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!

I’m writing from the plane in route to Cochabamba for the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Rights of the Mother Earth.  For those who aren’t familiar with the conference, it was proposed by Bolivian president Evo Morales in the aftermath of the COP15 conference in Copenhagen last December.  While that conference was billed early as “Hopenhagen”, this week’s meetings in Cochabamba, Bolivia hold the real seeds of hope for a global response to climate chaos that is rooted in justice, equity, and historical accountability, and led by global social movements of workers, farmers, and the poor.

What’s at stake?

While the world needed and hoped for a responsible and sufficient (if not radical) response to climate change, or at least a solid step in that direction, instead what we got in Copenhagen was more of the same: corporations and developed countries trying to extend their advantage and wealth.  The class character of the debate was striking.  One the one hand, delegates from Global South and Indigenous communities who are least to blame for emissions and are facing the loss of the livelihoods and homelands were demanding strong action now.  On the other, economic powerhouses like the US, which consumes about a quarter of the global energy supply, refused to be accountable for the environmental impacts of their economies and way of life.

Turning to the US situation for a second, as we’ve seen with healthcare, the Democratic Party has been extremely ineffective in capitalizing on their majority to push strong progressive legislation through Congress.  Why?  Because as a party they aren’t progressive, and they are just as beholden to corporate interests as the Republicans.  The US attempt to pass domestic climate legislation, called ACES, started too weak and quickly became weaker under the attacks of Republicans (and Democrats) in Congress from big agriculture, coal and oil industry states.

So, given this difficult situation at home, the US delegation decided not to lead but also not to get out of the way.  President Obama couldn’t (or wouldn’t attempt to) pass the strong climate legislation needed at home.  He might then have said, “You know guys, I can’t make it happen at home.  I’m doing the best I can, but in the mean time we want to support the strongest international plan that we can.”

But he didn’t do that.  Instead the US tried to turn back the clock, scrapping the progress made with the Kyoto Protocol and fighting for a new accord, the Copenhagen Accord, that it pulled together in a back room deal.  (Even with it’s flaws, the Kyoto Protocol contained some language and mechanisms that Global South nations wanted to move forward on rather than starting from scratch.)  The Copenhagen Accord offers no shared targets for emissions reductions but rather takes whatever each country wants to offer up and aggregates these commitments as a plan. Then, if the bad back-room plan wasn’t enough, the US showed up waving money to buy delegates just like congress people get bought and sold at home.  In response to this crass display, a delegate from Africa replied that the money offered wouldn’t be enough to pay for their coffins.

The Road to Cancun

Today negotiations continue but the US has taken the hard-line strategy of pushing its back room Copenhagen Accord like it’s the new basis of negotiations.  In the last week: 1. The US announced that it won’t provide climate aid to any country that doesn’t support the Copenhagen Accord, 2. The game plan from the Obama administration was leaked, revealing a plan to ram the accords through in their entirety and to do small “intimate” meetings with Big Green NGO’s to get them on board, and 3. At a follow up meeting to Copenhagen in Bonn, the Mexican delegation which will host the next COP announced that they there was no plan to continue the main tracks of negotiation in Mexico, another nod towards the US attempt to suspend open debate by all nations and ram the Copenhagen Accord through.  Scandalous!

All of which brings us to Cochabamba.  The Obama administration stated explicitly that they would give no money to Bolivia based on their opposition to the Copenhagen Accord.  Now Bolivia is hosting governments, NGO’s, and social movements from all over the world to build something better.  A head to head battle is shaping up – democracy vs. the back room, accountability vs. impunity, an uncompromising assertion of the dignity and value of all life vs. crass attempts to buy countries’ support.  I know what team I want to be on.

