[E-rundbrief] Info 886 - Climate Change Peoples Protocol (Correction)

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 886 - Peoples' Movement on Climate Change: The
Peoples' Protocol on Climate Change (presented at the Copenhagen Climate
Forum 09). Korrektur zu Info 885; Erich Fromm über die Menschen im
Kapitalismus.

Bad Ischl, 9.1.2010

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

Bitte entschuldigt meinen Neujahrsfehler - dieser Text wurde irrtümlich
unter Info 885 versendet, die damit doppelt verwendet wurde!

Ich wünsche uns allen ein fehlerfreundliches Neues Jahr - vor allem frei
von uns allen bedrohenden Fehlentscheidungen!

Matthias Reichl

---------------------

Dazu noch ein Text von Erich Fromm:

	Der moderne Kapitalismus braucht Menschen,
	die in großer Zahl reibungslos funktionieren,
	die immer mehr konsumieren wollen,
	deren Geschmack standardisiert ist und
	leicht vorausgesehen und beeinflusst werden kann.
	Er braucht Menschen,
	die sich frei und unabhängig vorkommen und meinen,
	für sie gebe es keine Autorität,
	keine Prinzipien und kein Gewissen -
	und die trotzdem bereit sind,
	sich kommandieren zu lassen, zu tun,
	was man von ihnen erwartet,
	und sich reibungslos in die Gesellschaftsmaschinerie einzufügen;
	Menschen, die sich führen lassen,
	ohne dass man Gewalt anwenden müsste,
	die sich ohne Führer führen lassen und
	kein eigentliches Ziel haben außer dem,
	den Erwartungen zu entsprechen,
	in Bewegung zu bleiben,
	zu funktionieren und voranzukommen.

	-----------------------------				


The Peoples' Protocol on Climate Change

Peoples' Movement on Climate Change

http://peoplesclimatemovement.net/

Monday, 07 December 2009 19:16

The planet is experiencing a climate crisis of catastrophic proportions.
Drastic action is required to reverse the situation. Global surface
temperature has risen twice as fast in the last 50 years as over the
last century and is projected to rise even faster in the coming decades.
Thirteen of the last fifteen years (1993-2008) rank as the warmest years
on record. This is disrupting weather patterns, endangering ecosystems
and biodiversity, and destroying people's lives and livelihoods,
especially of the poorest and most vulnerable.

With more frequent extremes of heat, changed rainfall patterns, stronger
tropical cyclones, and sea-level rise, climate change will inflict the
hardest impacts to millions of the world’s poor and disadvantaged –
women, indigenous peoples, farmers, fishers, small island and desert
nations. Africa, Asia, and Latin America face shorter growing seasons,
lost or degraded agricultural land, decreased agricultural and food
production, and freshwater shortages. Droughts in Africa would bring
widespread malnutrition, hunger, and famine. Asia is already confronting
flooding and landslides, with mounting casualties from injury, death,
and diseases. In Latin America, higher temperatures and reduced
biodiversity in tropical forests will devastate indigenous communities.
Rising sea levels and increased storm surges threaten small island
populations and coastal communities, and warmer waters are diminishing
fish stocks.

The destabilization of the planet’s climate is driven by the
unprecedented increase in human-generated greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the
atmosphere over the last two centuries. The most dangerous increase is
in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, attributed to the unrestrained
burning of fossil fuels for energy to feed capitalist industry,
commerce, transportation, industrial agriculture and food production,
and militarism. Widespread deforestation also contributes to emissions
and cripples the planet’s carbon-cycling capacity. The increased
concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere is causing warming that fast
approaches 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the estimated
threshold for catastrophic climate change.

