A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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
Page 1 and 2:
Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rig
Page 3 and 4:
Page 5 and 6:
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
Page 149 and 150: Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rig
Page 199: Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rig
Page 211: Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rig
show all

A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?