THE CLIMATE CRISIS, A CHALLENGE FOR THE HUMAN CONDITION AND FOR AN ETHICS OF NATURE
Elizabeth Peredo
Beltrán
The climate change we are living
is not any crisis, it is a global alert about the way toward self destruction
that the powerful have chosen, given the lack of equitable possibilities that
the world need in order to survive –the indigenous peoples, the social
groups living in poverty, women,the elderly and children are the
most affected by it in today’s world.
La Paz is a beautiful Andean city surrounded by
glaciers of the Eastern Mountain Range of the Andes. Among these, the Illimani
stands out as handsome and majestic Apu, is the guardian of its
inhabitants and of the smaller mountains and glaciers that surround it. More
than two million inhabitants take shelter in this scene of urban valleys and
altiplano fields: La Paz and El Alto are two cities with intense histories, a
long path that includes the building of a society where justice and cultural
diversity seek to live in harmony.
The coat of arms of the La Paz Department has as its
center the powerful image of this beautiful snow covered mountain meaning that
this glacier is part of the history and identity of our department. The
Illimani, just as the majority of glaciers of the world, is a most valuable
source of information about the history of the planet; just as the trees
through their circles, ice of glaciers give data about the climate of the earth
during many centuries. According to how old the glaciers are and how much snow
and ice have in their structure, they will give more information to share about
the different climate periods in the world and about the stability of the
planet. The glacier scientists often speak about our long history by studying
the different levels of ice that have formed over time. Science confirms what
the ancient Andean cultures have told us: the snow peaks are our memory and
thus our protectors.
Even more, the Illimani covered by a white cape above
the city of La Paz is the source of inspiration for poets, artists and painters
who find on his impressive beauty a fountain of identity and a sense for their
lives. There are tangos, huayños, boleros and other songs that call on
Illimani as a symbol for their inspiration. Hundreds of cultural groups of
dancers, musicians and intellectuals take his name as an identity. Walter
Solón Romero painted an Illimani when the windows of
his workshop, located in the neighborhood of Sopocachi, were covered by a
modern building, one of the many that have slowly been closing windows and
raising shadows in the neighborhood as “modernity” became in the
city. Unhappy because he couldn’t contemplate anymore the gorgeous snowy
Illimani, he put a white paper in the window and painted on it the image of the
Illimani to replace the covered window and remember the view of this glacier
keeping its silent presence in his Arts Atelier on the third floor of the Solon
Foundation. This glacier is, without a doubt, a source of identity and
inspiration.
According to UNESCO the
cultural identity is an inalienable peoples’ right. However, the
Illimani, the Mururata, the Huayna Potosí, the
Tuni-Condoriri and all our tropical glaciers in Los Andes, the same as
thousands of other glaciers in the world, symbols of identity and memory are
now melting before our eyes as a metaphor of the short time that we have to
react and change the course of events brought about by western capitalist
civilization, based on the greed and the irrational and irresponsible
accumulation of money and richness.
It is not the only glacier we are losing due to global
warming. In Bolivia, a smaller and more fragile glacier, the famous Chacaltaya
has disappeared. It was the traditional base of the Andean Bolivian Club and it
had the only ski lift in the whole country. In this glacier many tourist and
young people came to ski and enjoy ice-skating on the highest glacier in the
world: more than 4,000 meters (18,000’) above sea level.
Only memories of that glacier are left today,
remembering and the feeling of impotence in the view of a phenomenon that we
have not provoked. Bolivia is only responsible of about 0.17% of global
emissions, (0.33% of CO2), but we are suffering their worst consequences and
find ourselves in a very vulnerable situation. The Andean glaciers are the
basic source of identity, ecological balances, water and energy for the cities,
small villages and towns around them; several eco systems, as well as millions
of inhabitants, depend on them for their existence. In the case of La Paz and
El Alto, we get about 20% of our water and energy from them. Scientific studies
by UNESCO’s International Hydrological Program are already warning about
the progressive and imminent disappearance of the tropical glaciers of the
Andes and about the humanitarian emergency that will result from lack of water
in a near future, and we are not talking about this two big cities but all the
small villages, and rural communities that surround the various glaciers.
Presently more than a million persons in the city of El
Alto are having water rationing due to the serious lack of this element for
public service. Lake Titicaca is losing its water level in alarming degrees,
and the grazing animals of rural communities in the Altiplano and the Chaco
regions are dying because of intense droughts, the country has lost 5.000 heads
of livestock in a mater of weeks; there are plagues and sickness due to the
melting of the ice caps and the high heat in many communities of the rural
regions including the Yungas, where the people suffer from high temperatures,
lack of water that is affecting their basic means of living.