For those of us in the US who care about these issues, president Obama’s behavior is a bitter disappointment. The transition we have to make is a transition we want– not one that is forced on us by history.  We want a transition from a fossil-fueled economy.  We want sustainable communities built on principles of justice, equity, and democracy.  We want a world of good work, and good housing, where families, children, and communities count.  We want to meet our global obligations and to ensure that our sisters and brothers everywhere have what they need too.  That’s where I want my children to live.  And it’s why I’m in Bolivia with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network and other forces from across the globe who are working to build social movements with a strategy to win that world.

by Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan,

The Copenhagen round of the UNFCCC 15^th Conference of Parties has ended in failure  It is essential for the future of life on this planet that we achieve a global pact based on sound science and equity soon.  But given that the U.S. and its key allies were not willing to consider a fair and binding agreement, it is highly encouraging to see that social movements and many third world nations successfully united behind the slogan, “No deal is better than a catastrophic deal.”

Sadly, the US has been unwilling to put forth real solutions with the speed and scale needed. Instead, Hilary Clinton arrived on Thursday trying to extort an unfair deal by offering a vague package of $100 billion that would amount to a new climate colonialism. At the same time, a UNFCC analysis was leaked showing that the combined offerings of the US and other countries would amount to at least a 3 degree Celsius rise.  This would mean the eradication of whole island nations, dire drought for Africa, and massive displacement from increasing storms and flooding in South Asia.

The Obama Administration has offered cuts amounting to 4% from 1990 levels by 2020. To survive, the Island Nations, African Union, and other third world governments such as Bolivia joined with Indigenous People and others to call for industrialized nations to cut emissions by 49% from 1990 levels by 2020. They are demanding real solutions to the dire mitigation and adaptation issues they face.

Increasingly coordinated social movements and many 3^rd World governments held the line that no deal is better than a genocidal pact. Given this context, this is an important victory for the global south & impacted communities in the north on the path to winning:

- rapid, deep reductions in emissions;
- payment of climate debt;
- a rights-based approach to international and domestic climate change policy; and
- the inclusion of our communities in the processes.

On Thursday, December 17, US grassroots forces from impacted communities stepped up to challenge our government’s obstructive behavior.  Representatives of indigenous communities and other communities of color from the US and Canada delivered a letter to President Obama calling on him to act accountably and responsibly.

Today, Movement Generation stands proud to be building a powerful climate justice movement with

- Indigenous Peoples Movements
- Environmental Justice Communities and Coalitions
- Right to the City Alliance
- Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and
- Just Transition Alliance

We must build a powerful climate justice movement that can successfully pressure the US government to act accountably and responsibly.

The next round of negotiations will take place in Mexico City in late 2010.  Not just about climate, as Gopal Dayaneni says, “these negotiations are about everything, international trade; forests; food and agriculture; the rights of the indigenous and forest peoples; resource privatization; international finance (private and public); development rights; oceans; rivers; technology; intellectual property; migration, displacement and refugees; and biodiversity, to name a few. The reduction of emissions is only one part of the negotiations.”

One outcome could be that the ruling elites win an agreement that sets up a new global infrastructure for maintaining inequity amidst an increasingly militarized world where the rich control scarce food, water, land, and energy resources.  Or our social movements could use the next year to build our power to win a pact that helps us transition out of a capitalist system that is clearly broken and towards liberated communities that control our own land, water, and energy systems.

We must build this power starting in our own communities: talking with members, taking local action to frame the problem and the solutions. Along the way, the US Social Forum will be a critical space to align our movements and articulate an irresistible vision.

TAKE ACTION
As our delegation departs Copenhagen over the next few days, we call on you to stay connected to this historic effort to build a powerful climate justice movement led by frontline communities in the U.S.

- Look out for Report Backs & Strategy Sessions in January 2010
- Sign on to the Letter to President Obama
- Integrate Climate Justice into your basebuilding, leadership development, campaigns, and alliance building.
- Gear up to make Climate Justice a central frame of our movements at the US Social Forum through your workshops and other movement building work.

Social movements in the U.S. must seize 2010 to build our power towards winning System Change Not Climate Change. This is our moment to move millions to win a world driven by healing, cooperation, mutual aid, and a healthy relationship to the ecosystems we are a part of.

