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December 14, 2010 - No. 214 British Columbia Political Crisis Reflects the Clash
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 Vancouver demonstration against 2010 Winter Olympics, February 12, 2010. |
Workers and communities across the province have protested against his elimination of the appurtenancy clause in the forest industry, which for decades compelled forest license holders to mill the logs they took from "crown lands" at production sites within the communities close to the logging sites. Integrated forest use communities, which may have included a sawmill, chippers and pulp mill have since been broken up with dozens of sawmills and pulp mills closed, while raw log exports have skyrocketed.
The Campbell government in concert with the federal Harper Conservatives have schemed to extinguish Aboriginal peoples' title to their traditional lands under the guise of improving their economic security and well-being. Campbell bribed members of the Tsawwassen First Nation in Vancouver, especially those not living on their hereditary lands, into accepting a "fee simple" arrangement. In exchange for $16 million to be divided amongst the band members and other concessions, the Tsawwassen First Nation gives up all future land claims in their traditional territory.
The corrupt sale of BC Rail to CN in 2003, after Campbell promised not to privatize the third largest railroad in Canada and publicly owned since 1918, also angered the people especially workers in BC's north. The people were particularly outraged with the Liberal deal this past October for the public treasury to pay the $6 million legal bills for former provincial Cabinet staff members Dave Basi and Bob Virk after they pled guilty to leaking information concerning the BC Rail deal in return for "benefits." For seven years they denied any guilt, but on the eve of key Cabinet ministers having to take the stand under sharp cross-examination, the government came up with this means of shutting down and silencing the case, which had the potential to expose the profound corruption surrounding the privatization of BC Rail.
Workers also remember Campbell declaring illegal the strike of 40,000 members of the Hospital Employees Union, ripping up their contract and replacing it with imposed lower wages and worse working conditions. An essential aspect of this attack was to open up the health industry to foreign monopoly labour contractors who began "legal" trafficking of workers to public and private health enterprises through their monopoly control of the health services labour market.
The Campbell government passed the Education Services Collective Agreement Act in 2002 proclaiming teachers an essential service, making it illegal for teachers to withdraw their services to defend their rights. In defiance of this anti-worker legislation, teachers went on strike in 2005 to protest the ripping up of their contract restricting class size and other teaching conditions essential to the well-being of some 600,000 public school children. After two weeks on strike, Campbell passed draconian legislation imposing fines and prison time on teachers and union leaders who advocated or continued the strike, leaving unresolved the issues that concern teachers.
General opposition to the
Campbell Liberals crystallized
in the anti-Harmonized Sales Tax petition this past August that
received over 557,000 signatures, forcing a referendum on the HST to be
held next September. The essence of the campaign was a rejection of the
shift of taxation away from the monopolies,
which no longer have to pay sales tax on their machinery, with those
monies replaced with an extension of the provincial sales tax and GST
to a host of consumer goods previously not taxed.
The list of grievances against the Campbell government is long indeed. During his regime, the dreadful mass murder of women in Vancouver and the North was covered up by police and other government agencies. Women's organizations, cultural groups, sports and other social programs had their budgets slashed. Public money for legal aid dried up, the homeless grow in numbers, help for the disabled has been cut. Ninety-five thousand residents of BC rely on food banks, up 10,000 from a year ago. The province has the highest number of children living in poverty and at $8 per hour the lowest minimum wage, unchanged since 2001 with a $6 "training wage" for youthful entrants into the capitalist labour market.
Representatives of the monopolies are now scrambling to renew their provincial political leadership. Events call upon the workers of BC and their allies to come forward with organized conscious resistance to the neoliberal agenda and forcefully solve the political and economic crises and all their many problems in ways that favour the people.
Federation of Labour Meets Amidst
Workplace Tragedies
Over one thousand workers representing their trade unions gathered at the Vancouver Convention Centre for the annual BC Federation of Labour Convention November 29 to December 3. Discussions were held on problems facing the economy and workers' movement in the province, including:
- the increasing export of raw logs and lack of secondary manufacturing in the forest industry;
- the escalation of public financing of private education and declining government support for public education;
- the Harper government attacks on the Post Office and the rights of postal workers;
- the BC government downgrading of essential basic services provided to women and children;
- and among other issues, in light of the coming referendum on the HST, the necessity for a broad discussion for a modern taxation system that does not target individuals but rather the revenue of enterprises.
