From Cochabamba to Cancun
My conversation with Tina Gerhardt about the climate justice movement, published by Where We Are Now.
Robert S. Eshelman: We both just returned from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place just outside of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Explain what took place there and describe what your impressions of the conference were.
Tina Gerhardt: The World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia provided a stark contrast to the December climate talks in Copenhagen. In his opening address, Bolivian President Evo Morales, who convened the conference in light of the failed Copenhagen talks, criticized the Copenhagen Accord. First, it was a backroom deal drawn up by five countries – the U.S., Brazil, China, India, and South Africa – in a nondemocratic manner, in that it ignored the progress of the UN’s two working groups – the AWG –KP and the AWG-LCA – and it ignored a basic UN tenet of transparency in protocol drafting. Second, by forcing other UNFCCC delegates to sign off on it last minute, these five countries trammeled on another UN tenet: consensus in decision-making. Morales’ comments echoed the critiques of numerous nation groups – such as the G77, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries – expressed at the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn in early April.
To counter this undemocratic process, Morales suggested four goals for the People’s World Conference: 1. reparations from developed nations to developing nations, to assist them with adaptations to climate change; 2. the creation of an International Climate Justice Tribunal, to prosecute crimes against the environment; 3. the development and transfer of technology from industrialized nations to industrializing nations; and 4. a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Morales also called for borders to be opened to climate refugees.
Morales convened the Bolivian summit to establish a balance of power by bringing together governmental representatives, indigenous people, NGOs and climate justice groups from around the world. In this way, the Bolivian summit aimed for a completely different decision-making structure – one that is bottom up, that includes civil society, that includes indigenous peoples from Bolivia and around Latin America, that basically takes all of their voices into account. There were 17 working groups and panels, which drafted in a final declaration that the Bolivia has already submitted to the UNFCCC for discussion at the UNFCCC’s COP 16 talks in Cancún at the end of the year.
The People World’s Conference provided the climate justice movement a vital opportunity to meet and reevaluate organizing priorities and strategies prior to the COP 16 in Cancún. Furthemore, the Bolivian summit marked a vital shift in the configuration of the climate justice movement, as nation-states, NGOs and climate justice activists work together to address the ticking time bomb that is climate change.
And throughout the conference, a fundamental critique of capitalism as the source of climate change was pervasive, from Morales’s opening speech to the final declaration. Morales underscored the incompatability of capitalism, predicated on the need for ever-increasing growth to ensure continued returns on profit, and environmental sustainability. It echoes the climate justice movement’s call in Copenhagen for “System Change not Climate Change.”
RSE: I expected the conference to be a precursor to – a type of preparatory meeting for – Cancún but, now that it’s over, I think the conference served a much more basic function of bringing together disparate political networks and establishing a framework for strategizing and communication. In order to block implementation of the Copenhagen Accord and to check the power of rich nations, there’s going to have to be a tremendous upsurge of oppositional power. The Bolivian conference created a forum for building that power. It was an incubator of sorts.
Bolivia is putting forth this very long-term set of demands – the establishment of a climate justice court, a call for an international referendum on climate change, passage of a UN declaration on the Rights to Mother Earth, and distribution of climate reparations. All of these demands are really far from the core discussions occurring within the UNFCCC process, which is not to say that they are not demands we shouldn’t get behind. But I think in order to push those demands a lot more organizing has to be done to connect social movements around the world and build cooperation between these movements and nation states like Bolivia that are not neo-liberal ones but have direct connections with political movements. So I think the benefit of the Cochabamba conference was to establish an imagination and establish a set of principles upon which social movements may be able to organize around – in conjunction with several states like Bolivia – and begin to build relationships that can push these demands.
I agree though that one of the more interesting things about the conference was this relationship between nation states and social movements. There’s a vexed relationship here. And in Cochabamba we saw, in some ways, how bringing social movements on board with their program benefits nation states, such as Bolivia. Bolivia will go to Cancun with the final conference declaration and say that we had 35000 people supporting our platform and I think that that will give them a certain amount more power in negotiations just as, conversely, social movements having the backing of certain nation-states are benefitted by the conference. This type of relationship gives both nation states and social movements some added cache yet their interests are not always aligned.
Also, looking back to Copenhagen and in light of Cochabamba, I think there’s a crucial question. During Copenhagen the demand coming from the climate justice movement was for governments to “sign a deal.” But I think that that was a shortsighted demand because it never took up the details of what that deal might entail – say the establishment of billion dollar carbon markets or continuing World Bank-funded deforestation under the guise of preserving forests. Maybe now, given the tenor of international negotiations, the demand should be “no deal” and push forward with Bolivia’s platform.
