runs with scissors
04-21-2010, 09:29 PM
[div class="excerpt"]by Kimia Ghomeshi, Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, G20 and Climate Organizer
21 April 2010
The World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, has been a completely new experience for me.* With over 10 000 participants, groups from the global north are the minority here, the opposite of my experience in Copenhagen.* For the first time, I am amongst community members from developing countries who are first and foremost already affected by the climate crisis.* Indigenous peoples from around the world (but primarily the Americas) are participating alongside government representatives, academics, scientists, trade unionists, activists and NGOs.* The Cochabamba conference is a space for social movements to come together and build alliances, a space to have democratic, inclusive discussions, a space for the world’s poor and disenfranchised who have been effectively silenced by the world’s rich to have a voice and be part of a democratic, inclusive process to find real solutions to the climate crisis.
http://itsgettinghotinhere.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/foto-kimia-blog.jpg
I am now about half way through the 3 day peoples conference and feel a great sense of empowerment and sadness all at once.* I feel a deep sadness for our civilization that is so incapable of living in harmony with one another and with mother earth.* The developing world are to this day paying the price for colonialism in the form of neoliberal and capitalistic practices that are destroying their air, land, water and food – destroying their way of life.* I feel a deep sadness that capital accumulation has taken precedence over human life so that developed countries like Canada can continue to develop, exploit and consume.
But I also feel incredibly empowered because what I am seeing before me, here in Cochabamba, is a truly global resistance.* A resistance to the world’s greatest polluters– polluters who refuse to accept their responsibility for causing this global catastrophe.* *And this movement is building, becoming more tactful, more united, more committed, with a common vision: Systems change, not climate change.
What does systems change look like?* Well there is an undeniable common thread in every panel, discussion, and workshop I have participated in. *And that is the role of capitalism, globalization and neoliberalism that enable the unfettered resource extraction, industrialization and overconsumption in the global north that has given rise to not only climate change and the energy crisis, but furthered the vast inequality within the human population.* These systems have brought poverty, cultural genocide, disease and death to the majority of the human population, in order to fuel economies in developed countries that account for roughly 20% of the world and 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
...more
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/04/21/canadian-youth-report-back-from-cochabamba/#more-18799 [/quote]
21 April 2010
The World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, has been a completely new experience for me.* With over 10 000 participants, groups from the global north are the minority here, the opposite of my experience in Copenhagen.* For the first time, I am amongst community members from developing countries who are first and foremost already affected by the climate crisis.* Indigenous peoples from around the world (but primarily the Americas) are participating alongside government representatives, academics, scientists, trade unionists, activists and NGOs.* The Cochabamba conference is a space for social movements to come together and build alliances, a space to have democratic, inclusive discussions, a space for the world’s poor and disenfranchised who have been effectively silenced by the world’s rich to have a voice and be part of a democratic, inclusive process to find real solutions to the climate crisis.
http://itsgettinghotinhere.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/foto-kimia-blog.jpg
I am now about half way through the 3 day peoples conference and feel a great sense of empowerment and sadness all at once.* I feel a deep sadness for our civilization that is so incapable of living in harmony with one another and with mother earth.* The developing world are to this day paying the price for colonialism in the form of neoliberal and capitalistic practices that are destroying their air, land, water and food – destroying their way of life.* I feel a deep sadness that capital accumulation has taken precedence over human life so that developed countries like Canada can continue to develop, exploit and consume.
But I also feel incredibly empowered because what I am seeing before me, here in Cochabamba, is a truly global resistance.* A resistance to the world’s greatest polluters– polluters who refuse to accept their responsibility for causing this global catastrophe.* *And this movement is building, becoming more tactful, more united, more committed, with a common vision: Systems change, not climate change.
What does systems change look like?* Well there is an undeniable common thread in every panel, discussion, and workshop I have participated in. *And that is the role of capitalism, globalization and neoliberalism that enable the unfettered resource extraction, industrialization and overconsumption in the global north that has given rise to not only climate change and the energy crisis, but furthered the vast inequality within the human population.* These systems have brought poverty, cultural genocide, disease and death to the majority of the human population, in order to fuel economies in developed countries that account for roughly 20% of the world and 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
...more
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/04/21/canadian-youth-report-back-from-cochabamba/#more-18799 [/quote]