Rhythms of Resilience:
3 Years of Cultivating Earth Democracy!

Be a part of Movement Generation’s first ever community celebration: After three years of groundbreaking work through our Justice and Ecology Project we’re ready to have some fun.  We would love to have you join us!

Friday, November 5, 2010
6pm-12am
Humanist Hall (390  27th Street,  Oakland)
Sliding Scale – $50 – $150

6-8pm:  dinner & program
8-10pm:  live musical performance
10-midnight:  live DJ’s – DJLN and Lucha Grande

Live Performances with: Invincible, Seasunz and J.Bless, and Los Nadies
Keynote Speaker: Adrienne Maree Brown

Host Committee: Adrienne Maree Brown, Tracy Burt, Larisa Casillas, Melanie Cervantes, Alicia Garza, Mike Gast, Ben Griesinger, Dave Henson, Taj James, Annie Leonard, Laura Loescher, Denise Perry, Mark Randazzo, Carmen Rojas, Jill Shenker, Zak Sinclair, Mari Rose Taruc, Mei-ying Williams, and Steve Williams.

Register by October 18th to hold your seat. We expect this event to sell out – so buy your tickets now!

As over 20,000 people converge in Detroit over the next week, MG will be participating in a range of important meetings, actions, assemblies and workshops at the USSF from June 22 through June 26.

Download a full schedule of the amazing Eco-Justice events taking place in Detroit.

You won’t want to miss two of our star eco-justice visionaries speaking on the evening plenaries:

-    MG’s Carla Perez will feature on the Wednesday, June 23 evening plenary

-    Jihan Gearon from the Indigenous Environmental Network will feature on the Friday, June 25 evening plenary

Our inspiring track of eco-justice work at the USSF culminates with an Ecological Justice People’s Movement Assembly the afternoon of Friday, July 25. This is a historic moment in which immigrant rights, economic justice, housing rights, water justice, food sovereignty, and many more forces are coming together to demand justice for our human communities and the Rights of Mother Earth. Together, we are building a Movement of Movements that can win a transformed world. If you will be in Detroit, join us in this important strategy space.

Download the flyer for the Eco Justice Ecological Justice People’s Movement Assembly.

Get an intensive overview on the state of our planet by joining MG’s retreats:
Retreat I – September 14-16
Retreat II – October 22-24

MG’s two three-day retreats take place at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Sonoma County (www.oaec.org). The first retreat focuses on literacy and analysis of local and global ecology. The second focuses on strategy and the implications for organizing in urban communities. The retreats are the flagship program of MG and are a truly transformative experience for participants.

Target participants for MG’s Strategic Retreats are:  Staff & member-leaders from base-building racial, economic and environmental justice organizations.  Accepted applicants commit to participating in both retreats.  Retreats run all-day for 3 consecutive days.

To request an application, send an email to: info@movementgeneration.org

For those of you paying attention – We have changed the dates of Retreat I.  They no longer will happen on Aug 27-29.  The September dates are the new, confirmed dates!

The deadline to apply is July 9, 2010.

Movement Generation’s 1st Annual Party!

November 5, 2010
6-10 pm
at Humanist Hall (390  27th St., Oakland, CA)

Last month in Cochabamba, the Bolivian government and social movements convened the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC).  The conference was ground-breaking, bringing together governments, NGO’s, indigenous communities, and social movements.  The goal of the conference was to re-ground and cohere the global forces that are working for climate justice in order to impact global climate negotiations.
Whether we work on environmental, social, or economic issues, what happened in Cochabamba is relevant to our work as Left organizers in the United States.  To help make the conferences’ relevance for our work as clear as possible, I’m going to talk about Copenhagen and the back story to Cochabamba, lay out some of the developments at the CMPCC, and explore how it all relates to the next phase of building a powerful climate justice movement.

The Back Story

Our situation is dire.  Science tells us that CO2 emissions from human activity (principally coal-burning and oil consumption, but also deforestation) are already beyond sustainability and that today’s emissions will take seventy years to manifest their full impact on global temperature.  Even with the Kyoto protocol in place, the growth of emissions in the last ten years has been the fastest ever. We need a substantial decrease in global emissions over the next 10 years, and we need to almost completely move away from fossil fuels over the next 30-40 years. If we don’t  we will almost certainly end up with irreversible changes in temperature, weather, and rainfall that will have horrendous and unacceptable social consequences.

This material reality provides the backdrop to recent international climate negotiations.  It would be a tall order to achieve that type of environmental change that we need under any economic or political system.  But the challenges are even greater under our current economic system; we are contending with neoliberal capitalism, an exploitative and often neo-colonial relationship between the global North and the global South, the corruption of most world governments by capital and corporations, and the arrogance and lack of accountability of the United States on the world stage.  The meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen laid these dynamics bare.  Although it was initially billed as “Hopenhagen” – a meeting where humanity would come together to protect ourselves and nature – the reality in Copenhagen’s meeting halls was class struggle.