But you were just in Bonn for the last UNFCCC talks and maybe you’ve got some insights on whether or not a deal that adequately addresses the need for greenhouse gas emissions reductions is really possible.
TG: You bring up a very valid point. As I mentioned, the UNFCCC process is predicated upon two key principles – transparency in protocol drafting and consensus in decision-making. Additionally, there are two working groups that meet regularly to extend the Kyoto Protocol. These two working groups – not some self-appointed nations – provide draft texts that go before the full UNFCCC membership for approval.
A backroom deal – like the Copenhagen Accord – ignores the progress of by these two working groups and up-ends the entire consensus-based process. When I was in Bonn in April, which was the first UNFCCC meeting since Copenhagen, most nations and nation groups critiqued the way things went down in Copenhagen. In essence what you had is a majority of the world’s nations expressing displeasure at the way the U.S. and several developing nations – China, Brazil, India, and South Africa – crafted a last-minute deal that they attempted to push through the UNFCCC process.
While these nations critiqued the backroom deal for its nondemocratic manner, reaffirming the UN tenets of transparency and consensus, they also reaffirmed their commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and to Bali Action Plan, which established the two working groups.
Coming out of Bonn, I think two issues were key: 1. A reaffirmation of the UNFCCC process; and 2. A reaffirmation of which text will serve as the basis for Cancún, not the nonlegally binding Copenhagen Accord but the Kyoto Protocol.
Additionally, what I continued to see in Bonn was the U.S. deputy climate negotiator John Pershing really tried to throw a wrench into the process. For example, he called the UN process into question and thereby derailed the talks. Then, 45 minutes later, he complained about how delays are indicative of how the UN process does not work. These kinds of moves by the U.S. are intended to impede and derail the UN process. But they are actually indicative not of the UN’s failings but of the U.S.’s intention to block the UN process. Having said that, even without the U.S.’s antics, I question whether the UNFCCC process is the most effective way to address climate change.
In Bolivia, the climate justice movements had the opportunity to meet with nations that are keen to address climate change. And this really could provide the seeds for future action toward climate justice, which could really add up to significant efforts to confront the dire and increasing realities of climate change.
But as Bolivian envoy Solon put it in Bonn: “we’re not trying to save a summit. We’re trying to save humanity.”
RSE: Much of this reminds me of the situation during World Trade Organization protests in Cancun in 2003. The WTO was also consensus-based. But, as we know from consensus-based decision-making processes within leftist organizing, not every party within a consensus process necessarily has an equal voice. There are all sorts of dynamics that grant one person’s – or one nation’s – greater or lesser power than another nation. Just as with international trade negotiations, the small island nation of Tuvalu does not have the same amount of power in climate negotiations as, say, the U.S., despite the fact that Tuvalu will soon be underwater due to rising sea levels. The U.S. is a leading geo-political player and wields any number of coercive means to bully and “convince” nations into agreement and Tuvalu – or perhaps more relevantly Bolivia – does not. And let’s be honest: one of the most outspoken critics of the U.S. during Copenhagen was from the Sudan – a country that may give us pause when considering whether or not to align ourselves behind them. Not to mention, when we discuss climate aid, do we really want to advocate for the U.S., the E.U., or any other rich nation of the world to funnel aid to poor nation-states that continue to be kleptocratic? You know, the ones that skim international aid from poverty programs? There are many NGOs putting forth demands about climate aid without considering the mechanisms of how climate aid would be distributed.
So I agree there are many problems with pushing for a deal on the international level. Hoping and organizing for a silver-bullet solution within the UNFCCC process that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide climate aid to poor nations overlooks the strategic difficulties in pressuring rich nations, through the UNFCCC process, and in the ways that governments of poor nations don’t necessarily work in the interests of the people living within a country’s borders.
If we want to continue to organize internationally – and I think its important to do so – perhaps the climate justice movement could pressure leaders of the G20 nations to end fossil fuel subsidies that add up to billions of dollars annually. Obama promised last year to work toward ending these subsidies. How about organizing around that?
Regardless of the demands, though, there’s clearly a need for some movement building and Cochabamba went a good deal of the way in building that sense of power. We’ll see how different the climate justice movement looks though in Cancun at the end of this year.
Tina Gerhardt is an academic and independent journalist. Her articles have appeared In These Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as on Alternet.org, Grist.org, The Nation.com and Salon.Com. She has covered the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December and in Bonn in April. She was a correspondent for Alternet.org and Grist.org at People World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April. Robert S. Eshelman is an independent journalist. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Abu Dhabi’s The National, In These Times as well as on HuffingtonPost.com and TomDispatch.com. He was a correspondent for The Nation at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen this past December and at the Bolivian government-sponsored People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April. His website is http://robertseshelman.com.