Contacts:
North American Indigenous Delegation Media Liaison    +45 5268 5594
Movement Generation Media Liaison  +45 2832 8422
(English, español, français, 普通話, portugûes)

COPENHAGEN – On the eve of President Obama’s arrival in Copenhagen to attend the fifteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties, organizations representing communities affected by climate change from around the United States delivered a letter urging President Obama to put a stop to the United States acting as a major barrier to real solutions to climate change, and instead to actively advance the concerns of vulnerable and impacted communities in the Global South and at home in the United States. “Global South” is a term often used to describe the G77 + China, or developing countries, including India, Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, and the Small Island Nations.

They held a press conference and rally in front of the US Embassy in Copenhagen, accompanied by chants of “Climate Justice Now!”

The letter was submitted by a convening of United States grassroots climate justice groups, including members of the North American indigenous communities delegation, the Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project (MG), the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC), Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) and the Right to the City Alliance (RTTC).

In the letter to President Obama, the climate justice groups assert, “Unfortunately, the proposals and negotiating positions of the United States government continue to be the single biggest barrier to progress in the Conference of the Parties process. Between side deals, weak targets, false solutions, a lack of transparency and a failure to commit to a legally binding agreement, the U.S. is gambling with the future of life on this planet.”

Wahleah Johns from the Black Mesa Water Coalition offered, “Indigenous peoples and grassroots communities are consistently left out of the climate negotiations, although we are the ones who bear the brunt of the burdens of ecological crisis. For instance, Peabody Coal uses 3.3 million gallons of water every day for mining coal on my reservation. The majority of the people that live out there on the Rez don’t have running water, or electricity, but we supply southern California, Nevada, and parts of Arizona with all of their energy needs. We expect President Obama to demand and support the rights of impacted communities to be at the forefront of just and equitable international negotiation processes.”

Speakers at the press conference and rally beforehand described the impacts of current ecological crises in their communities. Surrounded by colorful signs and banners, they also offered five actions that President Obama could take to address climate change at a scale and speed that would sufficiently match the scale and timeframe of the current ecological crisis.

For instance, Kandi Mossett (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara), a young Indigenous woman from Fort Berthold, North Dakota, is fighting a so-called clean fuel refinery in her community, including low-wage, dirty jobs and increased debt. Mossett knows firsthand the differential and disastrous impacts of oil refineries – including so-called clean ones – on community health: she’s survived cancer. She continues, “I’m lucky enough to be here but a lot of our people aren’t here anymore. They’re buried under the ground, because of what our governments are doing to us. Given what we know about climate change, why would we continue on this course? We are all going to be wiped off the face of the planet if this continues to happen.”

The letter proposes that rapid and deep reductions in emissions at the source are critical to meeting meaningful targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and urges President Obama to immediately reduce the US consumption load, without offsets, by a minimum 49% deduction from 1990 levels by 2020.

Likewise, Henry Clarke, the Executive Director of the West County Toxics Coalition from Richmond, CA, said, “The North Richmond community is on the frontline of Chevron’s chemical assault. We have experienced a lifetime of chemical exposure, asthma, cancer and death. These are human rights violations.” The letter proposes that solutions must include a rights-based framework that adheres to other United Nations rights-based frameworks set out in declarations, covenants and conventions, regardless of whether or not they are ratified by the United States.

Another necessary action demanded by the grassroots climate justice groups included the “recognition and payment of the climate debt” to the Global South. They stipulated that these climate debt repayments would have to be administered through a transparent, funding source and not current multi-lateral development institutions, which they say have failed to provide sustainable development pathways for the Global South, including the World Bank.

Jose Bravo, of the Just Transition Alliance out of San Diego, CA, added that for communities from the global South in the North, sustainability and environmentalism was not a new thing. For Bravo, “Just transition is about shifting from polluting jobs to clean jobs, polluting industries to clean industries.”

