Bolivia410

Daily Dispatches

April 17 – Carwil without Borders

Like what is soon to be thousands and thousands of people, I’m now in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Cbba is Bolivia’s third-largest metropolis, and fourth-largest city (both of the twins, La Paz and El Alto, are larger along with Santa Cruz). If you’ve heard of Cochabamba before, it’s probably because of the April 2000 Water War. In celebration of that event’s tenth anniversary, water activists are gathering in the 3rd International Water Fair from this past Thursday until Sunday (website).

From Thirty Thousand Feet Above Mother Earth

En route to Bolivia – that is, somewhere 30,000 feet above Mother Earth – I crossed paths with Alberto Saldamando, the legal council for the International Indian Treaty Council, and a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to the Cochabamba climate summit. As we stood in the aisle of the airplane, raising the hackles of the flight crew, I asked him his vision of the week ahead. Alberto is a friend, someone I’ve worked with in the past, so he may have been more candid with me than he might be in public; when I asked his opinion on the state of the climate negotiations and his hopes for Cochabamba, he said, “I’m pessimistic. You know, greed has no bounds.”

The coming event in Cochabamba will be an alternative for plural dialogue and consensus among countries, faced with the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, the vice president of the Latin American Parliament (Venezuelan group), Filinto Duran, told Prensa Latina.

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ADAPTATION

WORKING GROUP 11: ADAPTATION

Peoples do not accept the term “adaptation” because it represents an imposition, and is insufficient since it leads to a process of actions and costs required in front of an impact not generated by us. is understood by peoples as the tool to fight climate change

impacts and to protect and defend Mother Earth. It also means the healing of damaged natural resources, and the compensation of damages, social and cultural conflicts. The actual adaptation is the one that developed countries should accomplish, changing their lifestyles, development models and excessive consumerism.

It is proposed, in the context of the UNFCCC, that developed countries and those with emerging economies with large footprints, must learn to live with less opulence and lower GHG emissions.

MONITORING AND IMPACTS ASSESSMENT

• We demand the need of monitoring and assess impacts that poor countries suffer as a consequence of climate change effects, which requires developed countries to provide technology transfer in order to measure these impacts establishing the evidences of climate change impacts and their compensation, which should not represent a new debt for our states.

• We demand the strengthen of investigative capacities and technology transfer to universities in developing countries to build capacity to monitor, predict, and assess impacts of climate change on every level. To accomplish this, it is mandatory to demand resources from developed countries that cover all of these processes. (link)

Working Group XVII: Strategies of Action

Recognizing that all beings are children of Mother Earth, which is not an inert object, but rather is alive, and being aware that while we are not in balance with Mother Earth we—people, animals, plants and all beings as a whole—are ill.

Today from Bolivia, we declare the world to be in a state of emergency and call on all world’s peoples and their organizations to mobilize and on governments to raise awareness and commitment to defend Mother Earth, adopting a lifestyle in which all walk together and nobody is left behind, a way of life that offers all to everyone and in which no-one lacks anything (link)