Our Indian comrades at People's Movements in India has taken very important step to push Indian government to take side with Evo Morales, when he convenes an Earth Summit at Bolivia call Peoples’ World Conference On Climate Change And Mother Earth’s Rights’to save the earth at Cochabamba, next week.
We congratulate Evo Morales to take such bold step to save all the organisms in the planet with these actions. Also, we expect the largest democratically elected government like India will support to this with attending the highest possible authority will make a difference to the world.
The Copenhagen summit has done nothing to save the earth though there was a very big campaign and high hopes all over the world.
Some scientist and environmentalists recently raised some voice saying the information which released to media and to the world high lighted some cooked data to suppress the development of the developing countries. What ever the said and done, we feel the changes to our climate, the increased air temperature, increased of insects, wider spread of weeds all over. And also we experienced so many years now, there are some climatic variations such as rains when the time we need sun and warm sun when we need the rain. So, how many seasons we lost our paddy cultivation alone in the country.
So, we need to think what environmentalists says and what we experience in our day to day life. So, we should strongly support the global attempts such as Evo Morales's in the world.
Herman Kumara,
13.04.10
10th April 2010
Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,
We, the undersigned people’s organisations, social movements, trade unions, and concerned citizens of India, submit this Memorandum to you as the head of the Government of India to draw your attention to the Call and Invitation to the ‘Peoples’ World Conference On Climate Change And Mother Earth’s Rights’ to all Social Movements and Organisations, and Governments, of the World by the Evo Morales Ayma-led social movement Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia; and to ask you to unequivocally respect and support this Call.
In the absence of any significant public position by your government so far on this extremely important initiative by a government of the global South, we write to you today, to demand that you now, without delay, go beyond political compulsions, technocratic understandings, and the polemics of ‘Climate Change’, and that you affirmatively respond to this Call and to the invitation extended to you by Sr. Evo Morales Ayma; and that the government of India take part in this Conference at the highest level.
We attach here for your convenience a copy of the Call and invitation issued by Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
You may recall that many mass organisations, citizens and movement groups had submitted a detailed Memorandum with demands and clear proposals to you and the GoI prior to the Copenhagen Summit, in order to raise our concerns, positions, and demands to you to represent the people of India and our interests at the Summit. (We attach a copy of the Memorandum here, for your information) On the one hand, we understand that the GoI subsequently took meaningful positions vis-à-vis placing demands on the developed world to reduce emissions, pay up, and not compare the emerging or the least developed worlds with itself; and that Indian government has also played an important role in bringing together the major emerging economies to form BASIC.
On the other hand however, when seen in terms of the concerns we had raised to you in our people’s Memorandum regarding the key issue of equity, the government of India’s position was also seen by many as ‘hiding behind the poor’. And the government of India’s position was easily exposed because of this very aspect and as a result, the government of India could not play any substantive leadership role among those countries that have traditionally expected us to take a lead from within the developing world.
We therefore reiterate here our understanding that at this crucial juncture in world history, and given the profound crisis that climate change represents, India’s efforts should be focussed in taking the lead among and on behalf of the interests of the majority of the world’s nations – the least developed and the emerging economies - and not jockeying for a position among the club of elite nations. And that most fundamentally, the Indian position should be proactively addressing issues of equity – within countries and between countries.
We firmly believe that the economic and political issues of inequality and inequity, both within and between nations, grievously impact distribution and consumption and are at the core of the crisis of global warming and of responding meaningfully to it. The crisis is also about a few - both globally but also within countries and regions - usurping the rights and access of the vast majority of the disempowered over the commons – air, water, land, minerals, and forests. Unsustainable economic development and inequitable growth based on an economy dependent on the use of fossil-fuels and extractive industries — all of which have greatly intensified in the last 60 years — have led to the sharp rise in carbon emissions, way beyond what the Earth can absorb. The global annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have reached about 35 billion tonnes a year from the burning of coal, oil and gas, and from deforestation. This is much more than the net absorption capacity of the Earth, estimated to be 16-17 billion tonnes a year or roughly 2.5 tonnes per person, and which is also declining due to a gradual warming of the oceans.
