While the Copenhagen accord set a non-binding agreement to hold climate temperature rise to 2 degrees C the finding of these working groups felt the target should be 1-1.5 degrees and holding CO2 emissions to 300ppm to save the island states and many others already heavily impacted by climate change. Another major issue was Eco Debt which people felt very strongly needed to be addressed in the upcoming COP 16 UN conference on climate change. There was strong agreement that the development model offered by Western (capitalist) society was severely flawed and that a new global model that was based in honoring the rights of Mother Nature had to be created. How can a system built on continuous growth (hyper-consumerism) continue with finite resources?

It was suggested that at it’s heart this is a spiritual issue. How can we stand by and protect our privileged way of life, while so many of our brothers and sisters around the world are suffering. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed and one-third is starving.  Perhaps we think this doesn’t impact us, but in reality it makes the world less safe, more unstable, leads to hording, greater separation,  denial and spiritual disharmony. The working groups put Mother Earth rights first, because human rights and all the other issues are a subset of it.

Another critical issue that was addressed was agricultural reform, food is a primary example of our lack of honoring the rights of Mother Nature. Factory farms, fast food, Genetically modified crops, privatization, pesticides and toxic chemicals, the patenting of seeds and our disregard for the preciousness of our water were examples of being out of touch with nature. Indigenous wisdom was called on to find solutions to help us return to balance with the needs of our Mother. It was felt that the capitalist system has used nature as a slave instead of a live being that supports all life on this planet. They suggested that this is why the rights of nature must come first and it is the duty of all people to fight for her rights.

Climate Justice and debt were big topics of this conference. It was decided that a new organization needed to be formed to regulate abuses to Mother Earth with a Tribunal to enforce the standards of living in harmony with the natural world. Many of the developed nations are calling for the cancellation of the Kyoto Accord, but this group will be calling for a commitment to adopting the protocol for the years from 2013-2017. They are looking for a 50% reduction from 1990 emission levels with no offsets or voluntary compliance. The consensus is that there must be legally binding commitments that can punish polluters and be upheld in a court of law.

The working groups also rejected REDD, the United Nations Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, considered by the many in the group to be simply a way of making money from pollution through carbon trading. Twenty percent of the planet’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector. The group feels that this proposal takes the attention away from the real issue of respecting nature. The suggested solution is education and a global tree planting campaign. Of course that needs to be part of a larger plan that includes getting away from our dependency on oil. As my friend Nnimmo Bassey, president of Friends of the Earth, says “Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole, and leave the tar sand in the land.”

After a gruelingly long and bombastic speech by Hugo Chavez, that put most of the people asleep, Evo Morales gave his closing remarks. He said that the corporate mass media turns things around to make people working for true democracy into the enemy and that it was up to us to get the word out and raise awareness of these important issues. In the end the future of the planet is in the hands of the people!

All in all it was a very inspiring day. More tomorrow.

michael

He began his talk by saying that social movements need to organize to produce concrete results in defending the rights of Mother Earth and that we need to focus on the real causes and not the effects. If we look beyond the the pollution, destruction and disharmony we see that our social and political systems are broken. You cannot have continuous growth and exploitation with finite resources. It is not about capitalism, communism or socialism, it is about protecting Mother Earth!

Morales said that we need to create a new grass roots global organization that represents Mother Earth. This organization must have a tribunal that is responsible for enforcing the agreements. If there is no punitive action, he asserted, there will be no compliance. Who will obey? This is the problem with the Copenhagen Accord, it has no teeth. An international Tribunal must deal with countries that do not obey or don’t want to participate. This can be done with peaceful sanctions and restricting trade…

Evo also talked about Human rights vs. Earth rights. The focus he said needed to be on the rights of the earth, if we focus on that we will have to deal with human rights. It made me think about the whole issue of human rights and how it is an outgrowth of our holding ourselves above and separate from nature. But, in reality we are a subset and if we respect natures rights then all life will be respected. Perhaps it sounds overly idealistic to some that we could actually give rights to nature, but it has already been done. Ecuador was the first country to grant rights to trees, rivers and mountains in their new constitution, which has been a huge inspiration to activists around the world. Other countries are looking at how to follow in their footsteps.

Here in Bolivia most of us feel strongly that something is emerging — a global revolution of epic proportion is taking place — a new story of our human earth relationship is being defined and people around the planet are waking up to a new possibility…

We arrived at 8am on a hot fall day and managed to find seats close to the front. I guess most people knew that there would be several hours of painfully loud music and people yelling slogans like “Fatherland or Death” and chants to stimulate and activate the crowd. I won’t forget my earplugs next time. But, with all the hype and noise it was also refreshing to be with people from all over the world — regular people, indigenous people, concerned people — gone were the somber suits and oh so perfect structures of Denmark. This was pure South American chaos at its best…

About a third of the roughly 20,000 attendees were from indigenous tribes and fully decked out in their traditional clothing. This was not a hype, as they always wear them. However the opening itself seemed short of content and long on typical political rhetoric! There were speakers from indigenous people’s of Alaska, Bolivia, New Zealand,  Spain, Africa and India that shared their invitation to connect with mother earth and learn from their culture, experience and tradition. They burned incense, danced and  blessed Pachamama (the earth, the sky and all time) in thanksgiving. While the smoke was pungent and choking, their sincerity and warmth was touching and a highlight of the morning.