The last two centuries are hallmarked with great strides in technology,
production, and standards of living. But these advances were achieved by
the lopsided use and overuse of the planet’s shared resources, for the
benefit of a minority of the world’s population, and to the detriment
and deprivation of the rest. At the forefront of this injustice are
Northern TNCs, whose relentless pursuit of private profits demands the
command of vast energy and natural resources, an arrangement that not
only led to ecological destruction, but the dispossession and
impoverishment of large numbers of people. Indeed, the two centuries of
increasing emissions and ecological destruction coincide with two
centuries of worsening economic inequality between and within countries;
with the increasing concentration of wealth to a narrow global elite,
and the universalization of want to the mass of humanity; with the
colonial and neo-colonial subordination of countries; with the corporate
takeover and exploitation of Southern natural and productive resources;
with the loss of Southern economic and policy sovereignty to powerful
economic and policy organizations such as the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, and so
on. The system that has resulted in climate change is the same system
behind structural poverty and underdevelopment which magnify the
vulnerability of millions who have little or no responsibility for
causing climate change.

Scientific evidence indicates that climate change and its impacts are
being felt sooner and stronger than had originally been projected.
Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland ice are melting fast; oceans are
rapidly acidifying; and higher surface temperatures in the Pacific and
Atlantic oceans are spawning stronger cyclones. Drastic and socially
just solutions are urgently needed. Emissions must peak and decline
rapidly to stabilize CO2 concentration in the atmosphere at 350 parts
per million (ppm), and keep warming as far below 1.5 degrees Celsius as
possible, in order to limit the devastating effects of climate change on
the world's poorest and most vulnerable. The global action in pursuit of
this end must recognize and redress the socially unjust arrangements at
the root of climate change; must be fair and equitable; must reflect
historical responsibility and capability to act; must allow for the
democratic representation and participation of the poor, and must truly
meet their needs.

However, existing official efforts for climate action are far behind the
pace with which climate change and its impacts are occurring. Northern
governments and corporations have heretofore not only refused to fully
honor their historical responsibility to reduce emissions and support
climate actions in the South, but have notably exploited the climate
crisis to develop, legitimize, and enforce self-serving solutions that
create new profit opportunities, and sustain and expand corporate power
over natural resources, production and energy systems, funds, and
technologies.

Powerful Northern and corporate minority interests have undermined the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The
Convention’s Kyoto Protocol has diminished responsibility and
accountability for the climate crisis through the marketization of the
atmospheric commons. The offsets and emissions trading system transfers
adjustment costs from rich to poor, creates new dependencies, rewards
corporations for polluting and increases their opportunities for
profits. Northern TNCs and investors have sustained and even increased
their energy intensive operations through relocation to Southern
countries, capturing and co-opting local elites into the destructive
process of capitalist-dominated production and consumption.
Moreover, current negotiations for a post-2012 climate regime appear
headed towards worsening the problem rather than resolving it. Major
powers have stalled on committing drastic emissions cuts that the
scientific evidence requires, and the funding to cover the costs of
adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. They are also
aggressively pushing for an agreement that would expand the
responsibility to make binding emissions cuts to developing countries,
or worse, abandon binding emissions commitments altogether, in sheer
disregard of equity, justice and their responsibility for causing
climate change.
Therefore it is urgent to come out with a Peoples’ Protocol on Climate
Change that captures the peoples’ stand on this most urgent problem
confronting humanity. This declaration articulates the values and
principles that should guide international action and peoples’ struggles
against climate change and its associated ecological and socioeconomic
destruction.

Statement of values and principles

We, the people, are united behind certain core development values and
principles of social justice, democracy, equality and equity, gender
fairness, respect for human rights and dignity, respect for the
environment, sovereignty, freedom, liberation and self-determination,
stewardship, social solidarity, participation and empowerment. This
statement further articulates these principles in the context of the
global climate crisis.

I. Social Justice must be guaranteed, acknowledging the systemic roots
of the climate crisis, the disproportionate responsibility of a narrow
elite, the disproportionate vulnerability of the majority to the adverse
effects, the grossly uneven capacity to confront and respond, and the
legitimate aspirations to development of the people apart from the crisis.

1.Climate change must be understood not merely as an environmental issue
but as a question of social justice, its causes are rooted in the
current capitalist-dominated global economy which is principally driven
by the relentless drive for private profits and capital accumulation.