Michele Roberts, from Advocates for Environmental and Human Rights out of New Orleans, Louisiana and Washington, DC, adds that communities from the South in the North – like those in the Gulf Coast region – are on the frontlines of ecological crisis, while the beneficiaries of unsustainable resource practices will feel it less. Likewise, a 2 degree Celsius rise in average global temperature is predicted to mean at least a 3.57 degree Celsius rise over continental Africa. Gopal Dayaneni explains, “Two hundred years of compounded industrial production has already committed us to severe and catastrophic consequences for the poorest people on the planet, including much of Africa, coastal Asia, indigenous people and small island states.”

The letter was delivered by Gopal Dayaneni from Oakland, CA and Roxana Aguilar from Los Angeles, CA.

Kalila Barnett, from Alternatives for Community and Environment, out of Boston, MA, closed with the following message to President Obama: “You campaigned on a platform for change and your belief that change doesn’t come from Washington, it comes to Washington.  Change is here, on the streets of Copenhagen, and all over the world. Climate Justice Now!”

TAKE ACTION: Please email this letter to President Obama at president@whitehouse.gov

Dear President Obama,

We are here in Copenhagen as the voices of our communities and our organizations that work to protect the rights of low-income communities, indigenous peoples, people of color and immigrants in the United States.

From the melting Arctic permafrost to the catastrophe following Hurricane Katrina, from the daily toxic assault of power-plants and refineries to the loss of fresh water in the Southwest, Indigenous Peoples and poor people of color in the United States are disproportionately impacted by climate change; which is why we find ourselves at the frontlines of the struggle to reduce these impacts. Due to our shared experience of the damage caused by the climate crisis, we recognize that we are in the same boat as our sisters and brothers in the Global South. We therefore call on you to support a legally binding treaty and to oppose any treaty that does not respect the rights of frontline, climate-impacted communities, both North and South. As someone who has benefited from the experience of growing up in two countries, Indonesia and the United States, and whose family heritage can be traced to Kenya, you are uniquely positioned to respond to this problem from a global perspective.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government’s proposals and negotiating positions are the single greatest barrier to progress in the Conference of the Parties process. Between side deals, weak targets, false solutions, lack of transparency, and a failure to commit to a legally binding agreement, the U.S. is gambling with the future of life on this planet.

Our communities face a triple bottom-line threat: we are surrounded by the polluting industries that at one and the same time condemn us to disproportionate rates of asthma, heart disease and other health threats, and are the primary contributors to the climate crisis; as poor communities, we are the most vulnerable to food insecurity, lack of access to basic services, and other consequences of climate disruption, with no one being more impacted then the women and children among us; finally, should the false solutions proposed in the UNFCCC process come to fruition, our communities will continue to pay the price for corporate pollution while reaping none of the rewards of these failed policies.

As representatives of a grassroots movement across the U.S., we want to be very clear about our expectations of you and your administration:

•  We demand an equitable international negotiation process that acknowledges, respects and advances the concerns of vulnerable communities everywhere, both in the Global South, and in the United States.

• We call for a real, accountable, and just transition from fossil fuel dependency to a more localized green economy that builds community resilience and gives communities real control over the decisions that effect their daily lives.

• We condemn any and all schemes that trade pollution on the financial market and that fail to take into account the rights of indigenous peoples and the need to protect forest biodiversity, such as current cap-and-trade policy and offset-schemes. Market-based carbon reduction schemes will not lead to sufficient carbon reductions, and will continue to create greater health disparities both in the United States and throughout the world.

• We expect your administration to advance proposals that recognize the disproportionate myriad impacts of climate change, and that commit resources commensurate to the scale of the challenges our communities face now and will continue to face in the near future.

• Industrialized nations must provide for reparation of ecological debts. Funds should be provided to assist developing countries to increase their capacities to protect their people from displacement and other potential effects, recognizing the disproportionate impacts on poor women, children and indigenous communities.

