World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

Bolivia’s mining dilemmas: Between Mother Earth and an ‘extraction economy’

A Bolivian tin miner. The Huanuni tin mine has now been returned to full control by the state-owned Comibol.

By Federico Fuentes, Cochabamba

May 15, 2010 -- The tremendous success of the April 19-22 World People's Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, has confirmed the well-deserved role of its initiator — Bolivia's President Evo Morales — as one of the world’s leading environmental advocates.

Since being elected the country’s first Indigenous president in 2005, Morales has continuously denounced the threat posed by the climate crisis and environmental destruction. Morales has pointed the figure at the real cause of the problem: the consumerist and profit-driven capitalist system.

Evo Morales: United, the developing countries can save Mother Earth

Bolivia submits Cochabamba Conference outcome to UNFCCC

Geneva, April 28, 2010 -- The Bolivian government forwarded a submission on April 26 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat containing the outcome of the "World People's Conference on Clim

Distorted account of Morales speech distracts from fundamental issue of climate change

MEDIA ADVISORY

April 23, 2010 -- CMPCC -- A few national and international media outlets, instead of carrying out analysis and reports on the fundamental challenge of climate change, decided to distract the public with a distorted and inaccurate account of a speech by President Morales.

Various media reports are misinforming the public, saying that Morales has linked eating chicken with homosexuality. In his exact words, Morales said that “chicken that we are eating is full of feminine hormones, which is why men who eat this chicken have changes in their being as men. I have read some information that isn’t from me, asking about a daughter of one and a half years who already had breasts..”

(Updated May 12) Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and texts from the People's Conference on Climate Change

The following documents were also adopted by the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth on April 22, 2010, in Bolivia. The Bolivian government will submit them to the United Nations for consideration. The main document, the People's Agreement, is available HERE.

For more coverage of the historic conference, click HERE.

They are: 1. The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth; 2. Shared Visions document; 3. Structural causes; 4. Referendum on climate change; 5. Document of the Working Group on Agriculture and Food Sovereignty; 6. Document of the Working Group on Climate Debt; 7. Document of the Working Group on Climate Finance; 8. Indigenous Peoples' Declaration; 9. International Tribunal of Climate and Environmental Justice working group; 10. Dangers of the carbon market; 11. Working Group No. 10 on the Kyoto Protocol and greenhouse gas emissions reduction; 12. Working Group 13: Intercultural dialogue knowledge sharing, knowledge and technology; 13. Final conclusions of Working Group 2: Harmony with Nature to Live Well; 14. Working Group 6: Climate Change and Migration; 15. Working Group 14: Forests; 16. Working Group 11: Adaptation -- Confronting Climate Change; 17. Strategies of Action; NEW: 18. Declaration of the "unofficial" "Working Group 18. [More will be posted as they become available.]

Evo Morales: `Combating climate change -- lessons from the world’s Indigenous peoples'

Bolivia's President Evo Morales interviewed on Democracy Now!, April 23, 2010. Full transcript below.

By Evo Morales, president of the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia.

Bolivia: Full text -- `People's Agreement' from World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

Bolivia: Reflections on the World People's Conference on Climate Change

[See also ``Bolivia: Australian participants report on World People's Conference on Climate Change''. For full coverage of the Cochabamba conference, click HERE.]

By Ben Courtice, Socialist Alliance via Blind Carbon Copy

This is just a first reflection on the monumental World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth which just finished in Cochabamba. I will post more on particular aspects of the summit soon.

Bolivia: Australian participants report on World People's Conference on Climate Change

Photo from Beyond Zero Emissions.

April 23, 2010 -- Several representatives from Australia's climate justice movement attended the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia, April 19-22, 2010. They included activists from Beyond Zero Emissions, Rising Tide, Socialist Alliance, Climate Emergency Action Network of South Australia and inner city climate action groups Yarra Climate Action Now (Melbourne) and Climate Action Newtown (Sydney). Below Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal collects some of their accounts.

Bolivia people's climate summit: An S.O.S. from Tiquipaya

Cochabamba people's conference. Photo by Reuben McCreanor, Upside Down World.

By Nidia Diaz, translated by Granma International

It would not be exaggerated to state that Tiquipaya, a small locality in unredeemed Cochabamba, is making history. More than 20,000 people, clinging to the final hope of saving the planet, or Mother Earth, are meeting there.

Five heads of state and two Nobel Peace laureates are accompanying them on this noble crusade in which the very existence of today’s world is at stake.

(Updated April 24) Bolivia: Historic people's climate conference winds up -- first reports on outcomes

Democracy Now! -- April 22, 2010. Cormac Cullinan, South African environmental lawyer and an anti-apartheid activist, is co-president of the people's conference Rights of Mother Earth Working Group. He reports on its findings (full transcript of interview below).

[For more coverage of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, click HERE.]

People’s summit adopts ‘Cochabamba Protocols’

By Brenda Norrell, Cochabamba

(See the end of this article for a link to the People’s Agreement text in Spanish.)

April 23, 2010 — Censored News via Capitalism and Climate — The World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth culminated Thursday and released the final declaration, the Agreement of the Peoples, calling for the establishment of an International Climate Court to prosecute polluters, condemning REDD and holding polluters responsible for their climate debt.

Voices from Bolivia people's conference: The `most important event in the struggle against climate change'

Nnimmo Bassey interviewed by Democracy Now! (Transcript below).

April 21, 2010 -- Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: Among those who spoke at the opening ceremony for the World Peoples’ Climate Conference was Nnimmo Bassey. He’s the prominent Nigerian environmentalist and chair of Friends of the Earth International. By contrast, at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December, his group, along with several other mainstream environmental organisations, was barred from the talks.

Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous spoke with Nnimmo Bassey outside the conference gates here in Tiquipaya. He began by asking to talk about the significance of the Bolivian summit.