Scientific studies foresee that these conditions will
affect more the water provision for than 70 million persons in South America in
the near future. The loss of glaciers in several parts of the world is
threatening the lives of millions of persons. In the case of the Himalayan
Glaciers that are the fastest melting glaciers in the world, the loss is
measured at about 10 to 15 meters a year, their loss will soon affect the lives
of at least 1,500 million persons in China, India and Nepal.
This is not happening because just we have bad luck, or
because God is punishing us; it is due to an enormous historical debt that was
generated by the more developed countries because they have taken advantage of
the atmospheric space, our territories, our people and our richness. And we are
talking not only about Bolivia, but also about the whole Global South. Thus,
colonialism and capitalism have left us a debt acquired in centuries of
exploitation causing devastation, vulnerability and marginalization.
Who will return our snow covered mountains, our sources
of water and energy, our identity and our life now that they are melting
inevitably due global warming? How are we going to face the acute lack of
water in our regions? Who is going to respond for the innumerable
catastrophes and floods in the world, now that they are made worse by enormous
climate changes?
Finally, who will return the planet to the harmony it
needs to continue sheltering us?
Climate Change is a mirror of the
system
The UN Framework on Climate Change Conference process,
that in the last times has been focused the worldwide attention, reflects the
debate about a very transcendental issue: a life system that is not more
sustainable in the world. The reports and debates made evident that the impact
of the excessive production of greenhouse gasses is becoming extreme and
irreversible for a long time. Even if the emissions were to decrease to 0
today, they would not return our lost snow capped mountains, and nothing will
avoid the loss of territories in the island nations, the desertification in
Africa or the lack of water at a global level for this reasons. Nor would it be
able to control the enormous frequency of environmental disasters that are
being provoked by this human caused phenomenon in the whole world. Scientific
reports about the ecological footprint that humanity is leaving right now
affirm that the planet spends 30% more than what the earth can regenerate in a
year, dragging with it a suicidal deficit.
The balance is broken. We have never confronted such a
great problem that so clearly gives evidence of the most profound problems and
contradictions in our civilization. Behind the global warming a system of
impunity is hiding, a system of irrational accumulation moved by the savage
desire of control the world thru commodifying it. A savage desire for the
profit of local and transnational corporations, and of visions that promote a
vision of development and welfare that has devastated the planet, digging up
the very basis of life and of the future (super-exploitation, excessive
extractions, comforts and waste).
It is true that all the countries in the world have
contributed to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG), but the levels of
responsibility are relative; not all of them generate pollution in the same
proportion, and it is clear that the developed and industrialized countries are
mainly responsible of global warming. We are talkion about the historical
accumulations of Greenhouse gases that were produced since the beginning of the
industrial era and have grown exponentially in the last 4 decades, coinciding
with the global rule and influence of the Washington Consensus.
Presently 80% of global emissions are produced by the
uncontrolled use by industry and energy consumption in developed countries,
countries that have only 20% of world’s population. Latin America is
responsible of only 10.3% of global emissions. This difference between the
emissions of developed countries and countries in development have never been
controlled, in spite of the fact that it was the goal of the Kyoto Protocol
signed more than 15 years ago. Of the 191 countries that signed this Protocol,
one of the most powerful ones, the United States, has refused sistematically to
ratify it; and is the one that contaminates at a rate of 20.2%. During
the negotiations in preparation for the COP 15 in Copenhagen, the developed
countries have not made any real commitments to reduce their emissions and they
are even trying to escape the commitments from the Kyoto Protocol, ignoring it
and trying to set up a fragile agreement without much meaning.
The climate change we are living through is not just
any kind of crisis; it is a global alert about self-destruction system that the
powerful have chosen, about the unequal possibility left to the world for its
survival –indigenous peoples, social groups living in poverty, women, the
elderly and children are the ones most affected by the world today.
But it is also a challenge in the midst of the shock
and the apocalyptic voices that pretend to come from the urgency and say that
there is no hope, rather than voices asking us to find true solutions that come
from paths of solidarity, honor, justice and
equity.
That is why climate crisis is also a crisis that above
all presents us with the need to create new paradigms for civilization;
recovering and building new ethics of relationships with nature and of great
love for life in towns and communities all over the world. Indigenous peoples,
women, agricultural communities, local communities are owners of a wisdom that
daily life teaches us about life, sustainability and solidarity. That is why it
is also an opportunity to look over all the visions and concepts developed by
various cultures in the world about the need for harmony with nature and about
the care we owe the planet, being a part of it.
