Copenhagen plan B : « Let's protect the rich » !

The Plenary conference session of the Kyoto Protocol parties has been postponed today.

The essential stumbling point is the final statute of the conference text. The 9 December was marked by being informed of Denmark's draft text, that could be the major outcome of the conference. This text, that had been elaborated secretly (rumours have been circulating about its existence now for several days), it violates the democratic principals of the United Nations and buries the Kyoto Protocol, just like the Rio convention on climate change.

It proposes reduction constraints for all countries, except the poorer ones, which is in contradiction with the Kyoto Protocol, which is committed to the Annex 1 industrialized countries. The financing and technological transfers that are the pillars of the climate change convention are now conditional. It is a text that according to the G77 “protects the rich countries”. The financial commitments proposed are very weak; however there is a mention about commitment to develop the carbon market. The knowledge of this text provoked a spontaneous protest by representatives of the Pan African Climate Alliance within the Bella Center.

During the Plenary, the Southern countries were very offensives, united to ask for stay in the frame of the Protocol, and the Northern countries, in particularly, following Australia's intervention, seemed to be like people living on private incomes who defend a text that protects them and who have lost all intelligibility of the situation. Fronted by their determination to see their propositions taken into account, without waiting, the President preferred to postpone the Plenary....

PRESENTATION OF THE BOLIVIAN PLATFORM FOR “MOTHER EARTH RIGHTS”, BELLA CENTER.

(a few interventions in the gallery of government representatives)

“ If you ask us if we want to live like Americans or Europeans, the answer is no. No not because we don't like them, but because their mode of development is unbearable. That's why we must change the system. “Mother Earth” has to be liberated from slavery. We have to find a balance between humans and nature”.

Here in this reunion , it's the place where real solutions can be discussed. It's a side event, organized in the conference, outside the negotiations themselves. Hoping one day that the carbon market, the REDD (Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), and others that will find themselves in these side events.

International day of Mother Earth April 22 : “We want to built a movement, a global movement for the rights of “Mother Earth” with indigenous people, social movements, the NGOs, ecological movements, the researchers, the States”.

ROUNDTABLE AT THE KLIMAFORUM

Ecological debt, Climate change and human and nature rights

Partial report of a few interventions

Elisabeth Peredo, Fundacion Solon, Bolivia

The necessity to change the paradigm. We come from the earth and we will return to the earth. Live well, live in harmony, they are the roots that we want to develop. We don't want to live more, we want to “live well” and in harmony with other people. The Bolivian government put on the UNO agenda, Mother Earth rights. We propose as well the construction of a Court of Climate Justice

It's following the Second World War, after the “holocaust” that the human rights have been reaffirmed. Today, it's a silent genocide that requires to set the rights of Mother earth.

Ibrahim Koulibali, Via Campesina, Mali

In Mali the climate change is there. It's a reality that acts ruthlessly daily for the past thirty years with the perturbation of the seasons. It's the lives of men and women that are at stake, The desert is advancing. But today we assist today in the emergence of a new business and land and forests treated a commodity. The debt establishes the responsibilities and those who are responsible must change the system. The rich will continue to pollute, because they have money to pay. The victims will continue to die.

Percy Makombe-Economic Justice Network (South Africa)

We are in front of a civilization crisis. We are not only the victims we are as well the stakeholders from the moment we have abdicated our right and our duty to think. The responsibility of the climate crisis belongs to the Northern countries. The industrialized countries, after colonising the lands, the seas, they colonise the air with the carbon market. They give themselves the property rights on the air with breathe. The patents on clean technologies should be abolished. The climate is a public good. The paradigm of consumption and growth must be reviewed.

Ivonne Yanez-Oilwatch Americas (Ecuador)

The climate change is starting to become an ideology. Of course there is a climate change. The ideology of the climate change supposes “ an adaptation” and not a transformation of the system. This ideology promotes the market, the carbon market, the CDM (Clean Development Mechanisms), the REDD, it's a “shock doctrine” like Naomi Klein said.

An “after-oil” era has to be built, that will enable emancipation. We should extend the constitution of Ecuador that recognises the rights for natural resources.