Durban Climate Justice

SA metalworkers union v Conf of Polluters and carbon trading; and for energy nationalization, Just Transition

willnham — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:20:00 +0000

NUMSA CENTRAL COMMITTEE STATEMENT

Wednesday 14 December 2011

…

COP 17 & Class Struggle:

Amidst the deepening crisis of climate change and in the context of the COP17 negotiations that were taking place in Durban, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa convened its first International Seminar on Climate Change and Class Struggle on the 4th December 2011.

Climate change cannot be resolved separately from the resolution of the capitalist crisis. Capitalism is currently devouring its own children throughout the world. The crisis is a global class war. We need to link our struggles around climate change with global anti capitalist struggles.

Delegates at the Numsa International Climate Change Seminar called on government to review the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM’s) and other elements of carbon trade that are being championed by global finance institutions and believe that an emerging carbon market could potentially undermine the need for a socially owned Renewable Energy sector. We reject market based solutions to climate change. Negotiations are not delivering so far. There is a need for massive reductions, NOW. Agreement needs to be much faster than 2020, since people are dying now. COSATU must take a policy to block CDM’s and other market based climate change solutions.

We believe Just Transition must be based in worker controlled, democratic social ownership of key means of production and means of subsistence. There is a need for long term collective planning of wealth and production and how needs are met. Collective and democratic planning is needed in order to make far reaching interventions that are on the scale that is needed and at the pace it is needed, and doing so in such a way that workers avoid bearing all the costs of the transition. Without this struggle over ownership, and the struggle for a socially owned renewable energy sector, Just Transition will become a capitalist concept, building up a capitalist “green economy”.

Within this, the question of ownership of hydrocarbons is central to the struggle against climate change. There is a need for nationalizing them. This will give political control of the industries and ensure that the economic revenue stays in countries where the fossil fuels are located. The example of Bolivia is key, and there is a need to learn from this experience.

There is a need for such nationalizations to be based on a state that is really of the whole people. It involves a political struggle.

The CC noted that, in the ongoing realities of a deepening global crisis of Capitalism, it was totally misplaced to expect any real movement on the Kyoto Protocol on the Environment and any significant agreements and on reductions in capitalist modes of production which pollute the Earth and heat it up.

While the CC welcomes the increasing emphasis being placed on a safer and greener Earth, the CC emphatically noted that the main enemy of the world today is the global system of capitalism which is profit driven and has no regard for the quality of our environment and now is moving fast to turn so-called Green Fields into new sites of private profit accumulation.

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OccupyCOP17 Supports 10-Dec. International Day of Human Rights

willnham — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:37:21 +0000

#OccupyCop17 letter of support for Madrid’s callout:

International Day of Action for Human Rights

A Statement on Intergenerational Rights

Let us not forget that the victories that will define 2011 in the pages of history began in Africa. That story of 2011 should end here. 2011 took us from Tunisia to Durban, South Africa – where Mandela cast his first vote and Gandhi held his first public meeting. Draw a line on the map from Tunis to Durban and think of all the languages you have crossed, all the diversity, all the wisdom, all the gods. There is a continent bridging those two cities – dreaming.
We are all in that dream.

2011 started with the demand for freedom, and ends with the demand for justice.

As our planet rampantly burns its insides and warms, history will view these years as a window closing. We have a chance to escape the catastrophe we are creating for our children. But there is no freedom without justice, and no justice without rights.

For our rights thrive, we must be guardians of their principles. Freedom is bigger than us – it is the architecture our dreams inhabit. It does not belong to us anymore than a house built of stone belongs to its inhabitant. Rights belong to the generations that will come after us. Justice grows like a garden, we water it with our wills. As each day passes, a window is closing and with it the justice that we will pass on to the future inhabitants of this world. Justice loses its meaning if it is stolen from the future.

Here in Africa, the well of hope is drying. People are being forced away from the land of their ancestors and have been sent wandering with nothing, into a darkening world.