In recent years, a great deal of energy has been spent in the international climates negotiations to get the US back to the table. Going into Copenhagen, it was clear that a comprehensive, equitable agreement wasn’t in the works.  Regardless, many social movements and governments from teh global South were hopeful that a global agreement would be reached that would use scientific estimates to set a global limit on emissions and provide a framework for transitioning away from fossil fuels.  There was hope that agreements could be reached that would allow for (1) adaptation by those who have already been affected by climate change and (2) the transfer of technology and funds to the South to make that transition possible without pushing the nations of the global South into poverty.  There was also the hope that developed countries would acknowledge the debt they owed to the rest of the world for damaging the climate.

Instead, with all the world’s governments assembled in the Bella Center, the global North (and particularly the United States) refused responsibility  The biggest polluters refused to commit to stop polluting. Would the North pay it’s debt for having used up the atmospheric space over the last 100 years?  Nope.  Transfer technology so that developing nations could develop with less emissions?  Nope.  Pay for damages or adaptation for communities that have already been impacted?  Nope.  Decrease domestic emissions to avoid climate chaos?  Nope.  Instead, these polluters wanted to use the UNFCCC as the basis to construct a new world order that would create a new set of economic rules to benefit northern corporations.

When President Obama showed up, he settled quickly into back-room negotiations to hammer out a proposal that would benefit the United States.  This proposal – now called the Copenhagen Accord – would create a process where each government had autonomy over what cuts it wanted to propose and where these proposed cuts would be added up and carried out through a world carbon market.  There would be no enforcement mechanism if nations don’t meet their proposed reductions.  If the US says it will decrease emissions by 4% (which is their current offer), and Costa Rica says it will be carbon neutral in the next 20 years, there is no mechanism by which the U.S. can be held accountable for greater emissions reductions.  The Copenhagen Accord was not allowed to pass during the meeting in Copenhagen, due to the resistance from ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) and African states and small island nations on the inside of the convention and to the social movements who were organizing on the outside.

Shortly after the Copenhagen Accord was released, a team of European scientists determined that if all nations lived up to their commitments under the accord, it would only amount to – at best -  a 2% decrease in emissions.  This is ten times less than what the science says is needed in order to prevent environmental catastrophe.  On the heels of this report, a team from MIT stated that – in material terms –  this 2% decrease by 2020 would commit the world to a 3-4 degree Celsius increase in temperature, an increase which would be catastrophic.

Pachamama o Muerte!

Leaving Copenhagen, there was a huge amount of righteous anger at the behavior of the US and the global North.  The time for action should have been 20 years ago.  But even this late in the game, the rich still acted with impunity.  What now?  Now that the Copenhagen Accord had come to light, the U.S.’s intentions were clear.  The next global meeting of the UNFCCC was already scheduled for Cancun in December of 2010, and the U.S. was clearly going to try to pass a proposal similar to the Copenhagen Accord at this meeting. But how could the movement that succeeded in stopping a bad agreement in Copenhagen defeat the US proposal and move negotiations back towards the kind of transformative proposals that are needed?

Evo Morales stepped into that political space by convening the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC).  As Willy Meir, a Left deputy from Spain stated at the opening ceremonies of the CMPCC in Cochabamba, “This conference has been produced from the failure of the Summit in Copenhagen, whose authors, the most developed countries, have taken us into a dead-end alley.”  The plan was ambitious: organize a conference with seventeen working groups that would develop social movement proposals on the major areas of global negotiation, proposals for other areas of importance for social movements that hadn’t been on the table in the UNFCCC, and strategies and plans to impact the negotiations.  The conference proposed responding to the back-room Copenhagen Accord which had been produced by unaccountable elites with a people’s proposal, developed in broad daylight through exchange and debate between global movements and communities.

What were these proposals?  Many of the proposals related directly to international negotiations. They included points such as:
• A 50% reduction of domestic greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries for the period 2013-2017 under the Kyoto Protocol without reliance on market mechanisms;
• The need to begin the process of considering the proposed Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth to reestablish harmony with nature;
• The obligation of developed countries to honor their climate debt toward developing countries and our Mother Earth;
• The incentivizing of models of agricultural production that are environmentally sustainable and that guarantee food sovereignty and the rights of indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers;
• The protection and recognition of the rights and needs of forced climate migrants.

Beyond the points that were specifically focused on negotiations, groups developed structural critiques of the causes of climate change. They crafted proposals and declarations that pointed the way towards the kind of broader social and economic transformations that will be necessary to adequately respond to the crisis.  This section from the final conclusions of the working group on Harmony with Nature provides a good example,
“Given that capitalism is a threat to life itself, it is necessary to forge a new system that reestablishes harmony with nature and among human beings based on the principles of: equilibrium among all and with all things, complementarity, solidarity, equity, justice, collective consciousness, and respect for diversity and spirituality.”

Or the following example from the Indigenous People’s working group, proposing
“The recovery, revalidation and strengthening of our civilizations, identities, cultures and cosmovisions based on ancient and ancestral Indigenous knowledge and wisdom for the construction of alternative ways of life to the current “development model”, as a way to confront climate change.”

