. Each year, some 10 billion tonnes of raw materials are extracted from the Global South to sustain consumption¹² in the North. In exchange for “financial assistance”, the IMF and similar bodies pressure countries to liberalise markets, cut public subsidies, and prioritise exports over local development. These measures deepen dependency and lock nations into a cycle of debt¹³, under-development, and environmental degradation. This economic order essentially renders lives and ecology in the Global South disposable for the purpose of profit in the Global North.¹⁴

[photo credit: Mahmoud Jamal Makhamreh]

We must recognise that Palestine is a modern representation of fossil capitalism’s logic. Palestine makes it abundantly clear that colonisation is ongoing and resource extraction for profit is ever-expanding, all at the expense of the environment and people. Sustained economic inequities, political and military oppression, and global financial complicity¹⁵ have all led to systemic socio-economic deprivation and environmental devastation of Palestine.

Since the Nakba, Palestinians have faced systemic dispossession and economic plundering by Israeli settlers, including the theft of and expulsion from their Indigenous lands. Nearly eight decades of displacement and occupation affect every aspect of remaining Palestinian life. In the Occupied Territories, checkpoints, walls, and barricades physically control Palestinian life and prosperity.¹⁶

The blockade on Gaza since 2007 and the attacks since have decimated Gaza’s economy,¹⁷ culminating in a genocide, ecocide, and scholasticide in a land of 2.3 million Palestinians, 80% of whom are refugees.¹⁸ By most measures, Palestinians in Gaza have systematically worse standards of living compared to Israeli settlers.¹⁹ Since the start of the genocide, almost 1.8 million more Palestinians have fallen into poverty, facing a poverty rate of almost 60%.²⁰

In the Occupied West Bank, a matrix of control tries to destroy life for millions of Palestinians and entrench its programme of colonisation. On the other side of the illegal apartheid walls,²¹ extravagant government subsidies support illegal Israeli settlements,²² and a hyper-modern economy is propped up by tourism, trade in petroleum, and military technology exports.²³

(1) Mohammed El-Kurd, Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal (Haymarket Books, 2025).