Our planet is changing, and with it the story of human rights. Here in Africa, the river beds are already drying and the seedlings that we watered for the future, are wilting. We do not rob water from the cups of others, we divert the streams. Climate change is the tyranny of the present over the rights of the future. In Africa, the future is already here.

Human rights are universal, they exist not only to everyone who is alive – but to everyone who will ever live. No one is free until everyone is free.

#OccupyCOP17
dec10.takethesquare.net/

CJN Press Release. COP17 succumbs to Climate Apartheid

willnham — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:11:56 +0000

For Immediate Release

10 December, 2011

COP17 succumbs to Climate Apartheid

Antidote is Cochabamba Peoples’ Agreement

www.climate-justice-now.org

Durban, S. Africa –Decisions resulting from the UN COP17 climate summit in Durban constitute a crime against humanity, according to Climate Justice Now! a broad coalition of social movements and civil society. Here in South Africa, where the world was inspired by the liberation struggle of the country’s black majority, the richest nations have cynically created a new regime of climate apartheid

“Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions,” said Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth International. “An increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius, permitted under this plan, is a death sentence for Africa, Small Island States, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apartheid, whereby the richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%.”

According to Pablo Solón, former lead negotiator for the Plurinational State of Bolivia, “It is false to say that a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol has been adopted in Durban. The actual decision has merely been postponed to the next COP, with no commitments for emission reductions from rich countries. This means that the Kyoto Protocol will be on life support until it is replaced by a new agreement that will be even weaker.”

The world’s polluters have blocked real action and have once again chosen to bail out investors and banks by expanding the now-crashing carbon markets – which like all financial market activities these days, appear to mainly enrich a select few.

“What some see as inaction is in fact a demonstration of the palpable failure of our current economic system to address economic, social or environmental crises,” said Janet Redman, of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. “Banks that caused the financial crisis are now making bonanza profits speculating on our planet’s future. The financial sector, driven into a corner, is seeking a way out by developing ever newer commodities to prop up a failing system.”

Despite talk of a “roadmap” offered up by the EU, the failure in Durban shows that this is a cul-de-sac, a road to nowhere. Spokespeople for Climate Justice Now! call on the world community to remember that a real climate program, based on planetary needs identified by scientists as well as by a mandate of popular movements, emerged at the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth in Bolivia in 2010. The Cochabamba People’s Agreement, brought before the UN but erased from the negotiating text, offers a just and effective way forward that is desperately needed.

For more information, contact:

Mike Dorsey – mkdorsey, or call+27 (0)79 863 8756 or +1-734-945-6424

Nick Buxton – nick or call +27(0)81 589 8564 or +1 530 902 3772

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND

www.climate-justice-now.org

On technology

“The technology discussions have been hijacked by industrialized countries speaking on behalf of their transnational corporations,” said Silvia Ribeiro from the international organization ETC Group.

Critique of monopoly patents on technologies, and the environmental, social and cultural evaluation of technologies have been taken out of the Durban outcome. Without addressing these fundamental concerns, the new technology mechanism will merely be a global marketing arm to increase the profit of transnational corporations by selling dangerous technologies to countries of the South, such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology or geoengineering technologies.”

On agriculture

“The only way forward for agriculture is to support agro-ecological solutions, and to keep agriculture out of the carbon market,” said Alberto Gomez, North American Coordinator for La Via Campesina, the world’s largest movement of peasant farmers.

“Corporate Agribusiness, through its social, economic, and cultural model of production, is one of the principal causes of climate change and increased hunger. We therefore reject Free Trade Agreements, Association Agreements, and all forms of the application of Intellectual Property Rights to life, current technological packages (agrochemicals, genetic modification) and those that offer false solutions (biofuels, nanotechnology, and climate smart agriculture) that only exacerbate the current crisis.”

On REDD + and forest carbon projects
“REDD+ threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities. Mounting evidence shows that Indigenous Peoples are being subjected to violations of their rights as a result of the implementation of REDD+-type programs and policies,” declared The Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD and for Life.

