Cochabamba: People’s Fight for Climate Justice

On April 22nd over 35,000 delegates representing different social movements from 140 countries converged to Cochabamba in Bolivia for World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. In its schedule of one week, the conference put forth the idea of the rights of Mother Earth, very much in line with the indigenous traditions where humans lived in harmony with planet earth for centuries, preserving and protecting it by sustainable means of livelihood. It emphasized that an interdependent eco-system system in which human beings are only one component, it is not possible to recognize rights only to the human part without provoking an imbalance in the system as a whole. To guarantee human rights and to restore harmony with nature, it is necessary to effectively recognize and apply the rights of Mother Earth.

The conference was a response to the corporations and governments of the “developed” countries in Copenhagen, who in complicity with a segment of the scientific community discussed climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause. The cause, which the Conference most unequivocally declared, was the capitalist system. The Conference was people’s voice which was largely shut out in Copenhagen. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, host of this People’s Conference presented Ban Ki Moon on May 10th the People’s Agreement, and stressed that the voice of the civil societies and indigenous people around the world must be heard and any climate talk is incomplete and soulless without it. The Conference shred apart the exclusivity of ‘Copenhagen Accord’ where deals were cut behind closed doors and civil societies and many smaller countries were not included in the negotiations on the premise that ‘too much democracy will not get us anywhere.’ In Cochabamba on the contrary, the participatory process including voices of civil societies and indigenous people all over the world came out with a draft with most transformative and radical vision so far. Seventeen working groups were formed, and after weeks of online discussion, they met for a week in Cochabamba with the goal of presenting their final recommendations at the summit's end. It demanded for a global referendum on crucial issues like climate change and rejected the notion of decision by a few elite representatives.

Bolivia's enthusiastic commitment to participatory democracy may well prove the summit's most important contribution. This is in line with the spirit of how Bolivia is run now and deserves a mention. During bloody Water Wars against privatization of water by Bechtel, Bolivia got its transformative leader in Evo Morales who comes from its indigenous population. He is leading a radical political transformation in the country where key industries are being nationalized and workers are being encouraged to form unions and people’s voices are being heard. Morales with his deep connection to grassroots movements has encouraged an open participatory democracy for running the country, which till now has proven to be an incredible exception in the usual power hungry and corrupt ruling class around the globe. It is with this background, Bolivia hosted the summit, and was an ideal forum for people’s voices to be heard; in a giant football stadium with Morales marshalling the event. The attendees of the Conference admitted that it was a pleasant and surprising experience to see the police actually helping people and not thrashing and locking them up like in Copenhagen. Bolivia is proving to be an answer to the bourgeois argument that capitalism (so dependent on police and military) is the ultimate answer for humanity.

Morales is single-handedly taking on the farce of the rich countries of the global north with their pseudo solutions like carbon trading etc. It is to oppose such non-effective solutions and highlight the cause of the climate crisis that Bolivia along with Venezuela refused to sign the Copenhagen accord which resulted in cutting of the ‘climate aid’ by the US to these countries. Bolivia is a land locked country with its primary source of water being its age old glaciers which are fast melting as a result of climate change. Very soon, Bolivia might face threat of survival of its population. It stands along with island nations and other African countries, which are facing severe consequences of climate change without contributing one bit to its cause. The Copenhagen accord, which could very well lead to an increase of global warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius, can be catastrophic for the people in these countries. Africa already has climate refugees and it can further suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius in the current Copenhagen framework. The pattern will extend to South America and Asia where deserts can expand and droughts, floods would affect different regions due to melting of glaciers. India is already witnessing flash floods in Himalayan regions, which has led to displaced populations and destruction of agriculture. The production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people. The Conference outlined that there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Recognizing the roots of these drastic consequences, the Conference called for ‘decolonizing’ of atmosphere and recognizing Mother Earth as the source of life.

The concept of the Rights of Mother Earth may prove to be novel for capitalistic industrialized societies which have taken earth for granted and have exploited it for pursuit of profit and amassing wealth. The Conference in its final analysis clearly stated that the “capitalist system has imposed on us logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself. Under capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.”

The People’s Agreement that came out of Cochabamba proposed to forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and human beings and based itself on the principles of:
harmony and balance among all and with all things;
1. complementarity, solidarity, and equality;
2. collective well-being and the satisfaction of the basic necessities of all;
3. people in harmony with nature;
4. recognition of human beings for what they are, not what they own;
5. elimination of all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism;
6. peace among the peoples and with Mother Earth

The Conference posed a profound question for future of mankind: “humanity confronts a great dilemma; to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation, and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.” In this looming crisis, which threats entire humanity, it is of crucial importance to see people of the world as world citizens and not differentiate them by political, social, racial and cultural boundaries. The Conference represents one of the biggest culminations of efforts of the civil societies and grassroots movements into a formal declaration. However, the declaration did not address how to deal with the recalcitrant US, the single biggest polluter and the primary cause of the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks. It could also not come up with a credible mechanism for a reliable global referendum; the Conference was at times mired and bogged down with ideological debates for subtle differences in the final wording of the declaration. Still, it is a big step forward in voicing the critical concerns of the civil societies and indigenous people and emphasizing a need to reconcile with nature and adopt age-old indigenous philosophy of living in harmony with nature. More than that, it presents an alternative to the UN, which has almost reduced to a forum of imperial deliberations. It’s a firmer imprint on the world’s dominant imperial political landscape for the struggle between global north and global south, to end the exploitation of people and resources, to save the planet and prevent countries from disappearing from the face of the earth.