It is in this context of a planetary crisis that we see an extraordinarily important opportunity in the Call sent out by the Bolivian Government, to host a summit that will deliberate not on the rights of human beings over the planet and its resources, but on the Rights of Mother Earth herself; and that will assert not the rights of governments and corporations over the planet and the resources it shares with us all but will deliberate on and forcefully assert the rights and responsibilities of humanity itself.
As you must surely know, this profound idea of a Mother Earth – here, articulated by the indigenous peoples of the Andean region of the Americas - is also deeply rooted in our own cultures of this region of the world, such as in the term dharati mata that is so widely respected and practised in their own ways both by Adivasis and by peasants in India. As we see it, we as humanity are therefore indeed already linked together across the planet – and indeed, bound together - by this fundamental concept; and it is our responsibility as human beings to at all times respect, protect, and promote this concept. We ask you, and your government, to pay heed to and adopt this concept.
At a time in history when every country and every negotiator is talking the technocratic language of ‘climate’, ‘carbon’ and ‘ppm’, it is vitally important to also acknowledge that it is only an indigenous community representative and a government led by such peoples that could have initiated a Call that so radically widens the perspective : To protect and nurture the Rights of Mother Earth herself. And we should have no doubt about what a fundamental challenge this Call poses to the rich nations and to their over-dependence on an unsustainable development paradigm.
We therefore urge the government of India to second this Call.
Beyond convening a Conference however, the Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia has – in its Call - also put forward four vital instrumentalities for protecting and nurturing the Rights of Mother Earth :
· A Universal Declaration of Mother Earth’s Rights
· Proposals for new commitments to the Kyoto Protocol and projects for a COP Decision under the United Nations Framework for Climate Change
· The organisation of the Peoples’ World Referendum on Climate Change; and
· Developing an action plan to advance the establishment of a Climate Justice Tribunal;
aside from more generally defining strategies for action and mobilisation to defend life from Climate Change and to defend Mother Earth’s Rights.
Asking you to keep in mind that it was Bolivia that made the historic demand at the Bangkok preparatory meeting of COP prior to Copenhagen - that developed nations must now pay up for their historical debt –, and that this was a demand that your Government supported at the Bangkok meeting, we demand today of the government of India that it unequivocally support the government of Bolivia’s proposals.
In this connection, we also however wish to make clear to you and to the Government of India that we consider it a gravely wrong and mistaken position by GoI that the failure that took place at Copenhagen works in the interest of countries like India (such as in the remarks made in the Lok Sabha by Mr. Jairam Ramesh, MoS (MoEF), that “the interest of developing countries like India remains protected in the decisions taken by the Conference of Parties at Copenhagen”). We believe that only a reversal or undoing of the harm already done by climate change at the earliest alone can serve the interests of the worst impacted peoples of the developing world – of whom we continue to be an integral part. We therefore demand that the Government of India must stand united with and protective of progressive efforts of other developing countries – such as Bolivia -, the G-77, the least developed countries (LDCs), and the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS).
In conclusion, we demand the Government of India join the Cochabamba Climate Conference and meaningfully participate in it at the highest levels. We have also specifically drawn your attention to the instrumentalities put forward by the Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to demand that you and your government specifically recognise, address, and support these instrumentalities. We believe that doing so will help build a new international alliance and global order – not only between nation-states but also, and primarily, among the peoples of this planet, and that this will moreover help us in India to review and revise our own unsustainable development trajectory of several decades – where we have so blindly followed the European and US American model of growth. It is glaringly evident that this model has, just as in Europe and North America, directly resulted in the massive over-exploitation of natural resources, the massive displacement of Adivasis and other forest dwellers, the intensified exploitation and continued pauperization of the urban labouring poor – all in the interests of the promotion of consumption by and production for rich. This is a present and a future that we surely now all know is totally unsustainable. It is therefore time that the Government of India stood up clearly and unequivocally for Mother Earth – for dharati mata –, and it can and must do so by unconditionally supporting the initiative that has been created by the Call issued by the Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
END.
They have Attached two documents to the memorandum which are missing here.
But, it is worth to mention what they have attached to send to Hon. Manmohan Singh, the PM of India.
1. The Call and invitation issued by Government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia
2. Memorandum To The Government Of India On The UNFCCC’s 15th Conference Of The Parties At Copenhagen’, dated November 24 2009.
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