{"id":5109,"date":"2010-04-26T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-25T22:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=5109"},"modified":"2015-02-26T20:04:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T20:04:24","slug":"changing-the-climate-for-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/04\/changing-the-climate-for-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the Climate for Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth\u2014a massive meeting organized by the Bolivian government in response to the resounding failure of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen last year. <\/em><\/p>\n

In a central plaza of the Universidad del Valle in Cochabamba, Bolivia, a small group of men and women are presiding over a beauty competition, of sorts. They\u2019re looking after a half a dozen llamas tethered to the base of a nearby stage, and flashing smiles as people come up to have their pictures taken with the tall, woolly animals. Over the sound system, somebody is describing with loving detail the various ecologically important functions that the llama plays in local agriculture, not to mention providing wool for winter clothing.<\/p>\n

Nearby an impressive solar panel display has been set up by a local NGO called Energ\u00e9tica<\/a>, which supplies electricity to some of the nearby food stands and feeds into the university\u2019s power grid. \u201cOur goal is to bring clean energy to places in the country that have never before received electricity, rural places where they haven\u2019t even ever had light after sundown,\u201d staff engineer Mauricio Richter tells me, describing Energetica\u2019s work, which is funded by both private grants and the Bolivian government. \u201cWe\u2019re here to show that the technology is here, and it\u2019s available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Welcome to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth<\/a>\u2014a massive meeting organized by the Bolivian government in response to the resounding failure of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen last year. The world\u2019s governments were unable to find enough common ground in Copenhagen<\/a> to hash out even a weak treaty to control carbon emissions. News reports largely caricatured developing countries at the talks as pawns in China\u2019s chess match with the United States and Europe. But organizers of this week\u2019s meeting see it differently: Copenhagen entirely ignored the question of climate justice<\/a>\u2014and the debt wealthy nations owe the world for the resources they depleted during their own development.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Copenhagen, in the small meetings dominated by the elites, we witnessed an incredible lack of transparency and a lack of democracy\u2014and a lack of willingness to really engage in the real problems,\u201d Angelica Navarro, Bolivia\u2019s climate negotiator in Copenhagen, told The Progressive<\/em><\/a>. Navarro is Bolivia\u2019s ambassador to Switzerland, but she is back in Cochabamba this week for the World People\u2019s Conference.<\/p>\n

Organizers expect 20,000 people from all over the world at the conference, including government representatives from up to 70 countries and a number of UN agencies. Thus far, the U.S. government hasn\u2019t announced whether it will send any high or even mid-level representatives or observers. A number of big-name U.S. intellectuals, writers, and entertainers are expected to participate<\/a> (including the suddenly de rigeur James Cameron).<\/p>\n

More notable, though, than the bold-face names are the thousands of indigenous Bolivians\u2014decked out in their signature bowler hats and rainbow-colored dresses, jackets and sashes\u2014who are queuing up to participate in sessions on things like climate migration, the pros and cons of the Kyoto Protocol, and the wealth transfers from South to North that are hidden in the carbon-trading arrangements that dominate the North\u2019s climate change discussion.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Colque, a soft-spoken farmer who lives outside of Cochabamba, is among the participants who have been locked out of meetings like the one in Copenhagen. Colque has watched with curiosity and dismay as local droughts have lengthened<\/a> and rainstorms have intensified. At the conference, he\u2019ll participate in the workshops centered around \u201cclimate debt\u201d\u2014the idea that rich countries, whose fossil-fuel driven development paths have stressed the climate most, are morally, politically, and perhaps one day legally bound to finance poorer countries\u2019 preparations for global warming\u2019s impact<\/a>. Scientists predict the most destructive impacts of climate change will be felt in the developing world.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are not that well informed,\u201d says Colque. \u201cWe need people everywhere to know what is happening to the land, to our farms. Of course we want our country to move forward and be able to grow just like the rich countries did.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Copenhagen meetings last year, Colque\u2019s eyewitness accounts of climate change would warrant token mention, at best. They may have been used as a colorful anecdote in a presentation by a high-level NGO. Or perhaps he\u2019d be given space to present them in person at the NGO ghetto, miles away from the main event, out of sight and out of mind at the heavily guarded diplomatic negotiations. This week\u2019s meeting in Cochabamba aims to instead bring experiences and observations like Colque\u2019s to the fore. Organizers say they have prioritized voices and perspectives from indigenous communities and of those who hail from countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t demanding a loan or finance; we\u2019re demanding a repayment of a debt, climate debt,\u201d says Navarro. \u201cReally, what we\u2019re demanding is a responsible way to organize our economies, our trade relationships and finance, that respects their environment, and that doesn\u2019t endanger the rest of the world just because of a greedy few.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, representatives from 17 large economies, including the U.S., met to discuss following through<\/a> on an agreement at Copenhagen that they would provide $30 billion between 2010 and 2012 to help developing countries deal with the sort of floods and droughts Colque has seen. The agreement also outlined a plan for rich countries to invest $100 billion by 2020. The gathering was a precursor to the UN\u2019s annual climate change meeting, which will be held in Cancun, Mexico, later this year.<\/p>\n

Cochabamba seems an unlikely setting for an international meeting of this scale. This dusty city of some half a million people in one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere is not home to any elegant conference centers. It has only a couple of the fancy hotels that are normally requisite for a conference hosting \u201cgovernment representatives from over 70 countries.\u201d But Cochabamba\u2019s symbolic and historic relevance is unmistakable. Ten years ago, the city was home to the \u201cWater Wars<\/a>\u201d\u2014a popular uprising that reversed the privatization of the municipal water company, which had been sold to the California-based Bechtel Corporation, and its accompanying 400 percent rate hike. That victory marked the first time a privatization scheme in a developing country had been undone by popular pressure. And it presented a breaking point, of sorts, from the global assumption that unregulated markets and mass privatizations are inevitable. Cochabamba\u2019s organizers hope the town will now host a similar break in global thinking on climate change.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Joseph Huff-Hannon is an independent writer and producer, a 2008 finalist in the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and a recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.<\/em><\/p>\n

GO TO ORIGINAL \u2013 COLORLINES<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth\u2014a massive meeting organized by the Bolivian government in response to the resounding failure of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,53,61,221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","category-environment","category-indigenous-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}