The solution to the Climate Crisis requires a rights-based framework that is legally binding and that minimally agrees to the following five commitments on the part of the United States:

1. Rapid, deep reductions in emissions at the source, in the United States, through an immediate ramp-down of the US consumption load, without offsets. This means a minimum of 49% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.
2. Recognition and payment of reparations, or climate debt, to the Global South through a transparent funding source rather than through the multi-lateral development institutions, such as the World Bank, that have thus far failed to provide sustainable development pathways for the Global South.
3. Operationalize all implementation language in the UNFCCC within all established rights-based declarations, covenants and conventions, whether or not they have been signed or ratified by the US, including the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on Biodiversity; particularly in implementation language of REDD
4. Acknowledge the traditional knowledge of grassroots communities who are and will be the first to feel the burden of climate change, and take this knowledge, along with the most current science, as the basis of policy decisions.
5. Ensure space for the real engagement and participation of our communities, for whom concepts of sustainability and resilience are not new.

In your acceptance speech last year, you spoke of your belief that change does not come from Washington, D.C. but to Washington D.C. In response to your clear call, we are now coming to you from the same communities that organized to win you the presidency, as people from across the United States who have put our confidence in you as our highest elected representative. We stand united; as poor communities we are vulnerable to your decisions, but as communities rich in history and popular will we are prepared to demonstrate our potential to lead the way toward new solutions to the climate crisis. Solutions will only be constructive to our economy if they are done with justice and equity.

The tone and substance of the current proposals in these negotiations do not represent the change you promised or change we can believe in. We expect you to deliver on those promises by standing up for those of us on the frontlines of climate change, by calling for a legally binding treaty built on respect for international human rights obligations, and the responsibility entailed by those rights.  Your role as President is to deliver a fair, just and binding agreement. As you know, our role as organizers demands that we hold you accountable to that charge.

Finally, we do not believe that any agreement is better than no agreement. We join with social movements both North and South in opposing a non-legally binding treaty or any treaty that does not respect the human rights of the Global South, indigenous people, immigrants, women and people of color throughout the United States.

Sincerely,

Advocates for Environmental and Human Rights, Alternatives for Communities and Environment,  Asia Pacific Environmental Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Building Alternatives for A Sustainable Environments, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network, Just Transition Alliance, League of Young Voters Education Fund, Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, Right to the City Alliance, Southwest Workers Union, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, WEACT for Environmental Justice, West County Toxics Coalition, Women of Color United (partial list of signatories)

Crafted by civil society participants at the 15^th Conference of Parties representing the above organizations.

La Paz, Bolivia, where I was born and spent my first 18 years “could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change,” according to The New York Times. [1]   I’ve been tracking the melting glaciers that supply water to the La Paz metropolis for the last few years. Each year the pace of melting has outstripped prior predictions in dramatic fashion. As a kid and a teenager I used to visit the emblematic glacier, Chacaltaya, mentioned in the Times article.  It is now gone.  Extinct.  Scientists speculated that it would be gone by 2020; it formally disappeared this year.  The crisis is no longer a futuristic prediction.  It has arrived.  The human impact stands to be incredibly stark. Margarita Limachi Álvarez, a Bolivian woman living in a village impacted by receding glaciers was quoted in the Times article saying,  “A lot of us think about not having kids anymore.  Without water or food, how would we survive? Why bring them here to suffer?”

Let’s transpose that experience to a U.S. context:  Lake Mead, which is a major source of water for LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix, has a 50% chance of being completely dry by 2021. [2]   That is only 11 years from now.  Major urban centers in Southwest U.S. are going to suffer dramatic decreases in water supplies within the next decade.

Tens of millions of lives are at stake in Copenhagen and beyond.  Literally.  Our profit- and growth-based economy has pushed the planet’s life systems to the brink.  Hence the motto on the streets of Copenhagen this week:  “We need Systems Change, not Climate Change.”  It’s way too late for compromises.