There are millions of persons in the world, hundreds of
societies and cultures that, thanks to their accumulated knowledge, confront
global changes and succeed in finding partial solutions while they develop more
dignified proposals for consideration to teach us that we all have to confront
the problem from its origins, with creativity and the necessary will to review
and change the paradigms of dominant life that tell us that development is
infinite. The dominant paradigms that states:
Development = destruction and
extraction,
Welfare = comforts paid for by
others,
Success = power and
discrimination,
Power = scorn and
humiliation.
But “We cannot solve problems by thinking in the
same old way as when we created them” (Einstein). The principles for
development and for survival that have ruled until now have turned out to be
calamitous for they are not only concentrated in unilateral benefits but also
generate destruction of the environment and gravely hurt human rights. They
only benefit the powerful of the world and are the origin of the greatest
inequalities and injustices.
The need to change paradigms that will support our
civilization is of the greatest importance, and this implies the need for great
political will. But above all, the courage to deconstruct and recuperate that
which is capable of caring for humanity and nature in such a way that will not
only be sustainable, but deeply balanced and just. In that sense, thinking on
feminist and indigenous practices of social and environmental care is a
beginning in this search.
The challenge to abandon mercantile and
wasting lifestyle
The present world tries to commodify everything:
water, the land, life, knowledge…even the air.
This is the dominant paradigm: everything is for sale
so as to generate profit for some. At the same time, development and
growth are measured with indicators that are leading us to the destruction of
the planet and humanity.
That is why, until the present, solutions used to
solve the problem of such magnitude as what scientists describe stay within the
limits imposed by the dominant marketplace logic, the power of transnational
corporations and the thoughtless consumption of natural resources. For example,
one of the mechanisms contemplated by the Kyoto Protocol, and used in the
negotiations for Copenhagen, is that of Carbon Exchange Bonds, Carbon Markets.
For some, this is the way to confront climate change; for many, this solution
will only serve to allow transnational corporations and the northern countries
to “buy” the right to keep on contaminating the environment at the
expense of poor countries and the poor people, even though according to
history, they were impoverished while they were preserving nature and
contributing oxygen to the rest of the world.
Given that, it is evident that the Southern countries
have the jungles and forests that help preserve the oxygen in the planet, the
promoters of carbon bond markets could be very dangerous, because instead of
transforming the productive matrix and changing consumption to more sustainable
models –what is historically needed--, they keep promoting the root of
the problem: oil energy systems as the base of our civilization. Instead of
contributing to reduce the emissions, they keep promoting a system that uses
the logic of luxury and extraction without anything that will really lead to a
controlling and changing the causes.
Another example is the production of agro-fuels
(bio-fuels) that appear to be fuels based on vegetable products instead of
fossils, with the idea that they are less contaminating. The truth is that
agro-fuels are in the first place a huge business for huge corporations just as
the business of seeds and drugs. They are a perfect business for the landlords;
who use vast quantities of sugar care or corn, planted in vast territories,
becoming a new reason for cutting down the forest to increase the agricultural
frontiers and putting food security in danger for the whole world (a situation
already denounced by FAO, several specialized NGOs and by the organizations of
the Via Campesina). The ETC Group states that the increasing price of food felt
between 2002 and 2008 was due basically to the production of agro-fuels. Its
production in several countries uses cheap labor and precarious conditions,
even causing grave diseases to the workers due to bad working conditions. But
more than that, there are several sources that state that these
“green” fuels also contribute to increase gas emissions because
they use fossil fuels to produce them anyway, and because of the terrible
pressure to cut down and the burn the tropical forests and jungles so the big
corporations can have more productive lands to promote their enviromental
devastating business.
So, even though some “false solutions” are
based on multilateral environmental accords and are developed within the
framework of the United Nations, they have opened the doors to a gamut of
postures and proposals whose consequences affect the advancement of human and
environmental rights as can be seen in the case of the carbon markets and the
agro-fuels. There are also even solutions proposed that promote the development
of transgenic technologies to adapt seeds and natural species to the changes
brought on by floods and droughts.
At another level, surprisingly, some voices are even
pointing to birth control for women as a “solution” for climate
change, affirming that if they could stop unwanted pregnancies in the world
–that according to reports are about 200 million a year—there would
be less population to pressure on the environment.
As we can see, this debate can easily lose its way and
distort the real origin of the crisis because it ends up looking for the wrong
answers.