Their statement, released during the first week of COP17, declares that “REDD+ and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) promote the privatization and commodification of forests, trees and air through carbon markets and offsets from forests, soils, agriculture and could even include the oceans. We denounce carbon markets as a hypocrisy that will not stop global warming.”

On the World Bank and the Global Climate Fund

“The World Bank is a villain of the failed neoliberal economy,” says Teresa Almaguer of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance in the U.S.

“We need a climate fund managed by participatory governance, not by an anti-democratic institution that is responsible for much of the climate disruption and poverty in the world.” “The Green Climate Fund has been turned into the Greedy Corporate Fund,” said Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South. “The fund has been hijacked by the rich countries, on their terms, and set up to provide more profits to the private sector”

On the Green Economy

“We need a climate fund that provides finance for peoples of developing countries that is fully independent from undemocratic institutions like the World Bank. The Bank has a long track record of financing projects that exacerbate climate disruption and poverty” said Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South. “The fund is being hijacked by the rich countries, setting up the World Bank as interim trustee and providing direct access to money meant for developing countries to the private sector. It should be called the Greedy Corporate Fund!”

Climate policy is making a radical shift towards the so-called “green economy,” dangerously reducing ethical commitments and historical responsibility to an economic calculation on cost-effectiveness, trade and investment opportunities. Mitigation and adaption should not be treated as a business nor have its financing conditioned by private sector and profit-oriented logic. Life is not for sale.

On climate debt

“Industrialized northern countries are morally and legally obligated to repay their climate debt,” said Janet Redman, Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies. “Developed countries grew rich at the expense of the planet and the future all people by exploiting cheap coal and oil. They must pay for the resulting loss and damages, dramatically reduce emissions now, and financially support developing countries to shift to clean energy pathways.”

Developed countries, in assuming their historical responsibility, must honor their climate debt in all its dimensions as the basis for a just, effective, and scientific solution. The focus must not be only on financial compensation, but also on restorative justice, understood as the restitution of integrity to our Mother Earth and all its beings. We call on developed countries to commit themselves to action. Only this could perhaps rebuild the trust that has been broken and enable the process to move forward.

On real solutions

“The only real solution to climate change is to leave the oil in the soil, coal in the hole and tar sands in the land. “ Ivonne Yanez, Acción Ecologica, Ecuador

For more information, contact:

Mike Dorsey – mkdorsey, or call+27 (0)79 863 8756 or +1-734-945-6424

Nick Buxton – nickor call +27(0)81 589 8564 or +1 530 902 3772

##END##

Press Release

citizenxt — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:19:12 +0000

BREAKING: 350.org activists and allies are protesting in the halls of the UN Climate Talks in Durban right now. Here’s a press release we’re putting out on the action. Follow @350 and @350africa for updates!

Hundreds Protest Inside UN Climate Talks in Solidarity with Africa and Small Islands

DURBAN — In solidarity with the millions of people already feeling the impacts of climate change, hundreds of people protested in the halls of the UN Climate Talks this afternoon to demand that nations not sign a “death sentence” in Durban.

The march filled the hall outside of the main negotiating room in Durban just as the afternoon round of talks were scheduled to begin. Standing side-by-side with delegates from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, civil society representatives sang traditional South African freedom songs and chanted slogans like, “Listen to the People, Not the Polluters.”

“We are all the people of Africa. We are all people of the islands,” said Kumi Naidoo, the Durban-born Executive Director of Greenpeace International. Naidoo appealed directly to the United States to step out of the way of progress. “President Obama, do not listen to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies. Listen to the people.”

In the last 48 hours, over 700,000 people have signed petitions calling on major emitters to stand with the nations of Africa and resist any attempts to delay climate action until 2020. The bulk of the signatures came from the global campaigning organization, Avaaz.org who called on the leaders of Brazil, China and Europe to, “Stand with Africa and face down the USA and other countries looking to wreck the climate talks and our planet.”

“The world is standing in solidarity with those here in Durban who are taking action,” said Avaaz Senior Campaigner Iain Keith. “The climate talks have just a few hours to go, and the future of Africa and the planet hangs in the balance. History will judge these negotiators based on the decisions they make tonight.”