Compromises are no longer viable, unless you are of the mind that some communities and populations are disposable.  At this point, compromises mean the eradication of entire island states. Compromises condemn entire swaths of the African continent to death from drought and severe climate dislocation. Compromises point to massive displacement and repression for immigrants and poor communities of color in the U.S. in an era of intensifying resource scarcity. I’m not willing to settle for compromise.  In my personal life, compromise may well mean the depopulation and implosion of my hometown as a “major urban climate casualty.”

The core of our current conundrum is pretty simple, really: Wealthy corporations and national elites created the carbon problem and must fix it.  My 5-year-old, Maya, gets it.  She understands the basic kindergarten notion of, “If you break it, you pay for it.”  She understands that social harmony, trust, friendship and true teamwork depend on some key values:  sharing instead of hoarding, and being accountable when an injury is committed, whether it was intended or not.  That’s the planetary moment we face.  The U.S, Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia account for 70% of the historic CO2 emissions on the planet.  Yet communities in the Global South, like folks in my Bolivian city of birth, stand to pay for the  broken dishes  with their lives and livelihoods. So we must share the responsibility for emissions reductions and the coming economic transition in a fair and accountable way.

Once upon a time, I remember Candidate Obama inviting us to move away from a ‘me society’ and into a ‘we society’.  Well, Copenhagen gives him the opportunity to walk the talk.  Business as usual is a dead end deal, in the very real sense of the word dead.  As in, 50% of all species extinct by 2100 if we remain on the current growth and profit treadmill.  As in 70 % of the world’s arable areas suffering from drought by 2025 if we stay the course.  What will it be, Mr. President?  Rhetoric or reality?  When the U.S. government’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, refuses to acknowledge our country’s historic “climate debt” to the world, he is defending business as usual.

To successfully weather the current climate transition, the world really needs:

1. Greenhouse gas emission targets that are real, binding, enforceable, verifiable and in line with the science; targets that reduce emissions at the source.

2. Agreement that industrialized nations must pay for the damage they have done to the rest of the world over the last 200 years–they must pay their “climate debt” and fund mitigation and adaptation efforts throughout the Global South.

3. A transparent, democratic funding mechanism to administer payment of the climate debt.

4. The recognition and protection of the rights of all peoples in all aspects of climate policy.

Bolivia’s current president, Evo Morales, made the following insightful observation upon arriving in Copenhagen yesterday: “The current United States defense budget is $687 billion. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful. The budget for the Iraq war, according to the figures we have, is $2.6 trillion…trillions of dollars. But directed towards paying the climate debt, $10 billion. This is completely unfair…”

President Obama, the whole world is waiting.  Act now, while we still have room to breathe.

* CLIMATE TALKS UNDEMOCRATIC & ON VERGE OF FAILURE
* US/RICH COUNTRIES REFUSE SERIOUS REDUCTIONS & CLIMATE DEBT
* MASSIVE POLICE REPRESSION AGAINST NONVIOLENT CIVIL SOCIETY

WHEN: Friday December 18th 4:30-6:00PM
WHERE: Danish Consulate,1 California St, at Market St. (Embarcadero BART), San Francisco [view map]
Bring candles and friends.

“First they shut the public out of the climate negotiations, then they shut out 80% of NGOs who have been accredited to attend, and now they are jailing people who challenge the undemocratic nature of the climate negotiations, while the future of life on earth literally hangs in the balance.”
— Dorothy Guerro, Focus on the Global South, Climate Justice Now Network.

WHY?
UN CLIMATE TALKS ON VERGE OF FAILURE: Because the US and other wealth climate polluting nations refuse to significantly reduce climate pollution and to pay our ecological debt to climate-impacted developing world and because of the lack of democracy in the UN climate talks. On Tuesday, US climate negotiator Todd Stern said he foresees no change in President Obama’s offer to cut emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by2020. The proposal has been widely criticized because it amounts to just a four percent cut when adopting the 1990 emission standard used by the rest of the world. Scientists call for a 40% cut by 2020in order to prevent an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile, developing countries including the US, UK and Denmark drafted and circulated a document to completely circumvent the UN from all further future negotiations.