2.The current global capitalist order, driven by the Global North and
their TNCs is the fundamental origin of over-exploitation and depletion
of resources, of the gratuitous use of energy resources and the
excessive release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “Free market”
policies of “globalization”, and its aggressive and intrusive expansion
into every sector of the economy and into the global South, and the
exploitation by TNCs of the people and the planet must be condemned.

3.Neoliberal policies are imposed particularly on the people of the
global South by powerful foreign governments wielding influence through
multilateral, regional and bilateral mechanisms such as World Trade
Organization (WTO) agreements, regional and bilateral free trade
agreements (FTAs), investment agreements, and aid conditionalities.

4.A very significant part of supposedly “Southern” emissions actually
result from the energy-intensive operations of Northern TNCs located in
the South for the purposes of exploiting local labor and natural
resources. We further acknowledge that the severe deforestation across
Latin America, Asia and Africa is most of all due to Northern TNC-driven
commercial logging, plantation agriculture, mining activities and dam
projects

II..People’s Sovereignty means asserting people’s power over resources
and institutions as the foundation of the global response to climate change.

1.Central to the history and structure of global capitalism that caused
climate change is the monopolization of resources, wealth, and
institutions by a privileged elite, and the consequent dispossession and
marginalization of basic producers, peasants, workers, women, fishers,
indigenous peoples. Through colonial and neo-colonial arrangements,
Northern countries, TNCs, and powerful global bureaucracies such the
IMF, World Bank, and WTO have wrested control of Southern economies and
natural resources away from Southern peoples, damaging them in the process.

2.Communities and marginalized peoples also do not have proportionate
control over planning, decision-making, and management of existing
bodies and initiatives devoted to climate action, and in the conduct of
the projects and programs they carry out. They do not have proper access
to information, funds and technologies. Northern governments,
international financial institutions, and aid agencies retain control of
these.

3.Communities, workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, women and other
marginalized sectors should assert democratic control over natural,
intellectual, and financial resources, technologies, and reorient them
towards serving social needs rather than increasing profits and
corporate growth. Southern peoples should assert national sovereignty
over their economies and pursue independent and sustainable paths toward
national development.

4.Communities and peoples who stand to bear the worst impacts of climate
change have a vital role in defining, guiding and determining the work
of any climate action body at the local, national, regional and global
levels. They should be afforded equitable representation, meaningful
participation, and the power to decide over what means to use in
mitigation and adaptation, and how best to use them in a way that serves
their particular needs. Funds and technologies must be accessible to them.

5.People should actively participate through social movements and
struggles to assert democratic control over resources and institutions
that is indispensable to dealing with the problem of climate change.

III. Respect for the Environment means a rejection of market mechanisms
that impose the cash nexus on ecological priorities. The needs of the
planet and its people must take precedent over the push for growth and
profits.

1.We recognize that nature is vital for the survival of all and that
natural resources and their use are essential for sustainable human
development, and the elimination of poverty, ill-health and hunger. We
are committed to building societies where the people enjoy all human
rights and fundamental freedoms, and in a way that the world we create
does not unjustly deny the same for future generations.

2.We assert that the needs of people and planet must be placed above
those of global capital and the wholesale pursuit of private profits.
Property rights, which allow things to be traded, accumulated, and
monopolized by a few for the sake of private gain, must not cover
resources and assets upon which people’s livelihood depend, including
local and planetary commons.

3.We believe that population growth increases humanity’s demands on
nature but that the resources of the planet are sufficient to meet these
demands if only production, resource-use and consumption are organized
to meet the needs of the people for life and not of a select few for
profits.

4.Corporations and international financial institutions have focused on
developing, enforcing, and expanding market-based and profitable
“solutions” that are unsustainable, unsafe, and which further the
commodification of the environment, such as carbon trading, forest
carbon offsetting, biochar, biofuels, carbon capture and storage, and
“clean coal”, nuclear and large hydropower energy, to name a few. Market
arrangements and technologies that extend the privatization and
enclosure of the environmental commons and pose new threats to
ecosystems and the livelihood, health, and food security of communities
should be opposed.

