The Peoples Agreement

Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation, and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

"Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger. If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people. The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system."

So begins the agreement reached at the World Peoples Summit in Cochabamba, this comprehensive, and impressively radical document goes on to set out 10 principles for recognising the 'Rights of Mother Earth', in the understanding that all life, including humanity lives in a dialectical and symbiotic relation with the ground under our feet. It states:

"To face climate change we must recognize Mother Earth as the source of life and forge a new system based on the principles of:

• The right to prompt and full restoration for violations to the rights acknowledged in this Declaration caused by human activities."

Promoted at the summit was the indigenous concept of 'living well' which is also interesting, in that it is not so different from 'our' conceptions of a bottom-up socialist/anarchist/communist democracy:

"Living well, not better. Faced with so much disproportion and wealth concentration in the world, so many wars and famine, Bolivia proposes Living Well, not as a way to live better at the expense of others, but an idea of Living Well based on the experience of our peoples. In the words of the President of the Republic of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, Living Well means living within a community, a brotherhood, and particularly completing each other, without exploiters or exploited, without people being excluded or people who exclude, without people being segregated or people who segregate.

Lying, stealing, destroying nature possibly will allow us to live better, but that is not Living Well. On the contrary, Living Well rather means complementing one another and not competing against each other, sharing, not taking advantage of one’s neighbor, living in harmony among people and with nature. It is the basis of the defense of nature, of life itself and of all humanity, it’s the basis to save humanity from the dangers of an individualistic and highly aggressive, racist and warmongering minority.

Living Well is not the same as living better, living better than others, because in order to live better than others, it is necessary to exploit, to embark upon serious competition, concentrating wealth in few hands. Trying to live better is selfish, and shows apathy, individualism. Some want to live better, whilst others, the majority, continue living poorly. Not taking an interest in other people’s lives, means caring only for the individual’s own life, at most in the life of their family.

As a different vision of life, Living Well is contrary to luxury, opulence and waste, it is contrary to consumerism. In some countries of the North, in big metropolitan cities, people buy clothes they throw away after wearing them only once. That lack of care for others results in oligarchies, nobility, aristocracy, elites who always seek to live better at other people’s expense."

The 'Peoples Agreement' was reached after 3 days of deliberation in 16 working groups, these groups were open and participatory, and whilst not without problems in some–criticisms ranged from them being too navel-gaving–the results were finalised in a meeting of the working groups with Evo Morales and the other representatives of the UN and other States present at the conference in Tiquipaya's Hotel Regina. The agreement is a huge step forward for the Climate Justice movement, and for social movements around the world. It's promise, if we can realise it, is to shift the debate on Climate Change onto a much more radical footing, in effect the World Peoples' Summit has the chance of being what the World Social Forum, refused to become, namely the key alternative World Forum to Neo-Liberal Capitalism, an annual gathering of the Worlds People that actually deliberates and produces co-ordinated plans of action. In this, as I said in one of my earlier reports, it very much looks like a 'second wave' of Anti-Capitalism, this is backed up by how the radical elements in the movement, involving organisations like Climate Justice Now! and Climate Justice Action have many activists and groups involved that trace their lineage to the protests against the G8 in the earlier part of the 2000s.

It's important to emphasis the anti-capitalist element, as the Climate movement, certainly in the West at least, has often been up to now more centred around promoting changes in personal consumption and lifestyle or advocating the need for austerity amongst the great mass of people to solve the issue, but here the blame is put squarely on the shoulders of the Capitalist system and it's promoters. Of course there are differences with the Anti-Capitalist movement of then. Then the State and Governments were something to be protested and attacked and political parties were often 'banned' from participation, whilst there were always contradictions in this general position, like the way tensions were caused by the involvement of Social Democratic States or local authorities in the Social Forum process, we are now living, in South America at least, with some of the Political success stories of the movement; one being the government of Bolivia. As Tadzio Mueller, part of the CJA network and contributor to Turbulence magazine says in an interview at the Huffington Post "While ten years ago the alter-globalization movement had a very strong critique of institutions such as NGOs and governments, now that context has changed: not all institutions are colonized by neo-liberalism. We definitely can't say that the Bolivian government is a neo-liberal one. There are problems with its continued economic reliance on extractive industries, but this is definitely an actor we have to work with." As Tadzio states there are certainly contradictions and problems to be overcome, both Bolivia and Venezuela are reliant on oil and gas for their economies and this, as everywhere needs to shift, at the conference one dissident group, denied access to the conference held an 'unofficial' working group the Mesa 18 just outside the conference gate, this brought together activists critical of the environmental destruction inside Bolivia caused by development projects, mining, and oil and gas exploration promoted by the Morales government.

Other problems facing the future of the movements, and especially for those of us in the North, is the relative absence of the radical left and workers movements so far in these processes, somehow we need to address and find ways to connect the radicalism in the South with the power of the those movements and ordinary people here, currently the Campaign for Climate Change's million green jobs demand being pushed through their campaign in the UK trade union movement is a good, but isolated example of this kind of thinking. Amongst much of the Left, promoting Climate Justice will entail a big shift away from traditional 'productivist' left ideas that say growth is good for Socialism, toward an understanding of what some call a 'Steady State' economy, that is, one that includes development, but not 'growth'–it would seem this is a particularly acute problem given the economic crisis, and a difficult one, but one that in some ways contains the seeds of a solution if the movement continues to develop in the way needed to match the world historical crisis we face.

Actions for the Year

The final text from the working group I was involved in can be viewed here in English and here in Spanish but here are the key action plans for the year ahead:

PROPOSALS FOR ACTIONS:

• Build an international relationship of social movements to implement joint actions.

Meetings are already happening in Mexico to plan for the protests at the COP16 summit in Cancun, and the alternative summit, Klimaforum10 is being prepared (see interview with co-ordinating commitee member, Rubén Treviño on GR's you tube channel). Cancun was, least we forget the scene of collapse of the WTO trade round in 2003, so we have the movements have a good record there! One final action to flag up is the and Global Minga, a Latin American network is on what was 'Colombus Day' this call is being supported and promoted by CJA network in Europe.

The Peoples' Summit was, despite all the criticisms and difficulties, a huge historic success spoiled only by the absence of so many activists from Europe, Africa and Asia held at home by the angry Icelandic Volcano, but whatever the outcome in Cancun, the fact that the second conference is already being planned, suggests that we may just bring the people of the world together to avert disaster, as the Peoples agreement states:

Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation, and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

LiNKS:

http://www.cmpcc.org.bo/

The main conference website

http://www.flickr.com/photos/globaliseresistance/

more pics from the summit (updated 12/05)

http://www.youtube.com/globaliseresistance

Videos from the summit (updated 12/05)