No Effective Climate Treaty Possible without a Stronger Justice Movement, Conference Finds

The collapse of negotiations at the recent United Nations global warming conference in Copenhagen has left the entire world scratching its head and wondering, “Now what?” Bay-area organizations were remarkably well-represented among the non-governmental organization delegations at that conference, and last week organizations that shared an environmental justice perspective gathered in Berkeley’s David Brower Center to discuss the way forward.

The Copenhagen declaration “amounts to a suicide pact,” according to Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization. The declaration proposed voluntary reduction pledges rather than binding emission reductions. “When you add all the emissions allowed under the pledges together you get four degrees” [i.e. degrees Celsius of global warming, equivalent to 7.2 degrees in the Fahrenheit scale used in the U.S].

“We need a new focus on breaking the fossil fuel lobby and corporate power,” Menotti said. He did not lay out a clear plan by which this could be accomplished, but he did urge people to look to the U.S. Social Forum meeting this June 22-26 in Detroit for leadership. Menotti added that it was a real victory that the Climate Justice Now network was a real and visible presence at this year’s conference, and not just the traditional environmental groups in the Climate Action Network.

Indigenous peoples are the most severely harmed by current and future climate change, and by many faulty proposed climate policies, according to Alberto Salamando of International Indian Treaty Council,. He claimed a victory in getting the U.S. to “back off its vehement opposition to including indigenous and human rights in the document.

Salamando stated that policies now being promoted under the climate negotiations, such as replacing natural forests with single-species tree plantations, would harm both the environment and indigenous people. “We have been informed that Columbia has plans to declare all of its indigenous lands as state parks” which would then allow them to use the forests to develop tradable carbon offsets. “Then they don’t have to ask the people who live there.” According to Salamando, the big lesson from Copenhagen is that “We can’t rely on these people. These people are nuts! Rampant greed has made them crazy.” He concluded: “We need to understand the need to take action now, because the longer we wait, the more painful the solutions will be.”

“Carbon fundamentalism” – an exclusive focus on emission numbers and trading – is actually a barrier to solving the problem, according to Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan of Movement Generation. “To address the root causes of the climate problem, we need to look at system change, not just climate change.” Mascarenhas-Swan argued that we need to create a “People’s Protocol” – “implementation language we can advocate for inside of the protocol process.”

A genuine climate movement will be lead by groups that have a base in low-income, people of color, and indigenous communities, and organizing to build capacity in these communities must be a top priority, said Mascarenhas-Swan. She urged people to get involved with community-based efforts to put forward justice-based local climate plans, such as the effort in Oakland.

There is a dangerous anti-immigrant tendency growing within the environmental movement, a tendency I call the ‘greening of hate’,” said Cathi Tactaquin, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. She observed that there is increasing prominence being given to a story that climate change will drive poor and hungry people toward the borders of rich nations, a story that leads to militarization and oppression. “We see nothing to suggest that the coming wave of environmental refugees will be addressed in a rights-based framework.”

We need to be working now to have the sometimes difficult and painful conversations we need across movements to build a common progressive analysis and agenda, Tactaquin argued. Next year’s UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (U.N. FCCC COP 16) will be in Cancun, Mexico. Also in Mexico next November will be the Global forum on Migration and Development. “We want to work with the climate justice community to see these as connected events.”

The theme of starting now to prepare for COP 16 was echoed by the other speakers, who were unanimous in urging that we build toward the largest and most visible delegation ever seen for cutting global warming pollution in a way that is just, effective, and fair to poorer communities and nations.