Cochabamba Report - World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

CGP Brazil

 

Report

"World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth"

19 - 22 April, 2010

 

Getting there

 

João Paulo, Helena (my 4 month old daughter who is breastfed and because of that had to accompany us to the event) and I arrived in Cochabamba on April 19^th, early evening, and went straight to the hotel. Although São Paulo is just about 1.000km distant from Cochabamba we were pretty worn out by the whole day spent travelling, once there were no direct flights and we had to connect flights in Santa Cruz. Not to mention the time spent in the airport waiting for the flight to Cochabamba.

 

On the next day, we woke up and headed straight to Tiquipaya, the community where the event was being held. Unfortunately, we lost the inauguration (with Evo Morales’ participation), because the line for registration at the Tiquipaya Coliseum was so huge we thought it just wouldn’t be possible to arrive inside the accreditation place in less than 3 hours. Because of that, we strategically chose to get our accreditation as fast as we could and go to Univalle’s campus, where most of the discussions were being held.  

 

Organizers estimate over 31.000 people from 142 countries participated in the event and we have to remember that  many, many Europeans were held back in their countries because of the ashes released by the volcano in Iceland. And with this information you can also imagine the size of the accreditation line ;-)

 

But even the “waiting in line” part was an interesting moment. People were very friendly and open and we had the chance to socialize with other participants and the many Bolivian indigenous peoples (called Cholos) who were also participating and thought that the way I was carrying my daughter was very interesting. To me it just seemed we were doing the same thing with different tools and positions. (picture attached).

 

On our first day, we experienced problems with the altitude. Have in mind that Cochabamba is “only” 2.800m above the sea level, compared to La Paz which is 3.660m high. A bad headache and a great sense of fatigue stroke us both, but we were able to go through with the planned activities. By the second day, we felt considerably better and we were finally good to go when we left to São Paulo. Bad timming!

 

The conference

 

The work at the conference was organized under the following participation structure:

 

a)      Working Groups - approximately 45 days before the conference, the participant could join up to 3 out of 17 virtual working groups. Documents on the subjects were exchanged by e-mail and a very interesting debate was started previously to the event. I chose groups 06, 08 and 15, respectively Climate Migrants, Climate Debt and Carbon Market. 

Although the subject that interested CGP Brazil the most was Climate Migrants, that was a very slow group, with minor participation, so I become more involved with the climate debt group which discussion was definitely more consistent.

Nevertheless, during the event I was not allowed to participate in the Climate Debt Group, because we could (obviously) only participate in one working group during the event and I chose Climate Migrants, at the time of my registration.

 

b)     Many self organized events about subjects regarding climate change in all its aspects.

 

c)      A large number of panels with speakers from all over the world, some of them already known by most environment and social related organizations such as Naomi Klein, Bernard Cassen, Frei Beto, Vandana Shiva, José Bové, François Houtard and many others.

 

 

We had a hard time deciding in which events we were going to participate. There were so many interesting discussions being held that it always seemed to me like whenever we chose a panel or discussion, we were automatically missing an equally important event elsewhere.  And the area where the event was being held was so big, sometimes we had to consider this aspect when choosing the activities we wanted to participate or we would spend our precious time just getting from one place to the other. But we couldn’t be everywhere so, finally, we decided to focus on the debates related somehow to the CGP Brazil’s work axes for 2010, which meant the following panels and discussions:

 

1)     Migrations Forced by Climate Change - Raul Delgado Weiss, Pablo de la Vega, Colin Rajah, Aldo Morrone, Alice Cutler

 

2)     Do we need a world referendum on climate change? - Bernard Cassen, Amy Goodman, Edigio Brunetto, Joel Marsden, Vera Mugittu

 

3)     Defining a common strategy after Cochabamba - Miguel Palacín, Nicola Bullard, Asad Rehman, Tom Kucharz, Meenakshi Raman, Leonilda Zurita, Julia Carmen Sanchez, Wendel Trio

4)     Presentations of the conclusions of the working groups – Climate Migrants

 

5)     A self organized event called “Trade Unionists & Green Jobs”, promoted by CUT Brazil with the presences of Carmen Foro, from CUT, Luis Hernan Paz, from CTA Argentina and Jonathan Neale, from UCU, England.

 

Cochabamba outcomes                                                                   

 

Broadly, it is possible to say that the conference was successful in many ways:

It succeeded in calling attention to the failure of CoP 15 in achieving the goals we citizens declared as essential to the Kioto Protocol negotiation. Through organizing such a huge (and at the same time subject focused) event it gave hundreds of social movements and organizations the chance to create stronger bonds and a more unified speech/action for the pursuing of their goals at CoP16 negotiation, in Mexico this year. After all, it will take this and much more to undermine the US efforts in enforcing their agenda.

 

A second deployment of the conference was the announcement of a 2o edition of the conference in 2011, which is great news for all those organizations and movements in need of an appropriate forum to discuss climate change and build the essential alliances to support their struggle.

 

The declaration that Evo Morales, in person, will lead the peoples delegation heading the UN headquarters in NY to present the resolutions approved by the conference also provided empowerment for such action and will draw all lights to the subject once again and will add on the desired legitimacy for the action.

 

The Bolivian president also proposed the beginning of a collective draft of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. This, he says, “will establish a legal framework for protecting our increasingly threatened natural environment and raising the global consciousness about Mother Earth, on which we all depend for life”.

 

All these actions signalize the possibility of bringing together the many marginal voices fighting separately against climate change. The ground prepared at this meeting has the potential to help organize and arm organized civil society to fight for a real solution in terms of climate change.

And, finally, the most significant outcome of this conference, the document called “Peoples Agreement” which declares the creation of a Climate Justice Court with the intention of suing and enforcing the laws at all nations, companies and individuals who commit felonies against nature.

President Evo Morales, who organized the gathering, also announced plans to mount a referendum of 2 billion people on solutions to the climate crisis within a year.

For CGP Brazil, the participation on the self organized event “Trade Unionists & Green Jobs” was an important step towards the development of a significant work in the area of green jobs and decent work. In this event, it has been distributed a hundred of CGP document and the Sammy case brochure about climate clange. Unfortunately, incredible as it might seem, within the hundreds of panels, events and work groups this was the ONLY event dealing with the subject of green jobs, one of the most controversial in debate of climate change spillovers. Nevertheless, we ceased the opportunity to start conversations with many union leaders and representatives and organizations related to the union´s world about the organization of more consistent work (perhaps a movement) to deal with issues that are both work and climate related. The conclusions arrived at this event were that green jobs could be the solution to end with two huge problems: climate change and the enormous rates of unemployment everywhere in the world.

 

 

By - Adriana Guimarães and João Paulo Cândia - CGP Brazil