The working groups were successful in crafting a shared vision, but they were not lacking in strong debates.  The conference was intended to create a big tent that would hold governments, NGO’s, and social movements, so it came as no surprise that – at times – these different groupings had different agendas and goals.  Governments that participated in Cochabamba were participants in the UNFCCC, and they had to decide what the tactics of their inside strategy would be.  Carbon markets were soundly rejected by social movements in the working groups of the CMPCC, but many governments (including the Cuban government representatives) supported the continuation of the Kyoto protocol as opposed to the Copenhagen accord.[1] To the extent that there was a debate around the use of market mechanisms, the governments were clear that they were arguing that market-based mechanisms should be seen as tactical demands. But regardless of whether this difference is strategic or tactical, it significant since the hope is to have unified demands inside and outside of the Cancun meeting in Cancun.  REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), a program which would incorporate forests into a global carbon market, was another big point of contention. Against the opposition of Bolivian government representations, the Indigenous Environmental Network from the United States organized hard and successfully to have the CMPCC oppose REDD.

In the end the Cochabamba protocol is remarkable for its unity.  The process was able to successfully weave together the best thinking and the on-the-grounds experience of social movements in areas as diverse as water, carbon markets, technology transfer and forests. The declarations stand as a movement-driven counter-proposal from the perspective of civil society in opposition to the perspectives of the elites.  As Colin Rajah of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said “Cochabamba changed the game.  The U.S. will push what it’s going to push, but now there is a new proposal on the table.  It’s a counter-balance.”
What does this mean for us?

Looking back at the successes of Cochabamba and thinking about what they mean for climate justice work in the U.S., a few key questions and observations come to mind.  The overarching question that organizers and activists all over the world are asking is: What do we do about the U.S.? It’s not the first time that we have asked this question.  As recent history shows , the obstructionist position taken by the US government.  Is the primary obstacle to meaningful coordinated global action on climate issues. We need to figure out: What do we need to do to either push the U.S. to move the right direction or – at the very least – to get out of the way and stop dragging the world in the wrong direction?  I would argue that there are three key tasks that we need to take up:

1. Building a Popular Politics of Climate Justice in the US

The world needs the U.S.-based movement for climate justice to reach a new stage in the development. There are signs that this is possible.  The public awareness of environmental issues has grown markedly over the past 5 years, both in social justice movements and the broader public. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina played an important role in that process.  At the same time, this awareness is uneven. Significantly, there has been more growth among the middle class and white communities than among working people and communities of color.  This isn’t surprising, but it has meant that most environmental awareness has driven socially-conscious consumption rather than than political action.  It also has played into the hands of the Right, which has worked to make the public believe the environmentalism is a lifestyle choice made by people who have money to spend or who are recreationally green.

The key for our work is to build and strengthen a popular politics of climate justice.  When I say “popular,” I’m arguing that our demands and our approach to climate change have to resonate with the perceived needs and demands of broad sectors of society. They need to respond to poverty.  They need to respond to racism.  They need to speak to those who are underemployed and lack affordable housing, to those for whom the current system doesn’t work and for whom it never will. They need to help move those sectors into action.

To accomplish this, our U.S.-based climate justice movement needs to follow the example of the movements that led the process in Cochabamba We need to get into fights around water, food, farming, transportation, land-use, housing, toxics, community resilience, jobs, and keeping fossil fuels in the ground.  My point here is that these fights – rooted in the dire conditions of neighborhoods, communities, and even bio-regions – can help us avoid making very technical macro-level policy fights our only site of struggle.  To the extent that we can keep these community-based issues front-and-center, we open the door to creating interesting new alliances and to making these issues tangible to folks who Al Gore isn’t going to be able to reach.

2. Same struggle.  Same enemy.  New Vision?

What about the Left?  When I was on the plane coming back to the U.S. from Bolivia, I was imagining the next six months and making mental work plans.  When I landed, I was struck almost immediately by the developments in Arizona.  The racist political forces that birthed SB1070 are the same forces that are responsible for the economic meltdown in recent years, and they are the same forces that stand in the way of the development of a just and sustainable economy.

For those of us on the Left, although some of the details of climate negotiations may be  different, the nature of the struggle and the enemy is the same.  But there are some differences. Specifically, Cochabamba may offer us a different vision.  When we envision a society that exists in a sustainable relationship to nature, this society has material limits.  These limits imply things about how subsystems of the economy – like the food system or the energy and transportation systems – should be run.  These limits shed some light into what a sustainable people’s economy could look like, whether it’s in the Bay Area or Phoenix or Seattle.  They help us to think about what our cities should be like.  An understanding of ecology combined with a critique of economy can help reground our Left Vision, giving us clarity in areas where we lacked it before.  The working groups in Cochabamba developed thinking along these lines that we need to take  the time to examine.  The Left in the U.S. would be strengthened by incorporating more of this type of thinking into our analysis.  We’ll have a chance to do that soon at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit in June 2010.