Jim Sinclair was re-elected to a two-year term as president, the post he has held since 1999. Irene Lanzinger, past president of the British Columbia Teachers' Federation, was elected Secretary-Treasurer.
The morning of December 2, two tragic deaths brought the reality of dangerous working conditions in the construction industry right to the doorstep of the convention. Just one block west of the Vancouver Convention Centre, carpenter Dan Martens from Mission, BC, a father of four young children was struck and killed by a wall form while working on a new high rise tower. Less than thirty minutes later word arrived that a second worker had just been killed while replacing the sails on Canada Place right next door. Both construction sites are projects of the monopoly Ledcor.
In an interview with the media upon hearing the tragic news, BC Fed president Sinclair said, "Accidents are avoidable, and BC employers need to know there is a price to pay when they endanger workers. Negligent employers need to know they will go to jail when workers are hurt or killed."
Sinclair said worker safety is a major concern for the Federation. Just the day before, Tracey Phan addressed the convention to throw light on the unsafe working conditions for farm workers in BC. Tracey is the 14-year-old daughter of Michael Phan, a mushroom farm worker who was left with irreversible brain damage from a 2008 gas leak at a farm. Sinclair said her story left delegates in tears. "No one can imagine her pain," he said. "We need to keep this from happening again."
Three workers -- Ut Tran, Jimmy Chan and Ham Pham -- sadly died in the same accident. Thang Tchen was also seriously disabled for life.
A-1 Mushroom Substratum Ltd. and H.V. Troung Ltd., along with four individual employers and supervisors have been charged with twenty-nine counts of failure to ensure the health and safety of workers and failure to remedy hazardous workplace conditions.
Labour Board Reveals Itself as
State Institution of Class Dictatorship
Two workers at West Coast Detail and Accessory Centre in Pitt Meadows were fired October 7, the date negotiations for a first labour contract were to begin. The two workers were part of a successful campaign to organize workers into a local of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which was certified August 27.
From the date of certification, managers began to keep a record of the two workers' Facebook postings concerning the workplace. Those Facebook postings, which contained derogatory comments about two managers and discussions of conditions at the workplace, were the sole reasons given for firing the two pro-union workers.
UFCW contends that the Facebook postings were simply an excuse to attack the two workers, exact revenge on them for actively supporting the unionization campaign, and an ugly attempt using intimidation and fear of loss of employment to stop any forward motion towards a first contract. UFCW also points out that the content within Facebook is subject to alteration and hacking and could not be corroborated as having been written by the two workers.
In a ruling October 22 and upheld on appeal in early December, the BC Labour Relations Board declared the company had "proper cause to fire the two detailing-shop employees on Oct. 7, for making disrespectful, damaging and derogatory comments on Facebook." The Board ruling said the firings had nothing to do with the unionization drive and the newly organized workers' attempt to negotiate a first contract.
Despite justifying the firings, BC Labour Board vice-chair Allison Matacheskie said she did find the timing of management's decision to start keeping a file on the employees' Facebook postings, from the date of union certification, "puzzling or suspicious."
Just as "puzzling" was the contradictory comment to the mass media by Lafe Solomon, the Labour Board's acting general counsel who said, "It (Facebook posting) is the same as talking at the water cooler. The point is that employees have protection under the law to talk to each other about conditions at work."
People would be justified in demanding to know what "protection under the law" these two workers received. The owners and management of the Centre opposed the unionization drive and the workers' struggle for a first contract. In those circumstances, it would be normal to assume that the owners and management would want to undermine the workers' collective. Firing workers in the heat of class struggle is a crude tactic to attack workers' right to organize themselves into a collective and have a say in their working conditions. In this situation, the company admitted that no policy regarding Facebook postings was ever discussed or negotiated with employees and their newly formed local. Manager John Clydesdale told the media that he was pleased with the Board ruling and management is now working on a policy to inform workers what "is private and not private" on Facebook. Clydesdale still does not get it that a workers' collective has been organized and management cannot simply "work on a policy to inform workers what is private and not private on Facebook." Those issues are all matters of discussion and good faith bargaining with the workers' collective, and management cannot simply issue "dictates."
The use of Facebook postings to attack workers comes as a dictatorial act of management without good faith bargaining with the workers' collective to find an arrangement to address this issue. The company continues to operate as if no union local exists and the Labour Board agrees with that anti-worker position. The Labour Board ruling exposes the Board itself, as a state arm of companies and managers to enforce a class dictatorship over workers and their organized collectives.