IV. Responsibility, expressed in the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities, requires a mechanism for
globally-inclusive equity. Northern countries share a disproportionate
responsibility for historic emissions.

1.The poor and marginalized communities are most vulnerable to the
adverse effects of climate change.

2.Elite segments of society whose current levels of consumption are
grossly excessive and cannot and should not be maintained, even as those
large populations globally who are denied basic needs should have these
met. These elite segments of society must bear the greatest
responsibility for the climate crisis.

3.There are large parts of humanity who are more dependent for their
survival on their access to and use of natural resources, as well as on
the state of the climate and the natural environment. The specific needs
of farming communities, indigenous peoples, coastal communities,
fisherfolk, and other marginalized, poor and rural producers need to be
given special attention in all adaptation efforts.

4.Adaptation is not acceptance of climate change but is necessary to
provide urgent relief from the actual impacts of climate change that are
already being felt by the most vulnerable communities and countries
until global mitigation efforts are sufficiently developed to halt
global warming.

A five-point platform for action

Comprehensive and concerted but differentiated and equitable global
effort to achieve deep, rapid, and sustained emissions reductions to
stabilize CO2 concentrations at 350ppm and hold global average
temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius

1.Northern states and corporations, having inordinately used and damaged
the atmospheric space and the environment enough to cause climate
change, should unconditionally carry out deep emissions cuts at a rate
and scale that will swiftly reduce CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm or
below, with peak emissions reached no later than 2015. All Northern
states should be part of an internationally enforced, regulated, and
binding framework for emissions reductions.

2.Southern states should reorient their economies towards low-carbon
development and carry out measurable, reportable, and verifiable (MRV)
emission reductions utilizing compensatory financial and technology
transfers from the North.

3.Rapidly transition away from fossil fuels as energy sources and
towards new, renewable energy sources and systems such as wind, solar,
geothermal, sustainable hydropower, and so on.

4.Abandon unsustainable agricultural and food production dominated by
profit-seeking agribusiness and agrochemical TNCs. Industrial
agriculture as practiced today causes major GHG emissions from land
conversion and soil degradation, and the heavy use of fossil fuels for
fertilizers, pesticides, and long distance transportation. Switch to
ecologically-sound farming methods that keep carbon in the soil, within
the context of diversified and community-based agricultural production
that prioritizes achieving food security and self-sufficiency.

5.End deforestation once and for all. Stop large-scale mining and
commercial logging activities by TNCs in the South, and the encroachment
of export cash-crop plantations into forests.

6.Reject aid conditionalities and policy impositions by the World Bank
and IMF, and revoke unequal multilateral and bilateral trading
arrangements that undermine environmental regulations and allow for the
unrestricted exploitation, pollution, and destruction of Southern
resources by Northern corporations.

7.Immediately end all subsidies and investments by Northern governments
and international public financial institutions to fossil fuel projects
that will lock the world with carbon-dependent energy, production, and
transportation systems far into the future. Redirect public funds to
research and investments in developing environmentally-friendly
technologies, renewable energy systems, sustainable mass transportation,
and so on.

8.End wasteful and destructive wars and redirect military budgets in
support of environmental conservation and the transition to sustainable
technologies and systems.

Demand the reparation of Southern countries and the poor by Northern
states, TNCs, and Northern-controlled institutions to redress historical
injustices associated with climate change

1.Demand the mandatory and unconditional provision and transfer of
financial and technological resources by the North to support adaptation
(coping with and covering the losses from adverse climate impacts, and
building climate-resilient systems) and mitigation (transition to
low-carbon and sustainable development paths, and carrying out
non-binding MRV emissions reductions) in the South.

2.Northern states should provide sufficient, predictable, and mandatory
climate financing to developing countries. Climate funds are
compensation and not aid. Funds should be over and above longstanding
and unmet official development assistance commitments by developed
countries (0.7 percent of Gross National Income); should mainly come
from public sources; should take the form of outright and unconditional
financial transfers; and should be democratically governed and directly
accessible to communities and their organizations. Carbon markets should
have no role in climate financing.