3. The Road from Cochabamba to Cancún

The CMPCC laid the groundwork for global movements to make a hard stand over the next year.  The US government is pushing hard for the adoption of the Copenhagen Accords in Cancun, but organizing in opposition to those Accords gained strength and clarity in Cochabamba.  In a recent message, Via Campesina called for thousands of local actions globally, and they called for a large-scale mobilization in Cancun.  And all signs point towards these mobilizations being stronger than they were in Copenhagen, from the scale of the protests and the coordination of organizing to the clarity of our proactive demands.  These public protests and actions will provide an important opportunity for our communities to weigh in and be counted.  We need a massive converegence and mobalization on the scale of the protests against the WTO in Seattle a decade ago.

What can we fight for and win in Cancun?  There are two key battles on different fronts. First, there is the battle for public opinion.  We need to broaden the public understanding of the breadth and relevance of these issues. We have the potential to shift the debate on domestic climate policies, like offshore oil drilling.  Second, we need to challenge the game plan of the U.S. delegation, especially with respect to the Copenhagen Accord.  We can have victories on both fronts if we can organize effectively. The U.S. Social Forum will provide an important jumping-off point to build the kind of coordination we need to make these victories possible.

Pa’lante Siempre!

Popular politics, deeper vision from the left, and an action plan…isn’t that what everyone’s looking for?   The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth moved the climate justice movement a few steps forward in all three areas.  But we still need to figure out how it all will come together into a successful fight over the next year.  My organization, Movement Generation, believes that the next step is to clarify our shared demands and our action plan during the U.S. Social Forum through the People’s Movement Assembly process.

On the days when I feel hopeless and when the type of change we need seems impossible, I look at kids playing outside my home and at my own children. And I know that, one day, they will ask me what I did when our planet was in so much danger.  Whether we asked for it our not, this is the defining challenge of our generation.  It’s a challenge that will be decided – one way or the other – in our lifetimes. Let’s get to work and make it count.

[1] Kyoto has a carbon market and offsets through a “clean development mechanism” that has been damaging to Southern communities.

Jason Negrón-Gonzales is the former Director of Movement Generation, and a co-founder of the MG Justice & Ecology Project. He began his political work organizing as a student around Puerto Rican community issues.  As a student at UC Berkeley he was involved in building multi-racial student alliances and worked against the ending of affirmative action and the cutting back of ethnic studies.  After graduating he began working with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a membership based community/labor organization in San Francisco.  In his time at POWER Jason served as Organizer, Campaign Director, and Education Director as well as in alliance building work locally and nationally.  Jason is now a Program Associate at Movement Generation and works as a trauma nurse at SF General Hospital.

(photo by Marisa Franco, Right to the City Alliance)

Events in recent weeks in Arizona should be a cause for concern for all people who seek justice and progress in the US, and they have special significance for those of us who call the climate justice, environmental justice, and environmental movements our home.  These events call for a principled stand and action on our part, in defense of communities that have been displaced by economic and ecological crises, and against the racist and bigoted institutions that we also confront in the fight for a sustainable future.

In the words of Pablo Alvarado, the Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Committee (NDLON), “this week, the Arizona legislature passed the most anti-immigrant legislation the United States has seen in a generation.”  This legislation, SB 1070, will:  1. legislate racial profiling by requiring police to arrest and detain people based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they are undocumented, 2. make it a state crime to be unable to produce legal residency documents, and or to transport or shelter undocumented people, and 3. ban day laborers by making it a crime for anyone to “pick up passengers for work” and penalizing anyone seeking work at a day labor site, or those contractors who hire them.

We know from experience that nothing encourages the right wing like success. Now, less than a week since the passage of SB 1070, there are copycat bills being considered or proposed in more than a dozen states nationally.  This tide will only be turned if we face the enemies of our communities head on and stop them cold.

Same Struggle, Same Enemy

The environmental movement has historically contained a xenophobic trend which has supported laws like California’s Prop 187 and Arizona’s SB 1070.  These groups have sought to use pro-environment arguments to advocate for racist policy on immigration and population.  Let us be clear – there is not and never will be a solution to climate and environmental issues that is not built upon a strong foundation of social justice. The Tea Party Republicans that are looking to rally their troops and gain votes through cynical racist attacks on immigrant communities are the main enemies of our movement as well.  These enemies of democracy, of justice, and of the earth attempt to block everything but profits for the rich, and they will have to be systematically overcome to advance the cause of sustainability in this country. If they want to fight on immigration, let’s give them the fight they are looking for.

We can never forget that the policies that have driven migration to the US – neoliberal, free-trade policies like NAFTA that have destroyed Mexican and Central American economies (particularly rural economies), the dumping of surplus corn by the US into Mexico to bankrupt farmers, and the establishment of export processing zones and export oriented production in Mexico and around the world by US design – are the same policies that must be overturned to reach a workable solution to environmental and climate issues globally.   There will be no sustainable future without expanding local democracy and economies, which is only possible by dismantling the neoliberal policy that strips wealth from the workers and the countryside whether in Detroit or Jalisco.  And with the continued destruction of the environment in global South countries, the issue of migration as a human right for those whose land and livelihoods have been destroyed will only become more important.