The Labour Board declares workers have no rights at the workplace to defend themselves and to have a say in their working conditions through collective good faith bargaining with management. Workers and their allies across Canada must take serious note of the lawless nature of today's labour relations. A Workers' Opposition must bring into being new arrangements through mass political mobilization, including laws and state institutions that uphold workers' right to defend themselves and have a say on their working conditions, including wages, benefits and pensions.
Cancun, Mexico
Climate Summit Concludes in Disarray
Thousands of Indigenous people and activists march through Cancun, Mexico
to demand action to stop climate changeon December 5, 2010.
The 2010 UN Climate Change Summit began on November 29 in Cancun, Mexico and continued until December 10. This year's summit, like the previous one held in Copenhagen in 2009, went into overtime. Like the Copenhagen Summit it also ended with the big powers breaking UN rules to impose their dictate. Thus the Summit ended only after the Chair of the Summit, Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa overruled an objection from Bolivia's representative Pablo Solon. Bolivia, joined by others, rejected the two documents that comprised the final agreement, saying they amounted to a blank cheque for developed nations, because the commitments required of those countries have yet to be published.
"We will get every international body necessary to make sure that the consensus is respected," said Solon, adding that the rules said that no agreement should be passed when one state strongly objects. Others which also objected included the countries that comprise ALBA (Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela) and the nations of Africa.
Despite this, Espinosa justified overruling Bolivia's objection and breaking UN rules. "Consensus does not mean that one nation can choose to apply a veto on a process that other nations have been working on for years. I cannot ignore the opinion of another 193 states that are parties," she said, as if the real world is a matter of her imagination. Not only did her response deny that Bolivia's was not the only objection, but it completely misrepresented the process which the U.S., Canada and the EU have blocked for years. Moreover, the representative of Bolivia was also upholding the interests of all those who attended the first People's World Conference on Climate Change held in Cochabamba, Bolivia this past April to demand immediate and meaningful action on climate change.
 Cancun, Mexico, December 2, 2010: Action by Indigenous Peoples Caucus (Indigenous Peoples are recognized stakeholders in the UN process) to remind the UN to Respect Indigenous Peoples Rights. |
In this vein, environmental and civil society organizations and Indigenous peoples attending the Summit expressed grave concerns throughout the proceedings that the Summit failed to address the large gap between the emission reductions that countries have pledged and what is needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Despite statements from Espinosa about the historic nature of the deal reached at the Summit the fact is that it did not reach an agreement and puts off until next year differences between developed and emerging economies over the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
At the Summit the U.S. continued to oppose the interests of humankind with its stand that the Kyoto Accord, which it has never ratified, is not fair to its interests. It demanded that the agreement should bind developing countries to undertake the actions they pledge, and to the measurement and verification of their plans. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, citing the 2006 Fourth Evaluation Report of the Inter Governmental Panel for Climatic Change, points out that the U.S., from the colonial period in 1751 to the present has been the main emitter of carbon dioxide, with a total amount of almost 100 gigatons.
Japan announced during the first week of the Summit that it would not make commitments to extending the Kyoto Accord, saying it wanted a new deal that would impose similar types of commitments on all major emitters, including China and India. Japan cited the U.S. failure to ratify the protocol during its first commitment period as a reason for it not to sign for a second period.
Japan and Russia fought off pressure to acknowledge in a final decision that they will commit to a second period of emissions reductions under Kyoto.
Al Jazeera's correspondent in Cancun reported that the deal "keeps the process of climate change negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations going, it doesn't allow them to collapse. But what it has actually done is defer a lot of the hard decisions until the climate conference next year in Durban, South Africa."
(Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, Xinhua, Prensa Latina; Photos: Ruckus Society)
Canada Declared "Fossil of the Day"
The Harper government is infamous for its obstructive conduct at international fora in support of U.S. opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and other similar international measures and agreements. The UN's Chief climate negotiator at the Cancun summit, Christiana Figueres, pointed to Canada as an example of those countries resisting making new commitments along the lines of the Kyoto agreement. News agencies pointed out that Canada will miss its 2012 Kyoto target of cutting greenhouse gases by 6 per cent below 1990 levels. Consequently, on December 4, at the end of the first week of the climate talks in Cancun, Canada was voted "fossil of the day" by 500 international environmental groups for its stand on the Kyoto Accord. The groups said Canada's position would result in a "zombie Kyoto" where "the patient isn't dead; she's just had her heart removed."