As of 3:30 PM Durban time, protesters still filled a hallway of the conference center, singing, chanting, and listening to speeches from activists and representatives from around the world. It is unclear whether security will allow the gathering to proceed throughout the day or clear the area.

“Any agreement to delay real climate action until 2020 would be a death sentence for millions of people in Africa and around the world,” said Landry Ninteretse of the international climate campaign 350.org. “We are tired of waiting for progress.”

Follow up:

Jamie Henn, E: jamie@350.org, M: 0825473841

Daniel Kessler, E: daniel@avaaz.org, M: 0829546010

see pictures from this live #directaction here:

LIVE>INSIDE: #FLASHOCCUPATION images

citizenxt — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:20:57 +0000

About an hour ago, we recieved word from the ICC [#COP17] that a ‘Flash Occupation’ had begun.

Kumi Naidoo escorted off the premises, occupiers occupying a space inside the building, and journalists being kept apart from the protesters.

Details are still sketchy but the message is clear: “STAND WITH AFRICA”

This follows the HumanMike Action that took place this morning:

http://oneworldgroup.org/durban

If these members are ejected, we anticipate an amazing bunch gathering at the AllNightVigil @ Speakers Corner [#occupycop17]

Zuma Goons Attack DLF & Civil Society – Open letter eThekwini Mayor & Manager

willnham — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:29:49 +0000

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

(www.democraticleft.za.net)

08 December 2011

Open Letter to eThekwini Mayor and City Manager: Explain use of eThekwini City Resources to Attack Climate Justice Protesters

On Saturday December 3rd, the international day for a climate action march, the 500 strong Democratic Left Front contingent made up of activists from different parts of the country, arrived at the Botha Park Assembly point with its banners demanding: ‘1 Million Climate Jobs Now!’ ‘Africa is Burning, Transform the System!’ and ‘Listen to the People!’. Our red t-shirts said the same thing. Our activists also prepared their own posters the night before. We had our own marshals and sound system. We were unarmed and intent on acting peacefully.

We were participating in the march to peacefully condemn the ruling elites who are obsessed with profit making market mechanisms as the solution to the climate crisis. Such solutions have not worked, will not work and are taking all of humanity closer to planetary destruction. We were also there to celebrate and amplify the call of other components of the climate justice movements for genuine alternatives like 100% renewable energy, binding and ambitious emission reduction targets, climate jobs, food sovereignty, mass public transport systems, the rights of nature and the vindication of climate debt.

On arrival at the assembly point at 9.30am we were physically attacked by a group of 150 youth. Our posters were torn and our banners were also pulled down. We were also pelted with stones and bottles. In this context we defended and restrained ourselves. The police stood by and watched. (The story of this violence and intimidation was covered in the Mail and Guardian online weekly.) Our attackers wore green tracksuits and hats that were branded with the Ethekwini Municipality logo. The tracksuits also explicitly stated these were volunteers for COP17. It turns out that this was standard gear issued by the City to COP17 volunteers and such volunteers were meant to assist visitors to the City. These volunteers were meant to be the goodwill ambassadors of the City and of South Africa.

We would like to pose the following questions to the Mayor and City Manager of Ethekwini (Durban) Metropolitan Council:

(i) Why were these volunteers, who were meant to be busy with organising COP17, allowed on to the march?

(ii) Based on our investigations it was established that these were a group of special volunteers linked to the Mayor’s office and were paid by the City. Why did the City leadership instruct these volunteers to physically attack us and constantly disrupt the march?

(iii) Why were these volunteers brandishing ANC banners, posters (100% Zuma) and ANC paraphernalia when they were meant to be non-party aligned?

(iv) Why should we not ask the Public Protector to investigate you for abusing public finance to fund an ANC goon squad?

The physical attack we endured was more than an attack on the DLF. It was an attack on our democracy, on our democratic rights and freedoms we have as citizens to assemble and to protest peacefully. With the world watching, the City of Durban has embarrassed South Africa and has shown to the world the ugly side of how the ANC rules. The climate crisis will worsen in South Africa and the world, but be assured at every moment we will be using our democratic freedoms and rights to struggle for climate justice and transformative solutions.