Just before President Morales came on stage a representative from the United Nations was booed (actually whistled) off the stage. While what she was saying was really about working together and partnership, this crowd was clearly not interested in what the UN or Capitalist Governments had to offer. The people here do not think that the 20% of the world that produces 80% of the pollution and damage to the earth have much to offer them. Their is also a great deal of anger over the issue of what they consider the environmental debt that the rich colonial empires own the poorer developing countries. They just wanted to hear Evo!

By the time we finally got to hear Evo Morales’ speech we were all fairly well fried by the high mountain sun and deaf from the loud music and shouting, but that in no way dampened the crowd’s enthusiasm. When Evo came in the crowd rose and screamed as if Elvis had just come on stage.

Evo as most people call him, has a very soft, folksy, down home style. He said that he called this conference because the UN had not figured it out — if they had respected the Kyoto Accord, we would not be here — that the people, all people, need to be heard. He talked about what we could expect if we did not take action on reducing greenhouse gases immediately. He said that from 1997 and 2007 CO2 in our atmosphere had increased by 11% and that Capitalism was the enemy of the earth and needed to be stopped. In his folksy style he gave examples of our food and how it is big, bright and beautiful, but lacked the nutrition for good health. His examples were often humorous like the perils of Coca Cola and how you could unstop drains with it. He suggested that the reason men “Turned” was because of the hormones in our food and that even baldness was a product of industrialized agriculture. He offered himself, with his very full head of hair as an  example of good living.

While his speech was short on solutions, he proposed that the papers the working groups were preparing would be presented to the UN climate change conference being held in Cancun, Mexico this coming December. He has managed to make a ripple in the fabric of global complacency and perhaps his charm, charisma and commitment will be the beginning of a new revolution as we meet increasing challenges brought on by our separation from Pachamama? Stay tuned!

As I flew over these dry and barren mountain peaks I wondered if the nearly 20,000 participants from 129 countries would be able to find common ground and construct an agreement that might be proposed as an alternative to the non-binding agreement from Copenhagen at this December’s UN conference on climate change being held in Mexico.

I am hopeful that something substantial will come out of this gathering — that the little voices of the multitude will swell into a unified front that stands united, not against something, but for the rights of mother earth and the commons — knowing that we are strong as an aligned force, but powerless divided. The Machine is too big, the issues too pressing and time too short to come away with anything less than a document that addresses all life on this planet. We need to get beyond blame and finger pointing and find out how we can provide clean air, water, enough food to eat, education, shelter, health care so that everyone can live a life of dignity and self respect. It is time to recognize that we are all connected and that the future of life on this planet depends on our coming together in common unity.

From my vantage point the success of this conference will be dependent on our willingness to listen compassionately, to drop our personal agendas, our anger and opposition and focus on our common needs holding a vision of a world that works for all life with no one and nothing left out. This could be the start of a peaceful global revolution where the 2 million organizations that Paul Hawkin has called Blessed Unrest stand together as a unified force for good.

So we have gathered here to bring our light, our listening and our prayers to this conference which starts tomorrow morning when President Evo Morales gives the opening address. Robin Milam, our team and I will be bringing you up to the minute reports through our blog and the evening news on KVMR (to listen go to KVMR.org) Stay tuned…

Bless us all,
michael

I apologize for not keeping up on daily quotes. Life if rich and full and sometimes we just don’t get to all we would like to accomplish.
In April I will be covering the People’s Climate  Change and Mother Earth’s Rights Conference in Bolivia and will keep you updated.
I will continue to post poems and quotations intermittently…

May your heart be filled with eternal love, grace and compassion for all life…
Blessings to you on Valentine’s Day and every day!
Love,
michael

Lovers

Lovers, you who are for a while
sufficient to each other,
help me understand who we are.
You hold each other. Have you proof?
See, my hands hold each other too.
I put my used-up face in them.
It helps me feel known.
Just from that, can we believe we endure?
You, however, who increase
through each other’s delight,
you who ripen in each other’s hands
like greapes in a vintage year:
I’m asking you
who we are.

You touch one another so reverently’
as thought your caresses
could keep each place they cover
from disappearing. As though, underneath, you could sense
that which will always exist.
So, as you embrace, you promise each other eternity.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a gathering of the Avoided Deforestation Partners. It was a most diverse and unlikely group of supporters of the bill including Sir Richard Branson, Robert Zoellick president of the World Bank, Hon. Jens Stoltenberg Prime Minister of Norway, Jane Goodall, several heads of state and representatives from Duke Energy, American Electric Power, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and NRD. Strange bedfellows all in support of REDD.

As I said in my last blog post I have major concerns with this bill, but after yesterday I saw that it may be the only thing that comes out of COP 15.  After all 17% of the CO2 could be eliminated from the atmosphere by keeping the roughly 47 trillion acres a year that is currently being destroyed. The idea is making the value of the carbon capture of the trees in the ground worth more than cutting the trees down for farming and timber harvest. Many poor farmers in tropical rainforest zones could benefit from an agreement due to the low income they currently receive from ‘slash and burn’ agricultural practices. REDD payments to keep the forests standing would therefore represent an improvement in their income.