Globe and Mail reporter Shawn McCarthy writes: "While Canada has not explicitly refused to commit to another round of Kyoto talks, Environment Minister John Baird has made it clear the Harper government is opposed to a number of its key principles, including the differing nature of the commitments between rich and emerging economies. And Canada wants one agreement that would bind all major emitters, rather than one deal for Kyoto signatories and another one that binds the United States." While defending the U.S. position, the Harper government has also previously claimed that it is waiting for the U.S. to act on greenhouse gases before taking its own position, ostensibly to safeguard trade and avoid punitive U.S. tariffs.
Bolivia Decries Adoption of Copenhagen Accord II Without Consensus
The Plurinational State of Bolivia believes that the Cancun text is a hollow and false victory that was imposed without consensus, and its cost will be measured in human lives. History will judge harshly.
There is only one way to measure the success of a climate agreement, and that is based on whether or not it will effectively reduce emissions to prevent runaway climate change. This text clearly fails, as it could allow global temperatures to increase by more than 4 degrees, a level disastrous for humanity. Recent scientific reports show that 300,000 people already die each year from climate change-related disasters. This text threatens to increase the number of deaths annually to one million. This is something we can never accept.
Last year, everyone recognized that Copenhagen was a failure both in process and substance. Yet this year, a deliberate campaign to lower expectations and desperation for any agreement has led to one that in substance is little more than Copenhagen II.
A so-called victory for multilateralism is really a victory for the rich nations who bullied and cajoled other nations into accepting a deal on their terms. The richest nations offered us nothing new in terms of emission reductions or financing, and instead sought at every stage to backtrack on existing commitments, and include every loophole possible to reduce their obligation to act.
While developing nations -- those that face the worst consequences of climate change -- pleaded for ambition, we were instead offered the "realism" of empty gestures. Proposals by powerful countries like the U.S. were sacrosanct, while ours were disposable. Compromise was always at the expense of the victims, rather than the culprits of climate change. When Bolivia said we did not agree with the text in the final hours of talks, we were overruled. An accord where only the powerful win is not a negotiation, it is an imposition.
Bolivia came to Cancun with concrete proposals that we believed would bring hope for the future. These proposals were agreed to by 35,000 people in an historic World People's Conference in Cochabamba in April 2010. They seek just solutions to the climate crisis and address its root causes. In the year since Copenhagen, they were integrated into the negotiating text of the parties, and yet the Cancun text systematically excludes these voices. Bolivia cannot be convinced to abandon its principles or those of the peoples we represent. We will continue to struggle alongside affected communities worldwide until climate justice is achieved.
Bolivia has participated in these negotiations in good faith and the hope that we could achieve an effective climate deal. We were prepared to compromise on many things, except the lives of our people. Sadly, that is what the world's richest nations expect us to do. Countries may try to isolate us for our position, but we come here in representation of the peoples and social movements who want real and effective action to protect the future of humanity and Mother Earth. We feel their support as our guide. History will be the judge of what has happened in Cancun.
Plurinational Government of Bolivia in Cancun
Another Year Lost Since the
Deception of Copenhagen
Mr. President:
Distinguished heads of state and government; heads of delegations:
Distinguished delegates:
Powerful forces are assuring without hesitation that climate change does not exist, that there is nothing to be concerned about and that the serious problem bringing us here today is a total fabrication. They are those in the United States Congress who are currently opposing the ratification of the weak agreements which control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, in a senseless crusade whose sole purpose is to retrieve a small part of the power that they lost barely two years ago.
They are the ones who want to reduce taxes for the 10 per cent of the population who control 90 per cent of the wealth, the same individuals who are opposed to the health reform, unemployment benefits and any proposal that signifies a small step toward progress or equity.
The fact is, and those of us meeting here know it very well, that climate change, plus the serious threat of a military conflagration of nuclear dimensions, constitute the gravest and most imminent dangers that humanity is confronting in terms of its survival.
The absence of progress toward a real solution of both problems is the result of the irresponsible attitude of those who promote and benefit from plunder, disasters, wars and the tragedy being experienced by our peoples.
It is the duty of all of us to demand that those bearing the full historical responsibility cease squandering and irrationally consuming the limited resources of our planet and direct the million-dollar sums that they currently utilize for making war to the promotion of peace and the sustainable development of all nations.