Mazibuko Jara and Vishwas Satgar
For The Democratic Left Front National Convening Committee

An Open Letter to UN Delegates from #occupycop17

durbanclimatejustice — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:39:30 +0000

(to be read on human microphone)

Can you hear me? /
Are you listening? /
These words / are not my own. / They are the voice / of the voiceless. / I speak to you, / not as a nation –/ but as the unheard majority of this planet – / the youth who are inheriting a system / we will not accept. / And I speak to you, / with the authority of every child / yet to be born. / The future belongs to them / not you.

We speak to you now / not as delegates of nations / but as people / as fellow humans – / so that your own hearts may speak truth. / For if you let a single word escape your lips / that does harm to your own conscience/ and to the rights / of all future generations –/ then you have no authority,/ for you know no justice./ And may the weight of the floods, / of the droughts,/ of the storms / and of the deaths –/ be upon your shoulders, / and upon your conscience/ from this day forth / For you held back the tides of change.

For 16 years / you have not heard us -/ so we are no longer asking. / The future of the 99% will not be written by your documents,/ but by our actions. / You cannot stop an idea who’s time has come / you cannot stop an idea who’s time has come. / So speak your heart / for there is no choice now / but change. / Welcome to 2012.

All Night Vigil for Climate Justice, Speakers corner, 6pm

durbanclimatejustice — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:27:18 +0000

A few of us from #OccupyCop17 were contacted last week by a community in KwaMashu, a nearby township to Durban, and were invited to go hear their story. The General Assembly agreed to send members of the assembly to go meet with them. The community had been evicted from their homes to build a road for the World Cup, and never received any compensation or help. They then built homes using materials they bought with their own money on vacant land. Two weeks ago they were evicted and told that they were “dirtying” Durban for the COP17. Their homes were then destroyed by police and the building materials stolen. They also took their food and clothing. The community, including about 12 children, is now sleeping on neighbors floors after spending a week sleeping on the land where their houses had been – too afraid of the police to set up tents or build structure, so sleeping under plastic bags and sticks. During the police raid, a woman fleeing broke her leg in two places. During the abnormally strong rain-storm the day before the COP, one man from their community got sick, went to the hospital, and died.

Tomorrow this community from KwaMashu are coming to the #occupycop17 / Speakers Corner Space (4 min walk from ICC, corner of Walnut and Braam Fischer) for the 7pm General Assembly. The children from the community had previously created a play about the eviction, and will perform it tomorrow. We want to help share their story, to remind the world of the role justice plays in the climate debate. Pablo Solon and others will also be participating in the General Assembly, which will be followed by an all-night vigil for Climate Justice at the same location.

Green Economy Denounced as “Market on Steroids.” Clown arrested, photographer assaulted

willnham — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:41:51 +0000

Global Justice Ecology Project
PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release 8 December 2011

Global Leaders Powerfully Denounce Green Economy

Expose its impacts on peoples and ecosystems

* Clown Ejected and Photographer Assaulted by UN Security *

Durban, South Africa–During a press conference today at the UN Climate Conference COP 17 organized by Global Justice Ecology Project, Indigenous Peoples, youth, social movement leaders and ecological justice activists gave powerful testimonies about the looming impacts of the “economic integration” of carbon offsets schemes across the world through the “Green Economy.”

Speakers condemned the Green Economy as a repeat of the failed and unjust dominant economic model, predicated on the expansion of the controversial REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) offset scheme to privatize and market the carbon stored in oceans, soils, agriculture, and biodiversity – that is, every entity on earth. They further explained how this emerging economic scheme will exacerbate impacts on communities already suffering from climate change, fossil fuel pollution, and false solutions to the climate crisis.

A team of clowns dressed as Uncle Sam and his economic advisors defended the 1% global elite that the Green Economy is designed to serve.

Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project opened the event with a quote from Einstein. “Insanity,” she said, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. From that perspective, this COP is insane.”

