Hi folks -
I wanted to share with you a statement that was drafted at the conclusion
of a week of workshops, plenaries, dialogues and debates convened in a
dedicated 'climate space' at the World Social Forum in Tunisia this April.
I think it paints a pretty good picture of what's on the minds of many in
the global climate justice movement. Food for thought in our policy work.
-Janet
p.s. The statement is also attached in multiple languages
To Reclaim Our Future, We Must Change the Present. Our Proposal for
Changing the System and not the Climate
The capitalist system has exploited and abused nature, pushing the planet
to its limits, so much so that the system has accelerated dangerous and
fundamental changes in the climate.
Today, the severity and multiplicity of weather changes – characterized by
droughts, desertification, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, forest fires and
the melting of glaciers and sea ice – indicate that the planet is burning.
These extreme changes have direct impacts on humans through the loss lives,
livelihoods, crops and homes all of which have led to human displacement in
the form of forced migration and climate refugees on a massive an
unprecedented scale.
Humanity and nature are now standing at a precipice. We can stand idle and
continue the march into an abysmal future too dire to imagine, or we can
take action and reclaim a future that we have all hoped for.
We will not stand idle. We will not allow the capitalist system to burn us
all. We will take action and address the root causes of climate change by
changing the system. The time has come to stop talking and to take action.
We must nurture, support, strengthen and increase the scale of grassroots
organizing in all places, but in particular in frontline battlegrounds
where the stakes are the highest.
System Change means:
- Leave more than two thirds of fossil fuel reserves under the soil, as
well as beneath the ocean floor, in order to prevent catastrophic levels of
climate change.
- Ban all new exploration and exploitation of oil, tar sands, oil shale,
coal, uranium, and natural gas.
- Support a just transition for workers and communities away from the
extreme energy economy and into resilient local economies based on social,
economic and environmental justice.
- Decentralize the generation and ownership of energy under local
community control using renewable sources of energy. Invest in community
based, small-scale, local energy infrastructure.
- Stop building mega and unnecessary infrastructure projects that do not
benefit the population and are net contributors to greenhouse gasses like,
mega dams, excessive huge highways, large-scale centralized energy
projects, and superfluous massive airports.
- End the dominance of export-based industrial forms of food production,
(including in the livestock sector), and promote small-scale integrated and
ecologically sound farming and an agriculture system that ensures food
sovereignty, and that locally grown crops meet the nutritional and cultural
needs of the local community. These measures will help to cool the planet.
- Adopt Zero Waste approaches through promoting comprehensive recycling
and composting programs that end the use of greenhouse gas emitting
incinerators – including new generation hi-tech incinerators – and
landfills.
- Stop land grabbing and respect the rights of small farmers, peasants
and women. Recognize the collective rights of indigenous and tribal peoples
consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
including their rights to their lands and territories.
- Develop economic strategies that create new kinds of ‘climate jobs’ –
decent paying jobs that directly contribute to carbon reductions – in such
sectors as renewable energy, agriculture, public transportation and
building retrofits.
- Recover the control of the public sources to finance projects for
people and nature like health, education, food, employment, housing,
restoration of water sheds, conservation and restoration of forest and
other ecosystems and others and stop the subsidies to dirty industries,
agribusiness and military industry.
- Take cars off the roads by building clean public transport
infrastructure that is adaptive to local, non-combustion energy sources,
and make it accessible and affordable to everyone.
- Promote local production and consumption of durable goods to satisfy
the fundamental needs of the people and avoid the transport of goods that
can be produced locally.
- Stop and reverse corporate driven free trade and investments
agreements that promote trade for profit and destroy the labor force,
nature and the capacity of nations to define their own policies.
- Stop the corporate capture of the economy and natural resources for
the profit of Transnational Corporations.
- Dismantle the war industry and military infrastructure in order to
reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of warfare, and divert war budgets to
promote genuine peace.
With these measures we will be able to achieve comprehensive employment for
all because built into this systemic change there will be more and better
quality jobs than currently exist within the capitalist system. With these
measures we will be able to build an economy that serves the people and not
the capitalists. We will stop the endless degradation of the earth’s land,
air, and water and preserve the health of humans and the vital cycles of
nature. We will avoid forced migration and millions of climate refugees.