One year ago in Copenhagen, there was a failure to respond to world expectations at the 15th Conference of the Parties to this Convention, with the vision of achieving a global accord which would confront climate change in a just and effective way.
What predominated there were anti-democratic procedures and a total lack of transparency. A group of countries, headed by the United States, the largest per capita and historic polluter, hijacked the negotiations process and imposed an apocryphal document that does not even resolve the challenges identified by the most conservative scientific investigations into the issue. Copenhagen turned out to be a disaster.
The United States and the European Union then proceeded to launch a campaign of political, financial and conditional pressure in relation to Official Development Assistance in an attempt to give legitimacy to the nonexistent "Copenhagen Agreement."
The recently disclosed U.S. documents, including the one registered as 249182, 10BRUSSELS183, dated February 17, 2010 are of particular interest. It refers to actions -- and I quote -- "To neutralize, co-opt or marginalize" a group of states among which Cuba is mentioned. I have this document here and others in my possession, which demonstrate the perfidious diplomacy of the powers in relation to climate change.
Mr. President:
Climate change is a global threat which also requires global solutions that are just, equitable and balanced and which involve all the countries of the world. For that reason, after an arduous effort, we adopted the Framework Convention and its Kyoto Protocol and for that reason, its cardinal principles are as valid today as when we conceived them.
It is widely acknowledged that the principal cause of the alteration of the world climatic system is the pattern of unsustainable production and consumption that prevails in the developed countries. It is also acknowledged that the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and the respective capacities of states constitutes the cornerstone of a just and enduring solution.
The countries of the South are not responsible for the lack of agreement to halt climate change. Rather, we are the victims of the lack of progress and the egotistical attitudes of those who are already enjoying the overexploitation of the planet's exhausted resources. The small islands, even more vulnerable, merit special consideration and treatment.
The People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place last May in Cochabamba, made essential proposals that must be taken into account.
Mr. President:
A long-term agreement has to guarantee a perspective of sustainable development for the countries of the Third World and not an additional and stifling restriction on attaining it. That implies that their greenhouse gas emissions must inevitably grow in order to meet the needs of their economic and social development. The Framework Convention established that and the developed countries must accept it.
In the framework of a second period of commitments within the Kyoto Protocol, the industrialized countries have to assume binding, quantifiable and more ambitious obligations in terms of reducing their emissions.
It is necessary and urgent to adopt today, here in Cancun, concrete decisions on a second period of commitments to the Kyoto Protocol. There is a group of developed countries, in this same negotiation process, trying to eliminate the Kyoto Protocol on the pretext that it covers only 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the Framework Convention covers 100 per cent of those emissions and this is simply an egotistical pretext.
At least one clear and precise road map must emerge from this meeting in Cancun, moving toward the solution of the central problems of climate change, looking ahead to the 17th COP in Durban, in one year's time.
Combating climate change involves confronting poverty and social inequality. It implies an obligation to transfer technology from the industrialized North to the underdeveloped South. It requires facilitating financial resources that will allow developing economies to face up to adaptation and mitigation, and to make available new funding over and above existing Official Development Assistance commitments, which are constantly more precarious and conditional.
While it would seem viable that agreements in the context of adaptation and the transfer of technology can be reached in this Conference, it is essential for us to define financial mechanisms or genuinely significant resources for confronting the effects of climate change.
These mechanisms could not function within the structure of the World Bank or any other institution of the Bretton Woods system, because that would involve conditions, discrimination and exclusions. The Bretton Woods institutions are as historically responsible for climate change as the governments of developed countries.
It is not about an act of charity but, above all, a moral and legal obligation resulting from the commitments assumed in the Convention. The crumbs promised in Copenhagen were extremely meager and have not even materialized; nor will market mechanisms or neoliberal policies, which no longer have any credibility whatsoever, help us to advance.
Mr. President:
The terrible floods which Venezuela and Colombia are suffering right now invoke all our solidarity and are evidence of the urgency of the problem.
The world order is unsustainable. In order to survive, human society will have to organize itself in another way. The time has come to act. Time is running out. Another year has been lost since the deception of Copenhagen. The peoples cannot wait for the powerful.
Thank you very much.
(Translated from original Spanish by Granma International.)
