Independent North Coast Journalist Reports on Cancun UN Climate Negotiations

Independent North Coast Journalist Reports on Cancun UN Climate Negotiations

by Dan Bacher

Stormy Staats, an independent video journalist and member of the Klamath Justice and Coastal Justice coalitions, reports from Cancun, Mexico for the UNFCCC COP16 (United Nations Climate negotiations), where she is helping out with the COP16 Independent Media Centers.

Stormy has covered numerous environmental justice battles in recent years, including the direct action protests by Klamath River tribes, fishermen and environmentalists in Portland, Oregon and Omaha, Nebraska to bring down PacifiCorp dams and the protests by North Coast tribes, fishermen and grassroots conservationists to defend tribal rights under assault by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's corrupt and unjust Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process.

"We are posting stories and video from the voices of people outside the meeting who have the real solutions to climate change," Stormy says. "We are trying to put the actual event in context for what it really is...a corporately hijacked, green washed vacation for those representing the governments who keep us on the track to profits over people."

Their videos cover rampant police surveillance of a permitted March "For Life and Climate Justice," police harrassment of a Mayan Caravan headed to COP16, including the stopping of a religious ceremony, and other events. All posts are on the Mobile Broadcast News website. http://mobilebroadcastnews.com/MBN/story/Cancun-COP16.

"I heard from members of a youth delegation inside the Moon Palace (the resort where the meeting is being held) that a lot of young people, among others are feeling dis-empowered," she explained. "A few people from Friends of the Earth International said this is the same meeting as the last few COP meetings, just in a new location."

"The New Zealand youth delegates said that if you go by the rules (for fearing getting kicked out), you have to submit action plans to the event authorities 48 hours in advance of doing actions that make a statement in the Moon Palace," she emphasizes. "Action plans are unsurprisingly being edited and denied. I encouraged them to just go for it, and join us on the outside. They got in trouble and were threatened with removal for standing in line wearing t-shirts that spell 'Stop the Tar Sands'."

Stormy said it is "a lot more interesting" at the alternative forums (http://www.dialogoclimatico.org) and at the encampments where thousands of people from around the Americas are arriving and participating in alternative workshops and forums. Check out their videos to see whats happening in the streets!

"Some of my favorite media-ninja friends and I have created a collective tactical media team, which means we are part of creating the history and future of this movement in our voice, the voice of those who believe in community rooted solutions to climate chaos," Stormy reports. "If news media is reporting in a timely fashion, and documentary is telling a story long after an event, tactical media is telling the story fast enough to effect the future for change."

Community rooted solutions to "climate chaos" are much different from the "green energy" scams proposed by ruling elites throughout the world, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, corporate environmental NGOs and gas, oil and energy corporations.

Each video you see is the product of 4-6 people filming, editing, and distributing media every day. "We are simultaneously filming ourselves working in this collective process to teach other people how to do the same. Sometimes it's like the Mad Max thunder dome...two editors go in and only one comes out! We are having a great time challenging each other and ourselves to creatively go beyond the limits of our imaginations!" Stormy adds.

These are the latest videos from independent journalists outside the COP16. Please pass on and post everywhere!!

People's Caravans Arrive in Cancun to offer Alternative Voice to COP16 Summit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9ULKRXt2g

COP16: Rampant Police Surveillance of Legal, Permitted March "For Life and Climate Justice"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzJJ7oeVZM

Police Harass Mayan Caravan Headed to COP16, Stopping religious ceremony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwgv4FjfJOM

Glassbead Report from Espacio Mexicano
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BD3ZG80GCQ

Great Links:

Indigenous Environmental Network
http://www.redroadcancun.com

The Ruckus Society
http://www.ruckus.org/blog

Espacio Mexicano
http://www.dialogoclimatico.org

La Via Campesina
http://viacampesina.org/en/

Risingtide North America
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org



INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK
FOUR PRINCIPLES for CLIMATE JUSTICE

“Industrialized society must redefine its’ relationship with the sacredness of Mother Earth”


1. Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Leave the coal in the hole – the oil in the soil – the tar sand in the land. Offshore accidents prove oil and water don’t mix. Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. Stop it at the source. Limit people’s consumption. Efficiency is meaningless without sufficiency. The transition to a low-carbon economy is not just about technology but about re-distributing economic and ecological space. In recognizing the root causes of climate change, people of the world must call upon the industrialized countries and the world to work towards decreasing dependency on fossil fuels. Demand a call for a moratorium on all new exploration for oil, gas and coal as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels, without nuclear power, with a just transition to sustainable jobs, energy and environment.