System change requires an end to the global empire of transnational
corporations and banks. Only a society that has the type of democratic
control over resources which is based on workers (including migrant
workers), indigenous and women’s rights and respects the sovereignty of the
people will be able to guarantee economic, social and environmental
justice. System Change requires a break from the patriarchal society in
order to guarantee women’s rights in all aspects of life. Feminism and
ecology are key components of the new society that we are fighting for.
We need a new system that seeks harmony between humans and nature and not
an endless growth model that the capitalist system promotes in order to
make more and more profit. Mother Earth and her natural resources cannot
sustain the consumption and production needs of this modern industrialized
society. We require a new system that addresses the needs of the majority
and not of the few. We need a redistribution of the wealth that is now
controlled by the 1%. And we also need a new definition of wellbeing and
prosperity for all life on the planet under the limits of our Mother Earth.
While there will still be a battle inside the international UN climate
negotiations, the main battlegrounds will be outside and will be rooted in
the places where there are frontline struggles against the fossil fuel
industry, industrial agriculture, deforestation, industrial pollution,
carbon offsets schemes, and REDD-type carbon offsets projects, all
resulting in land and water grabbing and displacements taking place all
over the world.
The United States, Europe, Japan, Russia and other industrialized
countries, as the main historical carbon emitters, should implement the
biggest emissions reductions. China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other
emerging economies should also have targets for emission reductions based
on the principles of common but differentiated responsibility. We do not
accept that on behalf of the right to development several projects for more
unsustainable consumption and exploitation of nature are being promoted in
developing countries only to benefit the profits of the 1%.
The fight for a new system is also the struggle against false solutions to
climate change. If we don’t stop them they will disrupt the Earth’s System
and deeply affect the health of nature and all life. We therefore reject
techno-fix “solutions” like geo-engineering, genetically modified
organisms, agrofuels, industrial bioenergy, synthetic biology,
nanotechnology, hydraulic fracturation (fracking), nuclear projects,
waste-to-energy generation based on incineration, and others.
We are also in opposition to those proposals that want to expand the
commodification, financialization and privatization of the functions of
nature through the so-called “green economy” which places a price on nature
and creates new derivative markets that will only increase inequality and
expedite the destruction of nature. We cannot put the future of nature and
humanity in the hands of financial speculative mechanisms like carbon
trading and REDD. We echo and amplify the many voices that are urging the
European Union to scrap the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), like
Clean Development Mechanisms, is not a solution to climate change and is a
new form of colonialism. In defense of Indigenous Peoples, local
communities and the environment, we reject REDD+ and the grabbing of the
forests, farmlands, soils, mangroves, marine algae and oceans of the world
which act as sponges for greenhouse gas pollution. REDD and its potential
expansion constitutes a worldwide counter-agrarian reform which perverts
and twists the task of growing food into a process of “farming carbon”
called Climate Smart Agriculture.
We must link social and environmental struggles, bring together rural and
urban communities, and combine local and global initiatives so that we can
unite together in a common struggle. We must use all diverse forms of
resistance. We must build a movement that is based on the daily life of
people that guarantees democracy at all stages of societies.
Many proposals already contain key elements needed to build new systemic
alternatives. Some examples include, Buen Vivir, defending the commons,
respecting Indigenous territories and community conserved areas, the rights
of Mother Earth – rights of Nature, food sovereignty, prosperity without
growth, de-globalization, the happiness index, the duties to and rights of
future generations, the Peoples Agreement of Cochabamba and others.
We have all long hoped for the possibility of another world. Today, we take
that hope and turn it into courage, strength and action – that together, we
can change the system. If there is to be a future for humanity, we need to
fight for it right now.
*April 2013*
Signed by the facilitators of the Climate Space:
- Alliance of Progressive Labor, Philippines
- Alternatives International
- ATTAC France
- Ecologistas en Acción
- Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
- ETC Group
- Fairwatch, Italy
- Focus on the Global South
- Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power and end TNCs’ impunity
- Global Forest Coalition
- Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
- Grupo de Reflexão e Apoio ao Processo do Fórum Social Mundial
- Indigenous Environmental Network
- La Via Campesina
- No-REDD Africa Network
- Migrants Rights International
- OilWatch International
- Polaris Institute
- Transnational Institute