Time to Stand Up

Leading immigration rights organizations based in Arizona like NDLON and Tonatierra have put out the call asking for support from allies in all parts of the US.  These forces are concentrating their efforts in the next 90 days “to stop SB 1070′s implementation, to defend civil rights, and to set federal immigration reform efforts in the right direction.” Calls to action and solidarity are being coordinated through www.AltoArizona.com.

We live in complicated times with many challenging issues confronting our communities: climate change, the foreclosure crisis, the recession, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and domestic battles around immigration, health care, and the direction of the nation in general.  The solution to this complexity isn’t for us to tuck ourselves into our corner and to try to convince others or ourselves that our issue is the most important.  We need to lean into this complexity and build a movement that understands that the same characters and systems are to blame for our different problems.  We also need a movement that is developed and sophisticated enough to take on fights on multiple fronts at the same time.  It’s time to broaden the front for immigrants rights.  See you in the streets on May Day!

I’m on the plane back to the US flying at 29,000 feet over the Amazon.  A green carpet of trees, only interrupted by winding veins of brown rivers, stretches to the horizon.  From time to time where a larger river appears, a small cluster of buildings sits like a speck on the side of the river.  Later, geometric patterns interrupt the expanse of the forest in areas where trees have been cut.  In their place are roads, but few buildings and no crops or livestock.  Suddenly, these clearings disappear and only forest and clouds are visible again.  The forest is immensely beautiful, and just seeing it there gives me hope – even knowing the challenges the forest and it’s people face, climate change being just one of them.  It’s hard to look at something so huge, a system that’s so complex and beyond human comprehension, and know that many think it won’t exist in 100 years.  The forest and its people may well become victims of the greed and myopia of those who run today’s world.

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) ended on Thursday in Cochabamba and every airport I’ve stopped in (more than a few now) has been filled with people heading home with new energy, new direction, and excitement to get back to work.  But before the movement moves on I want to share some last reflections that we’ll be taking forward.

The meaning of Cochabamba

When I asked Colin Rajah of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights what he thought the significance of the CMPCC was, he replied, “Cochabamba changed the game.  The US will push what it’s going to push, but now there is a new proposal on the table.  It’s a counter balance.”  This new proposal, brought together by social movements from around the world, and anchored by Bolivian and South American social movements will exist as both a synthesis and a roadmap, not just for climate negotiations but also for our movements themselves.  The conference successfully wove together the experiences and analytic strengths of many movements.  At times differences emerged (which I’ll talk about more below), but overall the conference was remarkable for the level of agreement expressed.

What was this agreement?  The content of the proposals is too vast to list here (click for Spanish text or partial English translations) but it was remarkable for being intersectional, based on a structural analysis, rooted in the experiences of communities on the ground, and supportive of expanding democracy. The outcome makes clear that solutions to climate change won’t come from the back room or the board room but from real people making decisions about their future.

The question now is: will it have legs?  As an organizer from Vía Campesina Mexico pointed out in one of the opening sessions of the conference – what is possible in Cancún (where the next UN Conference of Parties will meet to try to negotiate a global climate policy) will depend on what is developed internationally prior to November.  He also pointed out that the success of the movement in Copenhagen of resisting the imposition of a bad deal rested on the ability to advance unified demands.  The proposals coming out of Cochabamba are comprehensive enough to be a map for the movement in the coming months.  More work is needed –and happening– to make sure that enough of us are going to the same place.

Markets, Oppressed Communities, and the Right to Development

At the conference, a particular flash point for debate was on the issue of REDD- Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.  REDD is a proposal to put the conservation of forests into the global mechanisms developed to fight climate change.  Supporters say it would give a money value to forests, which today only have value when they are cut down.  This would then slow deforestation, provide funds to forest communities, and address the contribution of deforestation to climate change.  Opponents’ say that REDD is just a scheme to commidify the world’s forests in a carbon market, creating profits rather than conserving forests.  They also contend that in existing REDD projects, indigenous people have been displaced from the forests or coerced into signing away their land, and that forests have been razed and replaced with plantations (which are also considered forests under REDD).

At one workshop I attended, representatives from indigenous communities and the government in Bolivia laid out information and arguments on their REDD pilot project and why it was beneficial.  The crowd in attendance was skeptical but reserved.  The working group on forests was another story.  Indigenous organizers and leaders from the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) worked very hard to include a condemnation of REDD in the working group text and ran into head-on opposition from Bolivian government representatives and some Southern indigenous leaders in the group.

The REDD debate points to a larger dynamic at work in climate policy, a dynamic that is familiar from other kinds of organizing work.  Forest communities, and especially indigenous communities, have been marginalized and impoverished by decades of neoliberal policy, not to mention centuries of colonialism.  Now REDD appears, and communities have to decide whether they want to make a deal with the devil.  If they refuse, then conditions stay the same – they are still poor and their forests are still under attack.  Maybe they decide that by accepting they can work the program to their advantage, kind of like a climate community benefits agreement.  [I assume with this above scenario that the community is giving free, prior, informed consent, which is almost never true.  In most cases these projects, like many rural development projects in the South, are forced on communities by their national governments.]

