Climate change and agrofuels
Governments produce blank pages in Doha for planet’s future; La Via Campesina farmers are cooling the planet
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- Published on Friday, 07 December 2012 08:18
La Via Campesina - Press release
(Jakarta, 6 December 2012) – As the climate negotiations come to a close, the industrialized countries insist on inaction for the next decade, finding even more ways to escape their historical responsibility, create more carbon markets including one on agriculture and to keep business as usual of burning the planet. While governments continue to prioritize the interests of industry and agribusiness peasant farmers continue producing to feed the world’s people and the planet.
The high level segment of the 18th Conference of Parties (COP 18) and 8th Meeting of Parties (CMP 8) of the United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has begun on December 5 with Ministers arriving in the petro-state of Doha, Qatar. But the almost two week long negotiations has produced absolutely nothing. Developed countries are so entrenched in their positions and goals for inaction that when the Chair of the negotiations presented the new text under the Long Term Cooperative Action track, the text literally contained blank pages in areas where the Chair claimed divergences existed; these included adaptation, technology development, finance, capacity building and economic and social consequences of response measures – all issues of great concern to developing countries.
Statement of Asia Social Movements on Climate Change at the Asia Social Movements Assembly
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- Published on Thursday, 06 December 2012 14:26
World Social Forum on Migrations, Manila, Philippines
We have seen climate change related phenomena with intensity never seen before, like Hurricane Sandy, in many parts of the world in the past year.We no longer have the luxury of time as incidents of increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts, disruption of water cycles and other similar eventsare becoming the “new normal” for many countries. It is also becoming apparent that climate change is instigating more forced migration, and will createmore climate refugees. An estimated 200 million people could be displaced by climate change by 2050. In 2010 alone, it was estimated that more than30 million people were forcibly displaced by environmental and weather-related disasters across Asia and this number will continue to rise. Climatechange has also been wreaking havoc on crops and farmlands, worsening the already growing food crisis and pushing even more people into hunger.
And yet, despite the increasing devastation wreaked by climate change on farmlands, livelihoods, and homes, the UN Framework Convention onClimate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations are moving backwards instead of moving closer to a global agreement that will stabilize and cut greenhousegas emissions. The premise of the climate negotiations has always been based on the principle that developed countries need to live up to theirhistorical responsibility and yet from Cancun to Durban to Qatar, negotiations have instead focused on how developed countries can escape theirprevious commitments. Now, with the current proposals on the table, not only are developed countries going to be able escape commitments bywatering obligations down to voluntary pledges but they will also be able to create more carbon markets and loopholes in order to not take any action atall. Estimates from a study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have calculated that even without all the loopholes, these currentpledges will lead to an increase in the temperature of up to 5 degrees centigrade.
Climate Defense: Food Sovereignty is part of the solutions to climate change
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- Published on Friday, 09 November 2012 20:58
On the first day of the International Conference on Climate Change, Territories and Social Movements, representative of La Via Campesina El Salvador, Mauricio Venegas, said food sovereignty is part of the solutions to climate change in the rural areas.
The peasant representative was one of the panelists of the activity called “Social movements and alternatives to the crisis”, which opened the afternoon session of the conference organized by Friends of the Earth International, CESTA-Friends of the Earth El Salvador and MOVIAC, the Movement of Victims and People Affected by Climate Change.
Nearly 500 people from all Mesoamerica including international delegates from 70 Friends of the Earth groups, filled the auditorium of the National University of El Salvador. The conference will also organize a mobilization and a cultural festival on November 6th from the university to San Salvador’s downtown area.
Watch the video! Rio+20: LVC at the People's Summit
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- Published on Monday, 15 October 2012 14:41
Bangkok, UN Climate negotiations move towards burning the planet
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- Published on Tuesday, 18 September 2012 19:24
Press release
La Via Campesina and Asian social movements call for an end to financial speculation on food and climate as UN Climate negotiations move towards burning the planet.
(JAKARTA, September 18, 2012) Earlier this month in Bangkok, Thailand, a round of climate talks concluded under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC declared it a success and hailed concrete progress on the road to the 18th Conference of Parties (COP) in Doha, Qatar this December 2012. The progress they boast of is moving towards an agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol and will come into effect by 2020. La Via Campesina, an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, women farmers, indigenous people, rural youth migrants and agricultural workers, believes that this proposed agreement will not only be too late, it will also be too little as it has severely insufficient emission reduction targets and uses market mechanisms that aim to cheat nature not help it.
Asian social movement in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street movement
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- Published on Friday, 14 September 2012 04:27
September 15 -17 With Occupy Wall Street
Stop financial speculation on food and climate
(Bangkok, August 31, 2012) The fight of Occupy Wall Street is the struggle of all movements in the world. Finance capital, that created the crisis in 2008, has increased its power instead of being disciplined. At present, world GDP is 64 trillion US dollars while the derivatives market reached the incredible figure of 1,500 trillion US dollars in 2011. The speculative economy is 250 times larger than the real economy of the world. Now banks and Transnational corporations (TNCs) are moving to speculate on the impacts of the climate and environmental crises that the capitalist system has created.
Read more: Asian social movement in solidarity with Occupy...
Thailand and its climate criminals
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- Published on Thursday, 06 September 2012 20:28
Press release of the Thai Climate Justice Working Group
Smallholders who live and farm in the forest zones in Thailand are being prosecuted and sued for damage to the climate
As Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gather once again in Bangkok to continue talks about the climate talks, it should not go unnoticed that Thailand has been in the process of identifying its very first “climate criminals”. The “global warming cases”, in which people in different regions of Thailand have been criminally prosecuted, and then sued by Thailand’s Royal Forest Department and the National Park Department for “increasing temperatures” have resulted in at least 34 law suits, calling for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