2. Demand Real and Effective Solutions

End the promotion of false solutions such as carbon trading, carbon offsets, using forests and agriculture as offsets, agro-fuels, carbon storage and sequestration, clean coal technologies, geoengineering, mega hydro dams and nuclear power. These allow the rich industrialized countries to avoid their responsibility to take major changes. False solutions allow polluting corporations to increase their profits; allow Northern countries to disregard their high levels of consumption and expand production and release of greenhouse gas emissions and conduct “business as usual” practices. Promote a just transition to a low-carbon society that protects people’s rights, jobs and well-being.

3. Industrialized – Developed Countries take Responsibility

The burden of adjustment to the climate crisis must be borne by those who created it. This means:

o Demand industrialized countries agree to an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol for the second commitment period from 2013 to 2017 under which developed countries must agree to significant domestic emissions reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms that mask the failure of actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

o Based on the principle of historical common but differentiated responsibilities, demand

developed countries to commit with quantifiable goals of emission reduction that will allow the return of the concentration of greenhouse gases to 300 parts per million (ppm), limiting the increase in the average world temperature to a maximum of 1 degree Celsius.

o A minimum of 95% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries by 2050 based on 1990 levels.

o An end to over-production for over-consumption, and a dramatic reduction in wasteful

consumption and production of waste by Northern and Southern elites.

o Developed countries, assuming their historical responsibility must recognize and honor their climate and ecological debt in all of its dimensions as the basis for a just, effective, and scientific solution to climate change. Restore to developing countries the atmospheric space that is occupied by their greenhouse gas emissions. This implies the decolonization of the atmosphere through the reduction and absorption of their emissions.

o Demand financial support from the North to the South to help with the cost of adjusting to the effects of climate change and continuing to develop along sustainable lines and it must be subject to democratic control.

o Honor these debts as part of a broader debt to Mother Earth by adopting and implementing the Cochabamba People’s Accord and the proposed Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. The focus must not be only on financial compensation, but also on restorative justice, understood as the restitution of integrity to our Mother Earth and all Life.

4. Living in a Good Way on Mother Earth

o Climate justice calls upon governments, corporations and the peoples of the world to restore, revaluate and strengthen the knowledge, wisdom and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples, affirmed in our experiences and the proposal for “Living in a Good Way”, recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship.

o The world must forge a new economic system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. We can only achieve balance with nature if there is equity among human beings. The capitalist system has imposed upon us a mindset that seeks competition, progress and unlimited growth. This production-consumption regime pursues profits without limit, separating human beings from nature. It establishes a mindset that seeks to dominate nature, turning everything into a commodity: the land, water, air (carbon), forests, agriculture, flora and fauna, biodiversity, genes and even indigenous traditional knowledge. Under capitalism, Mother Earth is turned into nothing more than a source of raw materials. Human beings are seen as consumers and a means of production, that is, persons whose worth is defined by what they have, not by what they are. Humanity is at a crossroads: we can either continue taking the path of capitalism, depredation and death, or take the road of harmony with nature and respect for the Circle of Life.

o The “shared vision” for “Long-term Cooperative Action” (UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group) must not be reduced in climate change negotiations to defining temperature-increase and greenhouse gas concentration limits in the atmosphere. Rather, it must undertake a balanced, comprehensive series of financial, technological and adaptation measures, measures addressing capacity building, production patterns and consumption, and other essential measures such as recognition of the rights of Mother Earth in order to restore harmony with nature.