The lesson here is that we can’t forget that communities have issues that are already extremely dire, and we want to create the conditions where they don’t have to choose between their short and long term survival.  Movements have done this in many ways in the past.  Whether through the right to development, “el vivir bien”, the just transition, or what people have begun to call an E –squared approach (addressing ecology and economy), it’s up to us to build a movement where people’s ecological and economic needs aren’t easily counter posed.

The Politically Possible vs. the Materially Necessary

Even in Cochabamba, there were places where the inside strategies of governments and the outside strategies of social movements diverged.  A key area where this happened was in the area of carbon markets, which social movements generally opposed.  The governments that were present opposed carbon markets in concept, but given the current context of negotiations, they supported the continuation of the Kyoto protocol as a tactical demand.

This tactical position made some participants uncomfortable.  If capitalism and neo-liberalism are causing climate chaos, how can we take a position in favor of Kyoto, which not only had a carbon market, but has also driven all kinds of destructive projects in the South?  The discomfort felt by social movement leaders is historically rooted.  For years, big mainstream NGO’s have played the politics of the possible.  They have kept social movements on the outside, and have increasingly supported ineffective or damaging corporate-led policy.  Wasn’t the position taken by the ALBA governments in Cochabamba just the same thing?

My answer would be no, and here’s why.  We need to keep an eye on both what’s politically possible and what’s materially necessary, and then struggle to make more of what is necessary possible and to make false solutions (like carbon markets) politically unviable.  In this political moment, we need to take stock of where our forces and our allies are at and figure out the best way to play our hand.  Given the state of affairs today that definitely includes: 1. Influencing and gaining support from a much bigger segment of the population, in particular in communities that are and will be first and worst impacted, and 2. Impeding the US government’s ability to screw up this global process.  I think the ALBA governments are attempting to do #2.

Additionally, international climate negotiations like Copenhagen and Cancún are only one, rather limited, front that we’ll be working on.  The core of our work in the US will be to build political power, consciousness, and alliances at the levels where we can have the most impact right now – locally and regionally.  Whatever we decide to do will be a tactic towards advancing our long-term goals, all of which can’t be realized right now.  The clearer idea we have about what we want to do and why, the better chance we have of managing our alliances in the next period of time.

The Road to Cancún

We are leaving Cochabamba, en route to Cancún by way of our communities.  We have our work cut out for us, but I believe that we are up to the task.  In the next seven months we can build a stronger, more grounded climate movement than this country has ever seen.  We can win support, and put the “army of cynics” that president Obama described during his campaign (and who’s ranks he should leave as soon as possible) on their heels.  We can strike a blow for our allies in the South and derail the Copenhagen Accord.  And we can begin the hard task of transforming this country, to meet the needs of the people and Mother Earth.

We don’t lack talent or desire, so let’s not lack confidence or imagination.  As Eduardo Galeano wrote in his letter at the opening of the conference, “May we be able to do everything that is possible, and the impossible too.”  ¡Pachamama o muerte venceremos!

By Jason Negrón-Gonzales

Photo of Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network in the blessing ceremony in Cochabamba. credit: Diana Pei Wu.

Today, Earth Day, was the closing day of the first World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba.  It occurred to me as I watched participants and organizers streaming into the Félix Capriles Stadium for the closing ceremonies that decades from now I’ll be talking to my children and 2010 will be remembered as the year that Earth Day took on new meaning.  It will be the year that humanity turned a corner in our relationship to Mother Earth and began struggling along a new course.

Over the last week, a lot of information has been exchanged, new relationships were built, points and direction were strongly debated, and a new, shared course is taking shape.  Always present was the role and actions of the US government, the principle polluter of the last century, and the main obstacle to a meaningful response to climate chaos.  It’s been mentioned earlier that the Obama’s Copenhagen Accord, if it were adopted, would create a carbon market which researchers state will decrease global emissions by 2% (of 1990 levels) by 2020, which is less that what countries committed to 10 years ago under Kyoto.  So as the problem has gotten worse, the US administration under president Obama is proposing that the world be less ambitious.

But, as resident Chávez of Venezuela pointed out in his statements today at the conference, “There wasn’t any accord (agreement) in Copenhagen.”  Neither is the Copenhagen Accord a proposal.  It’s a threat made by a bully.  The US is playing hardball, withholding funds for those impacted by climate change unless they sign on.  In a lighter moment of the closing statements by government representatives today, the representative of Ecuador (which has been denied $2.5 million dollars already for it’s lack of support) countered the US withholding of funds with an offer of $2.5 million dollars to the US if it will join the rest of the world by signing the Kyoto protocol.  President Chávez later suggested that the money would be better spent getting social movements to Cancún.

And he was right.  Leaving Cochabamba there is a real sense in the air that our real work lies in front of us.  A new global people’s alliance for the defense of Mother Earth will be formed.  Representatives will be going back their home countries to continue fights around water, food and seed sovereignty, land reform, jobs and housing, indigenous rights, forest protection, as well as for the protection of their local land and ecosystems against destruction by mining, dams, logging, and more.  They will also have new direction in the fight against destructive climate policy.  At the World People’s Conference, particular points of contention were around the Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto protocol, carbon trading, and ecological debt.  These were big issues for the communities represented in Cochabamba, and will continue to be heading into Cancún.