Desmond D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance spoke next. “This conference of polluters has been a failure,” he declared. “It’s not going to assist the communities in South Durban or anywhere. Today as we sit inside this funeral parlor, we lament the deaths of our mothers, our children, and our families. The decisions we see coming out of here are in the interest of greed and corruption.” He closed his talk by invoking the anti-Apartheid call, “Amandla!” which means, ‘power to the people!’

Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance broke down in tears when she spoke of the mounting numbers of deaths on her home reservation in North Dakota, where natural gas fracking is destroying the water table and fracturing the community.

Referring to one of the key events of social movement groups at COP17 this week, Mossett said, “We called for a moratorium on REDD this week because this is the only thing that is going to save people – to stop these crazy policies.”

Ricardo Navarro, Friends of the Earth El Salvador added, “Here at COP17, we are seeing nothing less than the moral collapse of governments. The politicians here do not represent us. We are the ninety nine percent, and we have to take the streets.”

Clowns, led by Uncle Sam, then took over the stage and spoke on behalf of the United States and the global elites.

“We are the ones that caused the climate crisis,” the clowns announced. “And we are the only ones that can solve it!

Referring to REDD, Uncle Sam declared, Forests are very messy. They contain many useless life forms. If they’re not good for the economy, I say get rid of them.”

When asked by the press, “What is your Plan B?”, Uncle Sam, portrayed by Kevin Buckland, a US-based activist and member of the Youth delegation, answered, “Mars.”

During follow up interviews in the hallway of the ICC, UN Security detained Buckland, in clown regalia, while being interviewed on camera. He was debadged and evicted for alleged violation of the UN code of Conduct. (Clown suits are not, apparently, in the dress code.)

While taking photos to document Buckland’s detention, Vermont-based photographer Orin Langelle, Co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, on assignment for Z Magazine, was assaulted by UN Security who shoved his camera in his face.

And so the United Nations Circus of Polluters begins to draw to its fractious end.

###

Note: Full Statements by Press Conference Participants Below

Statement by Anne Petermann, Moderator, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Welcome everyone. We have invited social justice allies from around the globe to join us at this press conference to highlight the inherent dangers of the Green Economy and explain why we are uniting to blockade the “road to RIO.”

Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” In that light, this UNFCCC COP process is insane.

But even more insane is the direction in which it is headed. Not only in terms of setting into motion mandates that will allow business as usual until the planet is cooked, but most of all by moving forward with this so-called green economy.

The logo of COP 17 is a perfect example of this disastrous economic system and this corrupt COP process. It is a giant dead tree, painted green that is smothering the Earth.

We’ve seen for centuries how the market system of transforming resources and human labor into capital for the 1% has impacted critical ecosystems and driven entire peoples into extinction. But now they want to expand this market. They want to take the disaster of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and expand that offset scheme to every plant, animal and ecosystem on Earth.

They are developing plans now for Blue REDD, Brown REDD, Yellow REDD, Green REDD, REDD in every color of the rainbow. They want to use the carbon stored by every entity on the planet–including not just forests, but oceans and biodiversity, soils and agriculture to offset pollution from industry in the North, so they can go on polluting.

Already we are confronted not only by the climate crisis, but also by the food crisis, the water crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the crisis of the oceans. And the Green Economy, in squeezing control of the natural world into fewer and fewer hands of the 1% will exacerbate these problems and drive planet earth to the point where, as Native American activist and poet John Strudel said, “Civilized man may make survival by civilized man impossible.

Statement by Desmond D’sa, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance.

This Conference of Polluters has been a failure. It’s not going to assist the communities back home where I come from, or any communities anywhere in the world. Today as we sit inside this funeral parlor, we lament the deaths of our mothers, our children, and our families.

This funeral parlor has increased misinformation, it has withheld information, and it has not been transparent. The decisions are not in the interest of mankind, the decisions we see coming out of here are in the interest of greed and corruption.

We have to say to today in no uncertain terms, that the conference is a failure. It has wasted resources that could have been used to bring about better things in the world.