* CIVIL SOCIETY NGO’S BANNED FROM UN: Accredited civil society groups including Friends of the Earth, Avaaz, Tck Tck Tck, and Via Campesina have been banned from the UN Climate Conference. ”The surgical removal of non governmental organizations underscores the lack of democracy inherent in these negotiations. The only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is fully supporting and including peoples movements like the very ones illegitimately removed from this process.,” said Professor Micheal Dorsey, a member of the Climate Justice Now! Network.

* DENMARK VIOLATES DEMOCRATIC & HUMAN RIGHTS, ATTACKS NONVIOLENT ACTIVISTS: Danish police have engaged in mass preemptive arrests, detentions, clubbed and pepper spayed nonviolent activists, raided organizing centers and suspended basic civil liberties and democratic rights. Dr. Tadzio Mueller of Berlin, an accredited NGO observer at the COP 15 and the spokesperson for Climate Justice Action, was arrested without provocation by plain clothed police shortly after a press conference announcing nonviolent demonstrations plans. He remains in jail awaiting trial.

SING A PETITION TO THE DANISH GOVERNMENT:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ Tadzio/petition.html

WHO: Mobilization for Climate Justice West: A coalition of thirty climate justice, environmental justice, community, peace and human rights organizations. http://west.actforclimatejustice.org

i am here in copenhagen. this morning – it is 7 am in CPH, 10 pm back home in Oakland … missing you all. it snowed yesterday, wet snow that did not accumulate much; snow is expected for the rest of this week and weekend. i’m on the first half of a cup of coffee so forgive the disjointed order of words and thoughts as they come through ..

i read a facebook posting on peace, justice and development by a friend who is referencing and juxtaposing Amartya Sen’s piece, “Development as freedom,” MLK, and the Dalai Lama.

we are preparing this morning to take to the streets in a massive non violent civil disobedience.

this is the largest conference / international event that they have hosted here in Denmark. ever.

100,000 people took to the streets on Saturday to demand climate agreements that were just, equitable, and of sufficient scale to meet the need of environmental crisis that we anticipate.

After the collapse of the WTO between Seattle and Hong Kong, in their dying throes, the WTO ministerial said that they hoped that the UNFCCC could figure out global economic governance.

A crew of us who went to protest the WTO in Hong Kong in 2005 dubbed WTO “World Take Over.”

So I guess .. in thinking about .. different meaning of development, economic security, peace; why are we here in a cold Nordic country, a dark morning, house buzzing with energy slowly in a crescendo …

The movements from the Global South with whom my crew this time around (movementgeneration.org) – whose experience here in CPH i have had the honor of observing, building and documenting – have the experience, desire and dream that development is not about simple economic measures. It is about the freedom and opportunity to make our own destinies, collectively.

One delegate from Via Campesina reminded us that our communities already have the knowledges and practices that will lead the way to sustainability.

Another reminded us that this is not just a struggle for economic, historical, cultural, social well-being of communities, but also a struggle for memory.

Eduardo Galeano, Laura Pulido, Robin Kelley, Gloria Anzaldua would say it is also a struggle of the imagination, of the dreams we have for ourselves and the future, the struggle for the places we call home.

So here we are, thousands of people from the Global South and the South in the North, protesting an undemocratic process – of the more than 22,000 delegates, observers and UN parties who registered and were accredited to be inside the COP15 negotiations in the Bella Centre, less than 1,000 – including official government delegations will be allowed inside today, less than 90 on the days of High Level Sessions Thursday and Friday.

More than 25,000 additional people were planning on attending the more Social Forum like atmosphere of the Klimaforum, the climate justice oriented civil society consrtucted space a few miles from the Bella Centre, from the official COP 15 negotiations.