This also raises an important point.  When the social movements met, what came through loud and clear was that people all over the world think that climate change should be solved by having those who pollute too much cut their emissions.  The communities and movements don’t want fancy trading schemes, and they don’t want their land, their labor, or their bodies to become a commodity to be sold in someone’s market (although neither do those who have been made marginalized and poor wish to stay that way – this is the “right to development” that has been so debated).  This broadly shared opinion by those outside of the negotiations differs somewhat from those governments, including Bolivia, who inside the negotiations have taken the approach of fighting for continued open negotiations by all nations and a maintenance of the Kyoto protocol.  This tension between the demands of movements on the outside and governments on the inside will be resolved favorably to the extent that movements can flex their muscle and the negotiations reflect what people want and not just what’s possible under the political power plays of the day.

But more than politics, the conference in Cochabamba brought to the table humanity’s relationship with Pachamama.  This question, raised most pointedly by the indigenous communities present, was reflected in the project of creating a declaration of Mother Earth Rights, but also went way beyond it.  Can we really reach a sustainable relationship with the Earth unless we stop looking at it as something to be conquered or fixed that is outside of us?  How would it change our lives and our struggles if we thought, as Leonardo Boff of Brazil said, “Todo lo que existe merece existir, y todo lo que vive merece vivir (Everything that exists deserves to exist, and everything that lives deserves to live)”?  Or if we understood the earth as a living thing that we are a part of and that, “La vida es un momento de la tierra, y la vida humana un momento de la vida (Life is a moment of the earth, and the human life is a moment of life)”?  Whatever the tradition that informed it, the clear message coming through in Cochabamba is that we have to get right with nature.  As president Morales said to open the conference, “Pachamama o Muerte! (Pachamama or Death!)”

http://www.pitchengine.com/free-release.php?id=59552
*** ESPANOL ABAJO ***
Cochabamba, Bolivia– As Earth Day celebrations commence around the world, Indigenous Peoples from across the Americas are in Cochabamba, Bolivia today to close the historic conference on climate change and the “Rights of Mother Earth” hosted by President Evo Morales. Morales, the only Indigenous Head of State in the world, called this conference in the wake of failed climate talks in Copenhagen. As the world prepares for the next round of talks in Cancún, Mexico, Indigenous Peoples vowed today to push for proposals that keep fossil fuels in the ground, protect Indigenous rights, and reject predatory policies like REDD (Reducing Emissions Through Deforestation & Degradation).

“REDD is branded as a friendly forest conservation program, yet it is backed by big polluters and climate profiteers. We cannot solve this crisis with out addressing the root cause: a fossil fuel economy that disregards the rights of Mother Earth,” said Alberto Saldamando, legal counsel for the International Indian Treaty Council. “President Morales has heard our recommendations on the structural causes of climate change and predatory carbon schemes like REDDs, and will bring our voices to the world stage in Cancún later this year.”

This morning President Morales was joined by representatives of 90 governments and several Heads of State to receive the findings of the conference on topics such as a Climate Tribunal, Climate Debt, just finance for mitigation and adaptation, agriculture, and forests.

The working group on forests held one of the more hotly contested negotiations of the summit, but with the leadership of Indigenous Peoples, a consensus was reached to reject REDD and call for wide-scale grassroots reforestation programs. The final declaration on forests states, “We condemn the mechanisms of the neoliberal market, such as the REDD mechanism and its versions REDD+ and REDD++, which are violating the sovereignty of our Peoples and their rights to free, prior and informed consent and self determination.” The working group on forests also challenged the definition of forests used by the United Nations, which permits plantations and transgenic trees, saying, “Monocultures are not forests.”

“REDD is not a solution to climate change,” said Marlon Santi, President of CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, the largest Indigenous organization in that country. “REDD has been created by multilateral institutions like the World Bank that routinely violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights and pollute Mother Earth. It is perverse that these institutions are pretending to have the ‘solution’ when they have actually caused the climate crisis. REDD should not be implemented in any country or community.”

“REDD is a predatory program that pretends to save forests and the climate, while backhandedly selling out forests out from under our Indigenous People,” said Tom Goldtooth, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), based in Bemidji, MN. “REDD will encourage continuing pollution and global warming, while displacing those of us least responsible for the crisis, who have been stewards of the forests since time immemorial.”
The declarations forged by the working groups in Cochabamba will be taken to the Cancún summit by President Morales as a counter-proposal to the widely criticized “Copenhagen Accord.” Movements of Indigenous Peoples, trade unions, farmers and environmentalists are also building momentum out of Cochabamba with plans for mass demonstrations in Cancún.
The Indigenous Environmental Network is in Cochabamba for the duration of the Climate Conference (April 20-24). Onsite cell: +591 740 2853

Indigenous Environmental Network: Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions. www.ienearth.org

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Contactos en Bolivia:
Jihan Gearon, Indigenous Environmental Network: +591 740 28531
Jeff Conant, Global Justice Ecology Project: +591 703 75254
Contactos en Estados Unidos
Clayton-Thomas Mueller +1 218 760 6632