We the citizens of the world, the 99% we will continue to fight them in every corner of the world, we will continue to hold them accountable.

Speaking united with one voice we will continue to do this.

Down with the corrupt governments! Amandla!

Statement by Kandi Mosset, Indigenous Environmental Network and GGJA

Hello. I am Eagle woman

(In tears) This is the seventeenth Conference of the Polluters. And what have they done in that time? Nothing!

I grew up on a reservation. We are watching our people die. While I was here my cousin died. He was only 36 years old. Heart attacks, cancers, asthma. Everybody is being affected by the dirty industries on the reservation–industries allowed to continue polluting because of offsets. Because of REDD.

We called for a moratorium on REDD because that is the only thing that is going to save people – to stop these crazy policies. As Indigenous Peoples, as traditional people, we know better than anybody, better than these high level people, how to live upon the land. We resist these people that say ‘we will make the decisions for you.’

I can’t tell you what it’s like to keep going to these funerals, when the coffins are getting smaller and smaller.

I’m not here to compare our struggles; I’m here to unite. Because there is strength in unity and we must unite.

Decolonize the COP and unoccupy the sky!

Statement by Ricardo Navarro, Friends of the Earth El Salvador

We are here to express our disappointment. We are facing a big threat to the future of humanity. The scientists say they are guaranteeing a world that is 5 degrees warmer, by the end of the century.

To allow this to happen is criminal. Politicians are criminals for allowing this to happen. We are talking about the future of humanity, our sons, our daughters.

The message we are getting here is that politicians do not represent us. We have to take the streets. We are the 99%, and we have to take the streets.

We are seeing nothing less than the moral collapse of governments.

Statement by Uncle Sam (clown Kevin Buckland):

Hello. I am Uncle Sam. I was pleased to be a part of the World Corporate Climate Summit, which I helped organize over the weekend here in Durban.

But I’m here today at this press conference because I have a dream. I have a dream that one day corporations will not be judged by the actions that they take, but by how much of the Earth’s surface they control. But this dream is threatened. It is threatened by regulation. Human rights laws, environmental regulations, unions. All of these stand in the way of progress. It is not right. It is not just. We have paid good money to our government partners to ensure the outcomes of these talks, and by god, we mean to see those outcomes realized. Neoliberalism must prevail or all life on earth will be threatened. And by all life on earth, I mean, of course, the 1%.

After all, we, the 1% have a very long track record, going back hundreds of years, of improving upon nature. Nature is very slow and inefficient. For example, nature eliminates the weak and sick one individual at a time; where we eliminate entire ecosystems and peoples! It is a much more efficient process.

With the Green Economy, we, the 1%, are now taking our experience and advancing it to the next level. It’s like this COP 17 logo. Note that it depicts a giant dead tree, painted green, that is covering the earth. This is what we are about. This is the progress we are moving toward. Currently, forests are made up of living trees that take years to grow, must be cut down, debarked, and sawed into lumber or pulped for paper. Forests are very messy, with lots of extraneous life forms and human communities that serve no purpose. With the green economy, we can use new technologies–geoengineering, synthetic biology, nanotechnology and genetic engineering –to develop trees that sprout from the earth, grow to a massive size, are perfectly square, and fall to the ground, ready for harvest. And we will engineer them to be green so they will make people feel good.

It’s a win-win. We eliminate the surplus human population and monopolize the planet’s resources, channeling them for the benefit of us, the 1%.

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LA VIA CAMPESINA DURBAN DECLARATION

willnham — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:00:29 +0000

Assembly of the Oppressed, 5th December 2011, Durban, South Africa

Articles pictures and videos from Durban on www.viacampesina.org

As the Assembly of the Oppressed we are gathered here to demand the transformation of the entire neo liberal capitalist system. The fight against climate change is a fight against neo liberal capitalism, landlessness, dispossession, hunger, poverty and the re-colonization of the territories of the people’s of Africa and the global South. We are here to declare that direct action is the only weapon of the oppressed people of the world to end all forms of oppression in the world.

