CounterVortex

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) at the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba closed on Earth Day, April 22, issuing several resolutions, including: that the UN adopt a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth; that an International Committee be organized to hold a global referendum on climate change on Earth Day 2011; that the industrialized nations provide annual financing equivalent to 6% of their GDP to confront climate change in the developing world; and that an International Tribunal on Environmental and Climate Justice be created, with its seat in Bolivia. The conference called for a new global organization to press for these demands, tentatively dubbed the World Movement for Mother Earth—or, by its Spanish acronym, MAMA-Tierra.

These resolutions emerged from the CMPCC’s 17 official “tables,” or working groups, which were organized around the following themes: 1. Structural Causes, 2. Harmony with Nature, 3. Rights of Mother Earth, 4. the World Referendum, 5. the Climate Justice Tribunal, 6. Climate Migration, 7. Indigenous Peoples, 8. Climate Debt, 9. Shared Vision, 10. the Kyoto Protocol, 11. Adaptation, 12. Financing, 13. Development and Technology, 14. Forests, 15. Dangers of a Carbon Market, 16. Strategies for Action, and 17. Agriculture and Food Sovereignty.

Representatives of the working groups submitted their resolutions to the assembled government officials at a joint meeting at the Hotel Regina, in the Cochabamba suburb of Tiquipaya, on the morning of April 22. They were then officially adopted. Bolivian President Evo Morales, who called the CMPCC, told the press that he would demand the resolutions be adopted at the upcoming world climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, and warned that if this demand was not met he would seek redress at the International Court of Justice.

However, the CMPCC’s stated goal of establishing an alternative process on climate change to that of the UN, dubbed the Conference of the Parties (COP), seemed to fall short. Aside from Morales, the only head of state to attend was Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez. Diplomats and lower-level officials did attend from several countries, mostly in the developing world. (Opinión, Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, April 22)

The summit closed with an afternoon Earth Day rally at Cochabamba’s municipal stadium, presided over by (in order of appearance) Cuban Vice President Esteban Lazo, Nicaraguan elder statesman Tomás Borge, Chávez and Morales. With the exception of Morales’ closing speech, the leaders’ rhetoric touched only briefly on ecological themes compared with the standard socialist and anti-imperialist verbiage. While Morales emphasized a new vision based on respect for Pachamama (Mother Earth), Chávez favorably invoked Lenin, stating that “20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the task of building socialism has been taken up in Latin America.”

World War 4 Report on the scene in Cochabamba

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