Letter to Advance Climate Justice at COP16

The fourteenth session of the AWG-KP and the twelfth session of the AWG-LCA are taking place this week in Tianjin, China.

 During the last Climate Talks in Bonn in August some concrete proposals were brought to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in order to advance the negotiations to cut the greenhouse gas emissions in a new and positive way. The main demands of the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (Cochabamba, April 2010) have been incorporated in the negotiation text of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperation under the UNFCCC.

In the Cochabamba Conference, more than 35,000 people from governments and civil society representatives of 140 countries discussed areas of the UNFCCC negotiations and issues demanded by social organizations and indigenous peoples. The Cochabamba Agreement emerged from this process, incorporating themes such as the structural causes of the climate crisis, agriculture and food sovereignty, the breakdown of harmony with nature, the importance of creating a binding framework to identify and judge climate crimes, and the development of a global democracy for the people to decide on an issue that affects all humanity and the planet.

Specific proposals from the Cochabamba Agreement included in the negotiation text that will be considered in Tianjin are:

• 50% domestic reduction of greenhouse gasses emissions by Annex 1 countries for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol years from 2013 to 2017.
• Stabilize the rise of temperature to 1º C and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• Guarantee an equitable distribution of atmospheric space, taking into account the climate debt of emissions by developed countries.
• Full respect for the Human Rights and the inherent rights of indigenous peoples, women, children, migrants, and peasants and other small producers.
• Full recognition to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
• Recognition and defense of the Rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony with nature.
• Guarantee the fulfillment of the commitments from the developed countries through the building of an International Court of Climate Justice.
• Rejection of the mechanisms of carbon markets that transfer the responsibility of the reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases from developed countries to developing countries.
• Promotion of measures that change the consumption patterns of the developed countries.
• Promotion of national policies that could improve local markets and food sovereignty instead of supporting global markets and exportation.
• Adoption of necessary measures in all relevant forums to exclude from the protection of the intellectual property rights those technologies to mitigate climate change.
• Developed countries will allocate 6% of their national gross product to actions relevant to Climate Change to repair the ecological debt from the North and use this to adaptation and mitigation measures in the global South.
• Integrated management of forests for mitigation and adaptation, without applying market mechanisms and with the full participation of indigenous peoples and local communities.
• Prohibition of the conversion of natural forest and other valuable ecosystems for plantations, since the monoculture plantations are not forest, instead to encourage the protection and conservation of natural forests.
• The management of funds and policies related to climate change must be under the governance of the UNFCCC.

We urge you to support these proposals and act to ensure that they stay in negotiation text for the upcoming negotiations in Cancun, Mexico. As well we demand that you to reject the adoption of the so called “Copenhagen Accord”, which was not an agreement of the COP15 and was drafted in a non transparent and undemocratic manner, in closed meetings and by a small group of powerful governments, and subsequently forced upon the overall process to destabilize and derail the UNFCCC where all the countries have the same rights.

Finally, we call on the US-Government to step aside and for the rest of the world to move ahead, as well as on the EU to be more ambitious regarding the KP targets.

It is now time for the UNFCCC to embark on resolute policies to address the climate crisis.Governments need to take strong and legal binding commitments to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions and begin to transition away from unsustainable modes of production and consumption.

We urge you to reject false solutions and to adopt coherent politics and real solutions based on the principles of climate justice in order to eradicate the policies and root causes of climate change.

Yours sincerely,

Members of Climate Justice Now!

 

7 October 2010, signed by: