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December 2010. Cancun, Mexico ~ Conference of the Parties- COP16 ~

Global Struggle for Climate Justice – A Call to Action and Decentralized Organization

Help Organize Urgent Actions confronting Global Warming and Climate Change

The People’s Climate Dialogue and Convention is an effort from various organizations and activist that have come together to build a Climate Justice movement that uses direct action and popular education to mobilize fair and effective solutions to the climate crisis.

We invite communities, organizations, and activist to unite with us to create spaces, mobilizations, and actions to re-appropriate the Climate Change dialogue and the processes of mitigating and confronting the devastating effects of Global Warming, in a true search for Climate Justice.

In 2010 the United Nations Organizations has announced that the 16th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change will be held in Cancun, Mexico. 2010 is also the Bi-Centennial anniversary of the Mexican independence from the Old-World Empire, and the 100 year anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. For many 2010 is a significant marking-point for the social struggle in the Americas and the World. To commemorate this historical process of emancipation, and in counter-position to the false solutions demonstrated at the forum in Copenhagen (COP15), we are inviting socia movements, civil organizations, networks, activists, and communities of the world committed to the principles of Social and Climate Justice, to participate this year in the People’s Climate Dialogue an Convention- a struggle from below against the New-World Order.

We consider that the People’s Climate Dialogue and Convention should be a permanent and collective process of creation, that is why we have sought out a continuous dialogue that permits us to generate collective solutions, locally and globally, to our environmental problems. Consequently, we also propose to help organize and carry-out Regional Climate Convergences where we will be able to draw reflexions on the state of our environment, to share insights into particular themes, and learn practical tools to confront our common problems, including workshops and all other proposals for action that can be integrated under the principles of working together non-hierarchically, and striving for what unites us and makes us stronger. On the basis of this continuous work, and in collaboration with all who feel identified with the principles of Climate Justice, we propose the creation of the People’s Climate Convention at the end of the year in Mexico, parallel to the official UN- Conference of the Parties, COP-16. More information on this call to action and how you can get involved can be found at:

Marea Creciente Mexico – http://www.marea-creciente.org/

The UN climate meetings in Cancun will be a major focus for international mass actions this November and December, and the People Climate Dialogue and Convention is part of these efforts as well.

We are an international, pluri-national, and pluri-cultural network of activist and organizations that have come together to sound the call to action and alert the communities of the world of the dangers and catastrophes that are to come, and the possibilities we have as communities and countries that will be most effected to adapt to these changes. We demand Climate Justice and the participation of the civil society in the decision making processes being negotiated between world governments. And we are not waiting for governments or industry to negotiate our future for us.

A Radical Change in Direction is Necessary!

The People Climate Dialogue and Convention invites you to inspire and organize a radical change in direction to put climate justice, ecological integrity, and people’s rights at the center of international climate negotiations.

With particular chapters of the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012, a new treaty is being drafted not only to set the minimal goals by participating counties to reduce or halt human activities that cause Global Warming, but it also seeks to legitimize a “carbon market” generating the legal right to contaminate the air we breath, a right that would be controlled by those who hold political and economic power. With this, developed nations once again forget the enormous ecological and social debt that they have with the rest of the world, recognizing that their development has been based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and the total destruction of entire peoples and cultures. The information collected from around the world, based on the best science possible, leaves plain the false arguments from these countries that there is a lack of solid evidence that there really is a Global Warming that produces Climate Change; or more recently their renouncement to even admit their responsibility in the emission of gases that cause this effect.

The United Nations bodies that are charged with carry-out this difficult task of generating the new treaty have been corrupted by multinational corporations and international financial institutions. These agents of capitalism are developing and consolidating an international market to buy and sell credits to contaminate and pollute our air; this is equivalent to privatizing the atmosphere. The environmental degradation produced in capitalist systems are driving the world’s climate to a point of no return. If we continue along this path in less than one hundred years over 80% of all species in the world could disappear, including even perhaps the human species. The environmental defense that we are experiencing as part of the greater social movement is crucial, and it offers us a new opportunity to organize and demand anOther way of confronting the root causes of climate change.

The climate crisis is directly linked to the financial crisis, the food crisis, and the extinction crisis, as well as to militarism and war. They are rooted in an economic system dedicated to economic growth at any cost. We are uniting to challenge this system that puts profits over people or the earth. Urgent action to solve the climate crisis must include a complete transformation away from the dominant economic model of incessant and unsustainable growth, oppression, and injustice.

We must highlight real, effective, and just solutions to climate change

Join us in promoting solutions to climate change that are locally controlled, decentralized, bio-regionally appropriate and socially just. Thousands of these solutions already exist and need to be promoted and supported with public funds.

Help ensure that large-scale, destructive corporate-controlled false solutions to climate change are eliminated. This includes so-called “clean coal,” agrofuels (industrial scale bio-fuels), nuclear power, and large-scale hydropower. It also includes REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation)—the UN and World Bank initiative that offers incentives for countries to sell off their forests, expel indigenous and small-farmer communities from their lands, and transform bio-diverse and carbon-rich forests into industrial timber plantations.

Some key solutions to climate change include:

• Drastically reducing emissions without resorting to carbon trading and offsetting or other false solutions such as nuclear energy, agrofuels, or “clean coal”, while protecting the rights of those affected by the transition;
• Keeping fossil fuels in the ground;
• Re-localization of production and consumption, prioritizing local markets and cooperative economies;
• Decentralized utility systems and community controlled clean renewable energy;
• Rights based resource conservation that enforces indigenous land rights and ends corporate control over energy, forests, seeds, land and water;
• Ending deforestation and its underlying causes, imposing international sanctions and wood tariffs, coupled with a massive forest restoration effort, managed primarily by indigenous forest-dwelling peoples;
• Ending excessive consumption in the North and by elites in the South;
• Repayment of ecological debts owed by northern governments and resource extracting corporations to peoples in the Global South

The goals of the People’s Climate Dialogue and Convention are:

• To build a global movement for climate justice that encourages urgent action to avoid catastrophic climate change, and which addresses the root social, ecological, political and economic causes of the climate crisis toward a total systemic transformation of our society.
• To promote and strengthen the rights and voices of Indigenous and other affected peoples, (including workers in energy-intensive industries) in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.
• To expose the consequences of false and market-based climate “solutions” as well as corporate domination of climate negotiations, while advancing alternatives that can provide real and just solutions and which protect biodiversity.

Join Us in Taking Action!

Please join us in our national effort to organize educational events and non-violent direct actions at key locations in Mexico throughout this year. We welcome the active involvement of organizations that are united with us in our goals above, in our opposition to market-based false solutions to climate change, and in support of real, effective, and just solutions to climate change.

We call on local groups to create action proposals for the mobilizations leading up to the COP16. We are encouraging direct actions related to climate change in every part of the country and the world over.

For more information on how you can actively participate in the People’s Climate Dialogue and Convention, please contact:

COP16@listas.marea-creciente.org

or visit the following web-pages:

MAREA CRECIENTE MEXICO – http://marea-creciente.org

DIÁLOGO Y CONVENCIÓN CLIMÁTICA DE LOS PUEBLOS – http://cop-16.org.mx

We invite organizations to endorse this open invitation.

Endorsements:

Marea Creciente Mexico

Red Jubileo Sur Mexico

Otros Mundos Chiapas-Amigos de la Tierra Mexico

Colectivo Luna Sexta (Campeche, Mexico)

Colectivo ADA (Puebla, Mexico)

Rising Tide North America

Klimaforum09 (Dinamarca)

Programa LaNeta S.C. (DF, Mexico)

Canadians for Action on Climate Change

Centro de Medios Libres- D.F.

Asociación Civil AIRE A.C. (Aguascalientes, Mexico)

La Furia de las Calles (DF, Mexico)

Zona Autónoma Makhnovichina (ZAM) (DF, Mexico)

Colectivo Cordyceps (DF, Mexico)

Cultura y Comunicación de Zaachila A.C. (Oaxaca, Mexico)

Bionero.org (DF, Mexico)

Bios Iguana A.C. (Sinaloa, Mexico)

Asociacion Mexicana por la Autodeterminacion de los Pueblos- (AMAP)

Convergencia de Movimientos y Pueblos de las Américas -COMPA

Coordinador Nacional Agrario de Colombia (CNA) (Colombia)

Consejo Indígena MONEXICO (Nicaragua)

CAZAIMAGEN (Morelos, México)

Justseeds (Estados Unidos, Canada, Mexico)

Frente de Trabajadores de la Energía (DF, México)

Red Alerta contra el Deserto Verde (Brasil)

Federacion para el Desarrollo Integral entre Campesinos y Campesinas FEDICAMP (Nicaragua)

Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste (México)

Alianza Civica/Chiapas (Chiapas, México)

Sector de Organizaiones de Derechos Humanos del Comité de Cuenca de San Cristóbal de las Casas (Chiapas ,México)

Servicios para una Educación Alternativa (Educa) (Oaxaca, México)

Movimiento Mexicano de Afectados por las Represas -Mapder (México)

CESTA Amigos de la Tierra El Salvador

Movimiento de Víctimas y Afectados por el Cambio Climático -MOVIAC (El Salvador)

Eco Sitio (Argentina)

Other Worlds (Estados Unidos)

Coalición de Tendencia Clasista CTC (Venezuela)