Protesting an undemocratic process that is threatening, yet again, to curtail the ability of ourselves, our ancestors, our brothers and sisters, our future generations, not only to breathe clean air, to grow food on good earth and in healthy oceans rivers and creeks; to swim, clean and bather in water that sustains life, but also the abilities of our future generations to dream their own dreams, and imagine futures that are similar to a present that would be good enough to be celebrated instead of spurned for a “better” future dream.

so here’s to real democratic, public access for public negotiations that affect the entire global population, and disproportionately those who are being and have been excluded.

as the youth delegations (with the notable exception of the US “officially sponsored” youth delegation sponsored by the Big Environmental NGOs) have said, no decisions about us without us.

and here’s to our dreams.

xiangwangzhengyi!

Here are some highlights on the work of the delegation & my work here so far:

1) “No Decisions About Us Without Us!”

They are severely restricting access to the Bella Center for Civil Society as of today, and the restrictions on badges (and the requirement for secondary badges) means that many accredited delegations from impacted communities, north and south, are excluded from the process. There will be an action today and a press conference about the restricted access, and we are organizing folks under the message, “No Decisions About Us Without Us.”

2) RECLAIM POWER ACTION– Wednesday

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the MAJOR action, called RECLAIM POWER. Folks from outside will march to the Bella center (COP) and come up to, and possibly through, the gate to meet a civil society and country delegate walk-out of the talks to make a “Peoples’ Assembly”. At the front of the march to the Bella center will be southern peoples and other impacted peoples who are accredited and not allowed access. This is the Seattle-ing of Copenhagen.

Remember, if Parties of Conference walk out (that means country delegates) the whole thing comes to a halt, because it is a consensus process. We think we have several southern countries.

If we frame the collapse, we build our power moving forward. If we frame the collapse, we have a year to build up our base, and support the work of our allies who are engaged in all the processes. What we can move, or stop, in the COP is one way to measure our power. Here, you can’t talk about climate without talking about Climate Justice. For most, that means try to take away it’s meaning. But it has also shifted the debate significantly. Equity is central. Even mainstream NGOs are talking about debt. Stern was forced to say “climate debt” which is incredible, even if to deny it (you can not deny a frame without evoking it first).

Nothing good will come from this COP, so the question is who gets to frame the collapse. Do we get to frame it as Civil Society and Southern Countries say, “We won’t settle for Death.”  or will Northern countries blame the collapse on “China and the G77.” Or will the rich countries cobble together a bad deal that is a Political Agreement and not a legally binding treaty, and then say, “we did it,” when in fact they have done nothing but waste more time.

3) Danish Cops are Keeping the People’s Voices Out!

The Danish cops are coming down very hard on demonstrations. Last night it is reported that Naomi Klein was tear gassed.

4) Towards Strategic Alignment of Movements

We helped pull together a meeting of POC/EJ/RJ forces form the US yesterday that was one of the first to get unity. We are sending a letter to Obama (as a vehicle) to talk about both that we stand with the south, and that “what is bad for the south is bad for us too.”  (see media advisory)

I gave a talk with Naomi Klein the other day and the whole delegation will be getting together with her later this week.
Oh- and we have been quite successful in moving this idea that there is a “south of the north” and some of the new messaging for Reclaim Power and other things have included the idea of “the global south and climate impacted communities in the north.”

We also pulled together a meeting last night of Global South folks and grassroots groups from the North (all people of color) to a meeting that included some amazing folks. That was very well attended, and I think good. We’ve been finding ways of engaging, for sure.

5)  WEDNESDAY MORNING (6:30am COP time)

We have the big RECLAIM POWER action this morning, in which we will march with La Via Campesina, Jubilee South and Focus on the Global South onto the Bella Center, and then, possible, through the gate and meet up with folks walking out from the inside.

Access to the COP has been severely restricted by the UN, resulting in the vast majority of people, even accredited people like us, being locked out of the process.

Okay, we have to move, we are anchoring one section of the mobilization.