We are here in Durban, South Africa where the 17th United Nations Conference of Parties is taking place and are discussing false solutions to the climate crisis. And we can see that the future of Mother Earth and of humanity is in peril as those responsible for nature’s destruction are attempting to escape their responsibility and erase history.

We, La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasants, small-scale and agricultural family farmers, is severely dismayed at the attempts of the developed countries to further escape their historic responsibility to make real emission cuts and push for more false and market based solutions to the climate crisis.

Here in Durban, they are discussing a “new mandate” as an outcome of the COP 17, one which contains market mechanisms and a voluntary pledge system in order to move away from the mandated program of working towards legally binding commitments to cut emissions. Also, developed countries are working hard to escape their historical responsibility and not pay their climate debt by pushing for a green climate fund that involves private capital and the World Bank. Finally, there is a push to include agriculture in the negotiations, treating agriculture as a carbon sink rather than a source of food and livelihood. For La Via Campesina, with this trend of negotiations, it is better to have no deal than a bad deal that condemns humanity and our planet to a future of climate catastrophe.

We are now at the worst moment for agriculture and small farmers and for nature. The impacts of climate change are steadily worsening, leading to harvest failures, destruction of habitats and homes, hunger and famine and loss of lives. The future of humanity and the planet is in critical danger and if these false solutions push through, it will be a catastrophe for nature, future generations and the whole planet.

We therefore demand to all governments in the negotiations:

- For all

countries from the global South to stand up for their people and to defend the people and the planet with dignity and conviction. The government of South Africa has already sold out its people in this regard.

- For all

the developed countries to live up to their historical responsibility of causing this climate crisis and to pay their climate debt and commit themselves to at least 50% domestic emission reductions based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.

- Stop industrial

farming that promotes pollution and climate change through high levels of use of petroleum based chemicals

- Governments must

support agro-ecology

- For all

countries to listen and work for their people and not be under the control of transnational corporations.

- For all

countries to stop trying to save capitalism and making the people, including small farmers, pay for their economic and financial crisis.

We as La Via Campesina, demand the implementation of the people’s global agreement on climate agreed on in Cochabamba. And here in Durban and in a thousand Durbans, we strongly reiterate our solutions to the climate crisis.

- Further global

warming must be limited to a rise of 1 degree Celsius only.

- Developed countries

must make domestic emission reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.

- Developed countries

must commit to payment of their climate debt and give funding from at least 6% of their GDP. All funds for this climate finance must be public and be free from the control of the World Bank and private corporations.

- All market

mechanisms must be stopped, including REDD, REDD++ and the proposed carbon markets for agriculture.

We reiterate that there will be no solution to climate change and the predatory neo-liberal system that causes it, without the liberation of women, and rural women in particular, from age old patriarchy and sexist discrimination. We therefore demand as part of comprehensive action against patriarchy and sexism:

The promotion of women’s land access and rights through targeted redistribution

Laws and policies must be made responsive to the particular needs of women

We as La Via Campesina, demand an end to the commodification of our Mother Earth reject the mechanisms of the carbon market. Furthermore, we reject the proposed inclusion of a work program on agriculture in the negotiations and reject all proposals of market mechanisms surrounding agriculture.

We as La Via Campesina and the people of the world have the real solutions to the climate crisis and we call on all governments to heed them before it is too late. At this assembly of the oppressed we declare to the people of the world that the solutions are in their hands. Through building social movements and mobilizing popular struggles for social change the world’s people will overcome the close alliance between governments and multinational corporations that is strangling the world. In Africa at the moment this alliance is perpetrating one of the biggest land grabs in history, which would mean more chemical-industrial farming, more poverty and exploitation, and more climate change. The only serious counter to this is the land occupations initiated by the landless themselves. From the perspective of food sovereignty, agrarian reform and climate justice, these land occupations deserve the fullest support.

Sustainable peasant’s agriculture and agroecology cool down the planet.

Food Sovereignty is the solution!

Peasant agriculture is not for sale!

Globalize the struggle, Globalize the hope!

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