Bolivia Blog 1: Getting ready, the People’s Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights in Bolivia

Since the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks to both reach an outcome or even to ensure the voices of people who are going to be most effected by climate change were being represented, the Bolivian government have called a people’s conference to create space for the voices of the people – The People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights

The importance of this conference at this time cannot be underestimated. Last weekend, the climate negotiations resumed at the headquarters of the UNFCCC in Bonn.  Here, more blatantly than ever before, rich countries were responsible for bullying and bribing the countries, that were standing up in opposition to the weak Copenhagen Accord – ironically not only the most affected but also the least responsible for causing the problem in the first place. One senior African diplomat told The Guardian that the UK, France, EU and US have told poor countries they would “suffer” if they did not back the Accord. WDM first revealed the bullying and bribery tactics of rich countries in Copenhagen.

Bolivia, one of these most affected countries, has even been threatened that it will only receive climate finance if it puts its name to the Accord. The bullying from countries like the US was so outrageous that even Yvo de Boer, the UN’s outgoing climate chief spoke out about the threat to withdraw £2.5 million from Bolivia: “Bolivia is losing £2.5 million in climate funds. That is what the presidential palace pays for toilet paper in a year. Bullying is not an effective instrument” – in one breath referring both to the inadequacy of the sums being offered by rich countries like the US as well as the outrageous nature of these bribes. 

In all, over ninety countries, mainly made up of the world’s economically poorest countries, are refusing to sign up to the inadequate and non-legally binding Copenhagen Accord that was proposed by Obama. Whilst rich countries throw allegations of them scuppering the success of international negotiations, these poorer countries are standing strong for good reason: the Accord will not stop catastrophic climate change that will destroy the lives of millions, or help provide sufficient funds for people to deal with its impacts. Not only does this Accord have no legal power, it has not been adopted by the UN and it does not have the power to keep climate change even to the 2 degrees it refers to. The People’s Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights is intended to give the negotiations a push back in the right direction that it critically needs.

I will be attending the summit on behalf of WDM. Whilst I’m there, I will be working with our partners to develop our plans for future campaigning on climate debt and inputting into the climate debt work group. I will also be learning more about the impacts of climate change on people in Bolivia, one of the countries most affected by climate change as well as one of the economically poorest countries in Latin America. You can read my blogs over the next few weeks on our website.

For more information on the conference, please see http://pwccc.wordpress.com/