DIA DE LA MADRE TIERRA EN BOLIVIA
De Copenhagen a Cancun, Pueblos Indigenas se Comprometen a Defender a los “Derechos de la Madre Tierra”

Condena los programas depredadores del bosque de REDD

Cochabamba, Bolivia – Mientras las celebraciones del Día de la Madre Tierra comienzan ahora en todo el mundo, los Pueblos Indigenas de todas las Americas estan en Cochabamba, Bolivia. Ahora se cierra la conferencia historica sobre el cambio climatico y los derechos de la madre tierra, que fue patrocinada por el Presidente Evo Morales. Morales, el unico jefe de estado indigena en el mundo, llamó esta conferencia como consecuencia de negociaciones de clima falladas en Copenhague. Como el mundo se prepara para la siguiente ronda de negociaciones en Cancún, México,
los pueblos indígenas juraron hoy empujar para las ofertas que mantienen los combustibles fósiles en la tierra, protegen los derechos de los indígenas, y rechazan políticas depredadoras como el REDD.

“REDD es marcado como un programa amistoso de conservación de bosques, pero es apoyado por acaparadores grandes de contaminadores y clima. Nosotros no podemos resolver esta crisis sin analisar la causa primordial: una economía de hidrocarburo que desatiende los derechos de la Madre Tierra,” dijo Alberto Saldamando, un vocero del Consejo Internacional de Tratados Indios.

“El Presidente Evo Morales ha oído nuestras recomendaciones sobre las causas estructurales del cambio de clima y esquemas depredadores de carbón como el REDD, y traerán nuestras voces a la plataforma en Cancún a fin de este año”.

Esta mañana el Presidente Evo Morales estuvo reunido con representantes de 90 gobiernos y varios jefes de estado para recibir las conclusiones de la conferencia en temas como un tribunal del clima, la deuda climatica, finanzas justas para la mitigación y la adaptación, para la agricultura, y para los bosques.

El grupo de trabajo en bosques tuvo uno del los más fuertes debates de la cumbre, pero con el liderazgo de los pueblos indígenas, un consenso fue alcanzado para rechazar al REDD, y hicieron un llamado para lanzar programas de ancho-escala del nivel local de repoblación forestal.

La declaración final de la mesa de bosques dice, “condenamos los mecanismos del mercado neoliberal, como el mecanismo del REDD y sus versiones REDD + y REDD + +, que violan la soberanía de nuestros pueblos y sus derechos de auto determinación”. El grupo de trabajo de bosques también critico la definición de bosques utilizados por las Naciones Unidas, que permite plantaciones y árboles transgénicos, diciendo, “Los monocultivos no son bosques”.

“REDD no es una solución al cambio del clima,” dijo Marlon Santi, el Presidente del CONAIE, la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador, la organización indígena más grande en ese país. “REDD ha sido creado por instituciones multilaterales como el Banco Mundial que viola rutinariamente a los derechos de los pueblos indígenas y contamina la Madre Tierra. Es perverso que estas instituciones fingen para tener la ‘solución’ cuando son ellos que realmente causan la crisis del clima. REDD no debe ser aplicado en ningún país o en ningúna comunidad”.

“REDD es un programa depredador que finge salvar los bosques y el clima, al vender de revés bosques fuera de bajo nuestras narises,” dijo Tom Goldtooth, el Director de la Red Ambiental Indígena (IEN por sus siglas en ingles), que esta basada en Bemidji, Minnesota, EEUU. “REDD favorecerá contaminación y calentamiento climático continuo, al desplazar a nosotros que somos los menos responsables de la crisis, nosotros que hemos sido guardianes de los bosques desde que tiempo inmemorial”.

Las declaraciones forjadas por los grupos de trabajo en Cochabamba serán tomadas a la cumbre de Cancún por el Presidente Morales como una contrapropuesta al supuesta “Acuerdo de Copenhague”. Los movimientos de Pueblos Indígenas, los sindicatos, los campesinos y los ecologistas también construyieron un fuerte movimiento desde Cochabamba con planes para demostraciones masivas en Cancún.
La Red Ambiental Indígena está en Cochabamba durante la Conferencia del Clima (20-24 de abril). El cellular es: +591 740 2853

La Red Ambiental Indígena: Los Pueblos indígenas que empoderan a las Naciones Indígenas y las comunidades Indígenas hacia sustentos sostenibles, la justicia y mantener ambientales Justas, y el Fuego Sagrado de nuestras tradiciones. www.ienearth.org

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(photo by Diana Pei Wu)

Jason’s interview from Cochabamba on the People’s World Summit on Climate Change & the Rights of Mother Earth begins about 2/3 of the way through the show.

Jason puts forth a message of hope with hard analysis of the struggles of the moment.

“This is a transition that we want to make. Both for our children but even for our short to medium term issues of jobs, housing, … We want to move towards an economy that prioritizes people, not profit. That allows us to have jobs in the community that are local that prioritize health and people’s needs. Not the profit of a few…”