The need to re-establish harmony with
Mother Earth
Struggles all over the world have brought collective
visions and goals around the big challenge to re-establish harmony with nature.
In Bolivia, for instance, social struggles for water and for the environment
have left us an inheritance consisting in a collective social vision that is
tightly linked to life and to recover senses about “water is life”
and promotes the respect for Mother Earth, the Pachamama. This vision is
reflected in the new Constitution that speaks of Water as a Human Right, and
the Right to Life that incorporates the concept of “suma
qamaña” and of “ñandereko” =
“good living and in harmony” with Nature.
In counter position to the dominant idea that
“development” is infinite, the concept of “good living”
emphasizes the fact that it is not possible to develop and to have good living
by taking away what belongs to others, that it is not possible to grow always;
that development cannot be measured with indicators of inequality or inequity
and that we must look for sustainability which must be based on respect and
equity among human beings and on a profound sense and practice of thanksgiving
and reciprocity with Nature.
Several anthropological and economical studies have
looked deeply into the rural economies in the Andes to bring out some of the
characteristics and theories in them. There is an economy based on the
“logic of the gift” which basically means
an economy of the logic of social re-distribution and reciprocity with nature
(studies and researches by Dominique Temple, Olivia Harris, Elizabeth Peredo
and Xavier Albó).
The global crisis has brought about a better
understanding that these visions and the urgent need of looking for a
governance/institutionalization with rules that will help bring about a real
care for life and for nature. Bolivia is responding to this challenge by to
incorporating some of their concepts into our Constitution and inviting all the
countries of the world to re-think the meaning of development, growth and human
as well as environmental rights. In that sense, the UN Declaration of the Day
of Mother Earth opens, for the first time this framework, the possibility of
thinking in relationship between human beings and nature and promoting a debate
for implement an International Declaration about the care of Mother Earth.
Debates and negotiations around climate change cannot
forget or leave aside the advancement that humanity has made in constructing a
system of human rights and of the care of the environment, or much less the
struggles the peoples did to give society some human innovative ways of
confronting conflicts.
They cannot be satisfied with emission fees only, or
with money to mitigate and adapt. The challenge today is much greater and it
brings with it the need to rethink the model and the paradigms about all that
we have established in our lives, our culture and our development.
It is a challenge for all humanity to build a system
that promotes respect for nature and sanctions environmental crimes and makes
it clear that Mother Earth has rights.
The world has advanced by creating national, regional
and multilateral systems that try to assure human rights for all, but little
has been done about integral and relationship systems that assure the rights of
nature that will secure the survival of the species, and among them the human
species. That is the “adaptation” that we are looking for; this
crisis demands that the elites of the world “adapt” to the
idea that we have to change and that we cannot continue building model based on
extraction and market profits.
Bolivian President Morales proposed some principles to
open the debate about the care of nature and called on all to develop a global
declaration for the protection of nature that should have a multilateral
character and advance us toward a binding system.
The challenge of the social agenda consists in
building and strengthening these, and other principles, supporting them with
the experience of the peoples and the communities that have not lost everything
and who in spite of centuries and decades of extra activism and marketing, have
kept their systems of caring and promoting harmony among human beings and
Mother Earth.
The Climatic Debt and Bolivia’s Proposal for the UNFCCC
negotiations
A few countries and powerful corporations took
irrational advantage of the planet’s “resources” resulting in
a greater accumulation of greenhouse gases. This came in with the industrial
revolution and has grown especially in the last 40 years –which coincide
with the neo-liberal boom promoted by the Washington Consensus— the
atmospheric space of the planet has been used (occupied like in the war) in an
immeasurable way by some countries just as the resources of the biosphere are
being devoured by corporations belonging to the developed countries. That left
an enormous debt they owe the southern countries that cannot be denied; the
atmospheric space for the needs of development of the South today are limited
due to the grave crisis that they generated.
A 2008 report about accumulated emissions according to
countries and regions done by the World Resources Institute says that \the US
and the EU have accumulated more than 50% of global emissions between them from
1850 to 2000; of these, 30% were generated by the United States and Canada, and
27% by Europe.
The basic needs for survival by the southern countries
are at a disadvantage if we compare them with the resources for development
that were used and are still used by the developed countries. The countries in
development have to secure access to the right to energy, food and
transportation for their people in equality and democracy.
The equality that is indispensable to solve the
problems brought about by the concept of Climate Justice and that the people
demand must allow us to enter into the discussion about global warming and
about the commitments that must be made from the perspective of equity.