Activists Occupy Lobby During Climate Talks
(Climate Voices)
Outrage at the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Moon Palace Occupation Demands Climate Justice
UNFCCC Now the World Carbon Trading Organization
Cancun, Mexico -- At 1:15 PM on the last day of the UN climate talks, a dozen participants staged an un-permitted action at the Moon Palace where the climate negotiations were taking place, to protest the silencing of civil society voices by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Their mouths gagged with "UNFCCC," they locked arms in front of the escalators leading to the closed chambers where high-level climate negotiations were taking place.
The group stood their ground amid an onrush of security, as Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project, Deepak Rugani of Biofuelwatch and Global Forest Coalition, and Rebecca Leonard of Focus on the Global South shouted, "The UN is silencing dissent!" and other slogans referring to the shut down of people's voices at the climate talks.
"We took this action because the voices of indigenous peoples, of women, of small island countries, of the global south, must be heard!" they demanded.
Nicola Bullard of Focus on the Global South, who was standing by, said, "What we see here is a group of people representing voices silenced by the UN process. In the past few weeks we've seen the exclusion of countries of the global south, and their proposals ignored. We've seen activists and representatives from civil society excluded from the meetings and actually expelled from the UN Climate conference. This action was taken to show the delegates here that we think this process is unjust, that there are voices that must be heard, and that there are perspectives and ideas and demands that must be included in the debates being held in this building. These decisions are far too important to be left to politicians and big business. We need to open this up to include the voices of the people and the voices of the South."
Participants in the action were finally forced out of the building by security, but refused to unlock their arms despite security manhandling. They were expelled from the UN Conference, their accreditation badges taken away, and put on a bus that took them to the Villa Climatica, miles away from the Moon Palace.
The Silencing of
Dissent within the UNFCCC
- Global
Justice Ecology Project Statement, December 10, 2010 -
Global Justice Ecology Project took action today to protest the silencing of dissent within the UN Climate negotiations. Anyone whose interests do not reflect those of the global elite is being marginalized, ignored and shut out of the talks.
At the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen last year, dissent was criminalized and activists charged with terrorism for organizing the "Reclaim Power" protest. Here we are seeing a continuation of this trend with a zero-tolerance policy for dissenting voices.
Global Justice Ecology Project also undertook this action in memory of Lee Kyung Hae, the South Korean Farmer and La Via Campesina member who martyred himself at the protest against the WTO here seven years ago. In 2003 the fight was against the repressive trade policies of the WTO. Today the struggle is against the repressive position of the UNFCCC, which has become the World Carbon Trade Organization, and is forcing developing countries to accept policies that go against the interests of their citizens and the majority of the world's inhabitants.
REDD -- the scheme of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation that is being pushed through here, despite widespread concern about the human rights and ecological catastrophe it may bring, is a prime example of the kind of market-driven, top down policies of the UNFCCC that will allow business as usual to continue beyond all natural limits. These unjust policies will severely impact forest-dependent and indigenous peoples, campesinos, and marginalized peoples across the world.
From before the opening of the UN climate talks in Cancun on 29 November, through to the final moments, the atmosphere here has been one marked by exclusion, marginalization, and silencing of voices.
When the UNFCCC's negotiating text was released on 24 November, all language from the Cochabamba People's Agreement -- a document developed by 35,000 people -- had been removed. In its place, was a warmed over version of the unjust Copenhagen Accord.
Arriving in Cancun, UN climate conference participants found an armed citadel, a civil society space set literally miles away from the negotiations, inflated prices and hours of travel daily. For NGOs and civil society groups, as well as for the smaller and less economically empowered delegations from the less developed countries, such obstacles are crippling.
Activists and representatives from civil society have been systematically excluded from the meetings and even expelled from the UNFCCC itself. When voices have been raised in Cancun, badges have been stripped. Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network lost one precious day of negotiations due to the suspension of his badge for simply speaking in public. Youth delegates were barred for spontaneously taking action against a permitting process for protests made unwieldy and inaccessible. NGO delegates were banned from the Moon Palace simply for filming these protests.
The exclusion and silencing of civil society voices here in Cancun mirrors the larger exclusion and silencing here of the majority of people -- indigenous peoples, women, youth, small farmers, developing countries -- whose position does not reflect that of the global elite.
This is why, in solidarity with our allies from oppressed communities in the North and the South, we took action to demand justice in the climate negotiations.
www.globaljusticeecology.org
www.wordpress.climatevoices.com
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