3.Rechannel all resources from donor-controlled climate funds and
funding mechanisms, and oppose the involvement of Northern aid agencies
and international financial institutions in climate finance. Intended
recipients have no power and meaningful participation over these funds’
design, governance, and delivery; they add to the debt burden of many
poor countries, and will be forced to accept policy conditionalities in
exchange for access to these funds.

4.Reject private insurance schemes and the sale of debt instruments to
capital markets as mechanisms to raise financing for adaptation. These
schemes transfer the burden of financing to developing countries and
individual entities, and allow private corporations and funds to profit
from the vulnerability they face.

5.Remove intellectual property rights and trade restrictions that place
severe constraints on the people’s access to climate-friendly
technologies and thus on the ability to promote low-carbon alternatives.

6.Reject the imposition of debt-creating climate funds and the
neoliberal policy conditions tied to the access of these funds.

Reject false solutions that allow Northern states and corporations to
continue harming the environment and communities, provide new and
greater opportunities for profit, and reinforce and expand corporate
control over natural resources and technologies

1.Abolish all carbon markets. Put an immediate end to emissions trading
and offsetting as mechanisms for Northern countries and corporations to
meet emissions commitments. The cap and trade system has failed to
deliver what little emissions reductions rich countries have committed
to, and has effectively privatized and commodified the atmosphere.
Northern carbon markets allow big historical polluters to evade making
deep emissions cuts by trading among themselves rights to pollute the
atmosphere which they had been given for free by Northern governments.
Carbon offsetting allows Northern corporations to continue polluting by
funding environmentally and socially questionable projects in developing
countries, offloading the responsibility and associated risks of cutting
emissions to the South.

2.Oppose the expansion of carbon offsetting, which will transfer the
burden of cutting emissions to the South, reward big polluters, and
further weaken and delay efforts to curb Northern emissions through
mandatory measures. Oppose its extension into Southern spaces, including

a).forests, which threaten to displace indigenous peoples and
forest-dependent communities; bring standing forests to the control of
private corporations; promote the expansion of monoculture tree
plantations that damage forest biodiversity and ecosystems; and reward
deforesters;

b).agricultural soils, which threaten to further decimate forests and
land devoted to food production; enclose communal lands and displace
farmers and rural communities; reward landlords and agribusiness TNCs,
and bring more lands under their private control; and intensify
industrial agriculture. Oppose the large-scale deployment of
corporate-controlled technology such as biochar and no-till agriculture
that will facilitate the inclusion of soils into carbon offsetting
mechanisms.

3.End the large-scale commercial production and use of agrofuels.
Large-scale agrofuel production worsens GHG emissions by forcing the
extensive conversion of good farmlands, forests, and grasslands into
plantations that release carbon into the atmosphere – apart from
reducing agricultural land for food production, driving food prices up,
increasing food insecurity, and displacing forest and rural communities.

4.Reject “clean coal” and carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, and
megadams as substitutes to fossil fuels as power sources. These projects
are intended to supply the increasing energy needs of TNCs and global
elites but do not stem dependence on fossil fuels and the increase in
GHG emissions. They also pose huge risks to the safety and health of
communities, and the stability of ecosystems.

5.Oppose geo-engineering megaprojects that manipulate the environment
and alter naturally operating systems on a large scale. These
ill-conceived schemes are extremely costly, complex, and risky; and
totally ignore sounder, realistic, and practicable measures to stem
climate change. Such extreme technological fixes include ocean
fertilization, spraying sulphates into the atmosphere, putting sunshades
in space, and plastic-coating deserts.

6.Reject proprietary genetically-modified “climate-proofed” crops. Stop
the extension of patent rights on farmer-developed climate-resilient
seeds by biotechnology and agrochemical corporations, which would deny
small farmers the ability to cope with the negative impacts of climate
change. End the genetic manipulation of crops by corporations, and
promote the increase of agricultural biodiversity as an effective way of
increasing agricultural resilience to erratic and extreme weather.

