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Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com Kiribati is a small island in the Pacific Ocean, facing annihilation. Their team was led by the Minister of Emigration, charged with evacuating the whole population if worst came to worst. It is not simply that the Island will disappear under the sea. Floods are becoming more and more frequent: from one every other year, to one every year and now every half year. Sea water penetration becomes too frequent for the land to recover. It becomes useless for crops and there is a lack of fresh water. Salt water intrudes into the aquifer in the middle of the island. People start to use other water sources that are polluted. Water born diseases increase and mortality rises. Madeira is another small island state making plans to evacuate large numbers of their people. Delegation size was important because separate negotiations were going on day and night, eight to twelve at the same time, like finance, forestry, cooperation between developed/ undeveloped counties, etc. Delegations must be able to follow them all or they miss decisions affecting their country. Meeting times and locations constantly changed so struggled to know exactly where and when to be present. Massive documentation was produced which had to be read to watch what to argue against or for. Everything would be guesswork, unless you read everything thoroughly and summarised it. Even the BBC could not keep up with it. In the final three days there was nothing at all on the news screens. Increasing confusion resulted. Because NGOs were excluded in the second week, Alex and his colleague would have been excluded too. But they asked to be included as members of the Kiribati team. Countries like USA, Canada, China and UK with their very large and well organised teams could keep abreast of what was going on and create summaries of documents. They could catch up on sleep in relays. For inadequately resourced delegations from poor countries, desperately short of sleep, it became impossible to keep up. Having insufficient resources to cope with the mass of information was part of the unfairness for smaller and poorer countries. Some observers concluded that speaking at length was a deliberate tactic to exhaust other people. Towards the end of the summit, exhausted negotiators, without sufficient sleep, were taking critically important decisions affecting the future of humanity. Small countries like Kiribati, with very different cultures, were at another disadvantage: they lacked the necessary tough negotiating skills. Kiribati’s representatives were trusting and assumed people wanted the best for everyone whereas the culture of the Summit was adversarial and confrontational - a cross between the House of Commons and a court room. In the last three days they were exhausted and gave up. They sang songs and told stories. Alex summed up the reactions as he saw them. Countries from the North said it was a step forward. Countries from the South said it meant the end of their countries. A great injustice had happened. There was a huge revolt. Basically the rich countries are forcing people to: Move from where they live Die prematurely from flood, loss of fresh water or food. Failure to keep the temperature rise to 1.5c leads to death and forced migration. It amounts to genocide. There are parallels between national and international politics. In both arenas, the interests of rich and powerful dominate and the whole system bears down upon poor people and poor countries. Government leaders, there to serve citizens and protect them from the abuses of power, whilst talking a good talk, are too frightened to take on the rich and powerful and tackle the fundamental injustices and un-sustainability of the current system. 200
Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com Nations have to transform the whole global economic system simultaneously. We have to pressure our national governments to act. But John Bunzl, leader of Simpol, says “….. for me, the ‘bleeding rhino's head in the room’ is that we are asking our leaders to dramatically cut emissions and yet we expect them to do so without significantly harming our national economies.” It is unrealistic to expect them to do that unilaterally in a globally competitive economy. The risk is that unilateral initiatives will put those nations at a huge disadvantage. The whole global economic system, he argues, has to be changed simultaneously. Otherwise leaders will be committing economic and political suicide. Citizens need to pressure their governments to adopt the necessary policy changes simultaneously, thus removing the excuse they now make under pressure from their businesses and industries, that by adopting these policies before other countries do, they will damage their economic competitiveness. Countries need to act in unison. His organisation provides the means for citizens to bring pressure to bear. What next Most of the countries who endorsed the Accord want a binding treaty agreed by the next UN Summit. This will be held in the Mexican resort of Cancun in November and December, 2010. In the meantime there will be both UN and non-UN climate meetings. UN meetings were held in Bonn in April and USA hosted the Major Economies Forum, a meeting of the 17 biggest-emitting countries shortly afterwards. US "arm-twisting" tactics are resented and seen as a potential major stumbling block. For example, to placate domestic concerns about losing competitiveness, the US unilaterally demanded that China and other major developing countries should be subject to the same regime on verifying emissions curbs as industrialised nations. US made it clear that countries not endorsing the Copenhagen Accord would be unlikely to receive US funding. It will withhold money from Bolivia and Ecuador because they did not endorse the accord. Bolivia hosted the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth at Cochabamba, Bolivia from April 19 to 22 Over 15,000 people and up to 70 governments from all over the world were expected to attend. The event, supported by 241 partners from all over the world, was a response to the failures of COP15 It aimed to highlight the central role of peoples’ movements and social movements in the climate struggle and the critical alliance that must be forged between movements and progressive governments. The organisers call for “System change; not climate change” and urge all members and friends to organize actions on Earth Day 22 nd April to raise demands for climate justice and opposition to water and power privatization projects that exacerbate climate change. Their demands: 1. Northern countries give full reparations for the ecological debt and climate debt they owe to the South. 2. Northern countries undertake deep, drastic cuts of GHG (green house gas) emissions. 3. Southern nations assert their right to develop and meet the needs of their people through a system that is ecologically sound, just, equitable and democratic. 4. An end to the policies, operations and projects of IFIs (International Financial Institutions) that exacerbate climate change, including water and power projects. Stop IFIs, especially the World Bank and regional development banks, from claiming major roles in addressing the climate crisis and using it to push more privatization projects. 5. All governments to recognize and ensure peoples’ rights and access to sufficient, affordable, clean, quality water and adequate, reliable, affordable, safe, clean and sustainable power services and energy. 6. All governments to recognize that the use of very critical ecological and environmental resources in water and power services necessitate that these services remain under the public domain, protected from intrusion 201
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