Everyone in the world has a right to enjoy and to benefit from a balanced
climate and in relation to the goods of nature that are necessary for human
survival such as: access to water, to land, to nourishment, to energy and to
the land needed and for relating with the climate.
Climatic Justice includes the
democratic right for people to define their own future without having to be
affected by environmental and climatic deficits provoked by others. That means
that all the people have a right to determine their own future, their goals for
development, their models for development and to have the same possibilities
that the others enjoy, their right to life. But it also includes the right for
other living beings to life in the planet Earth.
Plurinational State of Bolivia’s negotiation
submissions put forth a proposal that presents as its axis of the theme
Climate Debt, which demands equitable and responsible
treatment for all the countries in development. This proposal demands the
recognition of the historical debt by the developed countries to the world for
their historical emissions and in particular with the countries in development
because they consumed excessively from the atmospheric space and having limited
the possibilities that other countries have for a development that will allow
them to fight poverty and have well being. But also the G77 countries are
demanding this concept based on a science and fair rules basis that must
recognize the historical responsibilities.
In the UNFCCC negotiations, it is urgent to make
effective the commitments and mechanisms that will make the richest and more
developed countries (who got rich by taking advantage of the atmospheric space
and contaminating it) honor their debt to support the costs for facing climate
change by the countries in development with sufficient financial resources and
technological transfers that will no longer lead to more conditionalities, that
will have democratic and transparent mechanisms and that will allow them to
confront the challenges of mitigation and adaptation with an adequate
transference for this emergency. To honor a debt is to understand that the
countries in development cannot halt their growth without taking into account
that there is a climatic debt and the need to take it on with equity. This
agenda is put forth into the debate and the negotiations of the Bali Action
Plan that includes the following of the Kyoto Protocol that refers to the
control of emissions and the Framework of the UN Convention about Climate
Change.
The Kyoto Protocol as well as the UNFCCC no not have
strong binding mechanisms to control the compromises, they have limitations and
failures that did not allow fulfilling all the commitments and actions needed
to reach their main goals. That is why Bolivia, as the same time that defends
Kyoto Protocol because it allows to apply the principles of climate debt and
sets clearly the Annex I countries responsibilities and the goals of the
Convention, has proposed in September 2009, setting up a Tribunal of
Climate Justice within the framework of the United Nations to have a
mechanism for punishing and watchfulness about the lack of fulfillment of
commitments.
One of the major weaknesses of multilateral agreements
in defense of the environment and human rights is that they don’t count
with enough binding mechanisms to keep them and controlling like there are in
financial and commercial systems. If a country “affects” the
profits of a transnational corporation (like with Argentina during the
financial crisis in 2000 that forced the government take some protectionist
measures in order to defend the national economy, or Bolivia that had to cut a
contract with Bechtel because the corporation increased the fees in 300%), it
exposes to be sued by big and powerful corporations, after a short term to pay
millions in indemnizations. The ICSID (International Centre for the Settlement
of Investments Disputes) of the World Bank is a clear example of this
corporative practice that has multiplied in the 90s linked to the international
investment protections system. But, if a transnational corporation contaminates
and consumes the oxygen for its benefit, or if it has affected the health or
human rights somewhere, there are no binding mechanisms to punish drastically
that corporation or the country that promotes it in the same proportion of the
damage caused. We can see thie svery day in many countries.
The historic Debt for emissions and the enormous
negative impacts on human rights and on different ecosystems has motivated that
social movements and activists’ networks from several parts of the world
should propose an Ethic Tribunal of Climate Justice from civil society, as
a response to the lack of linking mechanisms and those that control the
commitments assumed, so that they may listen to the voices of civil society and
build on the proposals that promote precepts of climate justice by the
grasroots organizations.
But, as we have said before,
climate change cannot be limited to one discussion about fees for gas
emissions, just financing or became a discussion that develops into false
solutions such as that of carbon markets that do not solve the problem in
depth, that they make it worse.
Being a glboal civilization crisis
intimately related to the survival of the planet, of human communities and of
the different species that inhabit it, requires taking urgent measures and
actions that are meant to radically change the basic causes of the crisis,
beginning with recuperating and developing more sustainable and fair ways of
living in order to pay the historic debt they have with the developing
countries in the south, but also to pay the enourmous debt we have with Mother
Earth and to change the very roots of the present paradigm, its matrix of
production and consuming, its financial mechanisms and rules of destructive
trade.
This is a crisis that demands a deep change in the
system to avoid continuing on the path that leads only to
destruction.