But, many of the safeguards intended to protect indigenous people and the world from greed and mischief have been removed for the current bill in an effort to get it through. I know in the states it is being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, but I still have concerns. When you tie in something like this to the carbon trade market you open the door to the kind of phantom wealth creation that led to the downfall of Wall Street.  One of the key issues is the loss of diversity in these areas and the bill is open to supporting the planting of moncultures and biofuel production that could be used for carbon credits. The monitoring system by Google earth could be used to monitor people (of course Big Brother can already do this), and it deepens the possibility of invasion of privacy or halting public dissention. It also makes no consideration about the planting of GMO crops, which continue to have many unresolved and potentially catastrophic consequences. These are just a few of my concerns and yet, it may well be the only outcome that makes a real difference at this conference. Hopefully the people’s movement will be able to put the safeguards back into the process.

He said that science has shown that once we put CO2 into the atmosphere it is there for at least a thousand years and that once you reach a temperature it isn’t coming down. The 2-degree rise that scientists say we must stay below is based on the cumulative emissions of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere. When you look at the total amount of estimated coal and gas reserves we can only use 60% of them to stay under the 2-degree ceiling. The real question is what part of the oil, gas and coal reserves are going to be left in the ground. Furthermore total reserves of the primary fuels doesn’t take into account the even dirtier sources being looked at with greedy eyes, like tar sands, oil shale, coal gasification and other unconventional fossil fuels. People think, oil in the ground is like money in the bank but it is also a superhighway to destruction of life as we know it. “We need to eliminate supply side policies and totally replace fossil fuel with alternative sources of energy”, says George Monbiot. “The real problem we’re facing is too much fossil fuels!”

Like excluding biodiversity, leaving water problems out of the equations and negotiations at COP15 could lead to serious scientific, political and social problems. There are several reasons this. What is not fully appreciated is the hydrological cycle and how overusing water can speed desertification, which in turn increases the impact on the climate.

I talked to Maude Barlow, who is the Senior Advisor to the President of the UN General Assembly and head of the Council of Canadians. She said that there were three main reasons that water should be included in climate negotiations:

1. Climate Change is having an enormous impact on water around the world, with melting glaciers, the rapid evaporation of surface water, the overuse of ground water, and disappearing snow packs, available water is rapidly disappearing.
2. Water is not just a victim of climate change, it is also a major cause of it. This is because our massive displacement of water from where it is needed in watersheds to maintain a healthy hydrologic cycle through growing crops in deserts, selling it off or sending it into big cities where we dump it with garbage and then into the ocean. (170 trillion liters a year from land based water systems into the oceans)
3. Climate refugees are water refugees. They are the first and most devastated face of climate change. Industrialized countries are trying to set the same market based responses to climate change to water in the form of privatization and commoditization of water.

Dr Riccardo Petrella of the World Political Forum’s Scientific Committee says that in spite of the massive water problems facing humanity today “the future is not finished.” We must include three goals among the priorities of the world policy for a sustainable and lasting development:

1. The human universal right to water
2. The protection and safeguard of water resources on the planet as a common good, human heritage and essential to the functioning of ecosystems.
3. A public, integrated, effective and united government of the planet’s water.

Dr. Petrella believes that the inclusion of water in the COP15 negotiations would provide many advantages. Most importantly it would be a positive sign in favor of the revaluation of the role of world common goods at the top of the agenda of strategies for attenuation and adaptation to climate change. In other words it would put the wellbeing of the public above private interests and competitive world markets. Which would leader to greater security and an “eco-nomy of justice and shared welfare.

The involvement of Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities in the development of REDD strategies and projects differs significantly from country to country, however there are numerous key issues that arise. These issues include the lack of consultation and inclusion of indigenous peoples, no recognition of the involvement of women who will be most impacted, concerns with lack of biodiversity and increase of monocultures, protection of indigenous property rights, the threat to the world’s natural forests, and the fact that Market-based approaches to REDD are complex yet lucrative, a combination that discourages community participation but encourages fraud and corruption. For most of the people in these areas climate negotiations should not be focused on discussing REDD and other market-based mechanisms, but rather on the transition to a new production, distribution and consumption model based on agro-ecology, on a solidarity-based economic approach, and on a diversified and decentralized energy matrix capable of ensuring food security and sovereignty.

The Industrialized nations are pushing hard for this market based approach, but it is becoming another instrument for creating phantom wealth.  Since mono crops and bio-fuels are included in the equation, the impact on biodiversity would further exacerbate the environmental problems. As money is involved in payment for carbon credits, it is likely that the people of the forest would get little or no return for their participation. Indigenous peoples have been protecting the forests for thousands of years. It is the richer nations that have been responsible for most of the destruction. Who would be best to leave as the stewards of the land, the people of the forest or big business? Can the market really be expected to take responsibility for the future of life on this planet? Seems to me like putting the fox in the house to guard the hens…