News
An international conference billed as The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth came to a close this week in Cochabamba, Bolivia following Earth Day. The conference was organized by Bolivian President Evo Morales after the frustration and non-action of the U.N. Copenhagen climate summit last December.
More than 48 governments and 31,000 people from 140 countries attended the conference. They came away with a list of strategies and proposals to address climate change. The conference was divided into 17 working groups that addresssed issues that included: agriculture and food sovereignty, Kyoto protocol, climate debt, Mother Earth rights, action strategies and technology transfer among others.
The conference attendees produced a People's Agreement which took the capitalist system to task. The People's Agreement states in part:
"The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.
We propose to the peoples of the world the recovery, revalorization, and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples, which are affirmed in the thought and practices of “Living Well,” recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship. "
( See the full text of the Agreement }
Morales intends to take the proposals to the next U.N. climate change conference in Mexico in November.
To see more information on the conference and read the entire People's Agreement go to: http://pwccc.wordpress.com
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