For example, the financing to mitigation and
adaptation cannot end up being used to buy the right of patents for
technologies that serve for mitigation or adaptation, due the actual private
system of patents of the IPWO and WTO. In the same way, the protection
mechanisms for private investments that include more than 2.500 bilateral
treaties in the world, and mechanisms of legal disputes like ICSID (WB) should
be modified and some of them definitely cancelled, to avoid that the
corporations will continue making demands for any reason from the countries and
taking away their public resources that are so necessary to confront the
climate changes.
Is this a matter only for specialists or everyone’s
business?
The topic of climate change and global warming is
complex and very new for everyone. It is a comples issue for social
organizations, for progressive institutions and for the population at large.
Many terms tend to generate resistance and questions. In Bolivia, at the
beginning simple people tended to reject it and said:
“Adaptation?” “But what do we have to adapt to? How can
we talk about “adapting” to such injustice?”, ”Why do
we must to adapt to this unfair situation?”
Some even said that the term “adaptation”
was mistaken, for when one confronts a danger that is threatening live with
imminence that we are noticing, we should no longer speak of
“adaptation” but rather about “survival” (as was
suggested by Ricardo Navarro during the First Pre-hearing of the Climate
Justice Tribunal in Cochabamba, October 2009.
But even though it is complex to understand, climate
change is the tragic consequence of the neo-liberal system, its financial rules
and its market that affect all the people, their way of life, and their access
to the elementary elements of needs of housing, nourishment, housing, work,
culture and all the most basic human rights to survive. That is why this topic
has to do with all of us. It is not a topic for technicians, scientists
or specialists only; it’s a common topic that arises from daily problems
for every person and every community.
Even though there might be different visions about how
to deal with climate crisis, there is a coincidence that is extremely
generalized that there exists a climate debt. The concept of
climate justice then, is a structure built from below, from social
movements, from the grassroots people, who from their experiences and struggles
demand payment of the enormous debt that the developed countries have with our
people and the enormous need to set up an ideal that is common for a
holistic vision of nature and the human being.
An Integral focus to change the world
Finally, we should also be aware that climate change
is at the same time a chance to confront a global crisis constructively and to
develop an integral vision to take on this crisis of civilization that overlaps
the following crisis: climatic, financial, nutritional, migratory, commercial,
racism, capitalism, colonialism, and others. It is a crisis that demands
an integral and multidisciplinary approach. We are facing global and complex
changes. That is why, climate change gathers together many diverse agendas:
rules of commerce, financial systems, productive matrixes, forms of dealing
with nature and water, means of consumption, culture of daily life and the
concept of good living.
Those of us who have worked for many years with the
topics of human rights, economic justice, the right to water, trade agrements
and culture responses to the system are sure that an integral focus should take
on the rules of finance and marketing as well as those of culture that lies
within our daily life.
For example, if we don’t analyze and change the
rules and agreements of intellectual property about knowledge and technology,
they may be hurting many developing coutries that need them to adapt to climate
changes and their consequences, or simply to apply them to their needs for
development. On their part, the rules for access to the free market that are
included in different multilateral or bilateral agreements, often create a
whole system in which the simple transportation of merchandize between
developed countries and other economies contribute to greater contamination and
excessive use of energy, with the additional consequent threat to health and
security of the population.
In the same way, the financial structures that are
predominant until the present cannot be maintained; we must avoid that it be
again the World Bank or the IMF through its regular financial mechanisms that
will take hold of the topic of financial resources to mitigate and adapt to
climate change; the facts have shown widely that these institutions’ way
of giving financial resources with conditionalities to the developing countries
have been very questionable and has caused them to fall into debt increasing
their poverty and social conflicts. And those topics belong to World Trade
Organization and the Free Trade Agreements agenda, the Agreements of
Association, as well as the multilateral and financial systems.
But above all we have to begin to
de-colonize our minds and desires, to change our mentalities
and practices, to stop wasting and contaminating, to stop consuming what is not
necessary. And that comes of course not spontaneously but from very clear new
basis of new societies, public politics, and public commitments. It comes
basically from very democratic processes.
We hope that by touching on these suicidal limits,
there may be a possibility to at least reflect and act about the profound
culture of the consumer societies, or about the patterns of success and power,
about the subjectivities that are deeply questioned in this times and above all
that they may serve to take on the challenge of beginning to act in an integral
and coherent manner: articulating the discourse and the practice, the ideals,
the thoughts and the actions.
La Paz, Copenhagen, December 2009
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