Struggle for ecologically sustainable, socially just, pro-people, and
long-lasting solutions

1.Ensure that official bodies for climate action become democratic,
participatory, and equitable institutions. Allow for the sectoral
representation and participation of groups most vulnerable to climate
change (including women, indigenous people, small island and desert
countries, the youth, farmers, fishers) in the governance of these
institutions and the delivery of support and solutions.

2. Assert the people’s sovereignty and democratic control over planetary
resources and productive assets, and the equitable distribution of the
wealth accruing from their use. Nations, communities, and sectors should
be able to utilize their resources to meet their social needs, and
pursue independent and ecologically sustainable paths to development.

Reverse neoliberal globalization.

Transform international economic and policy institutions, or replace
them with democratic and accountable institutions that respect national
sovereignty and people’s rights, and emphasize international equity and
solidarity.

Abolish unequal trade and investment arrangements that allow for the
unrestricted Northern exploitation, privatization, and destruction of
Southern natural resources, and lock Southern economies into dependence
on export-oriented resource extraction and industrial agriculture which
prioritize Northern and TNC demand over domestic needs, and at the same
time are major GHG emissions sources.

Reorganize international trade and investment relations around rules
that value economic sovereignty, self-reliance, people’s rights, and
cooperation over indiscriminate integration, dependency, corporate
power, and ruinous competition.

Reform domestic trade and investment regimes in favor of people’s rights
and sovereignty over natural resources. Regulate foreign-corporate
ownership and exploitation of natural resources, and hold corporations
accountable to strict environmental and community standards.

Promote sustainable, community-based food production oriented towards
achieving self-reliance and food sovereignty.

Countries, especially of the South, should adopt a comprehensive
national policy framework for economic diversification and for meeting
the collective needs of the present and future generations, especially
the poor and marginalized in society.

3. Reorganize corporations and productive units along democratic and
community-based forms of ownership and management. Replace the pursuit
of profits and private accumulation with the fulfillment of social need
and broader social goals such as education, health and food security as
the goals of production.

4. Institutionalize democratic planning and participatory management in
the use and conservation of resources for present and future production,
consumption, and other social uses. Social planning ensures resources
are utilized in such a way that people’s rights are protected, and
social needs are met in ecologically sustainable ways. Planning and
management should incorporate scientific and locally-adapted knowledge
and practices. Community-based resource conservation should be promoted.

5. Invest more public resources on research and development (R&D) of
ecologically sustainable energy, production, and transportation systems.
Reorient science, education, and R&D away from their current commercial
and proprietary character towards producing knowledge for social welfare
and development. Promote education on ecology and socially responsible
consumption.

6. Institutionalize cooperative arrangements with other countries in the
stewardship of global commons or shared resources such as oceans,
rivers, forests and the climate, based on solidarity and shared commitments.

Strengthen the peoples’ movement on climate change

It is clear that solving the climate crisis requires far-reaching social
transformation. Unequal patterns of power behind such injustices as
poverty, hunger, exploitation, and colonialism are the same ones that
have caused ecological destruction and climate change. And as with other
injustices, the climate crisis and its roots can only be dealt with
through political struggles by the people.

We affirm the importance of grassroots education, organizing and
mobilizations to promote and realize our alternative vision and program.
We retain our vigilance even where governments have expressed support
for a progressive agenda, and hold them accountable through popular
participation and mobilization. We are ever critical of attempts to
compromise the interests of the majority and the marginalized.

We commit to building on the powerful networks of movements for climate
action that have emerged worldwide. Localized actions against greenhouse
gas emissions have spread across the globe and deepened everyday
development struggles.

We shall further develop and advance a strong, broad, widespread,
grassroots-based people’s movement on climate change, in solidarity with
other social movements, to promote the people’s agenda on climate action
and social transformation, fight for solutions that secure justice and
democratic rights for the people, and challenge efforts from powerful
elite and corporate interests that seek to divert and undermine our
movement.

23 November 2009

Peoples' Movement on Climate Change: http://peoplesclimatemovement.net/



-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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