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Latin America: It's Now or Never: Hands Off Mother Earth!
Monday, April 26 @ 23:06:14 UTC
|
 It's Now or
Never: Hands Off Mother Earth!
In Defense of our living planet and planetary life.
By
Jutta Schmitt
April 26, 2010
The
Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth recently
held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by the World's People - as opposed to the
world's transnational corporations and their executive branches or
'Governments of, by and for the Elites' - has concluded with The
People's Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
(1). This final document makes it very clear that if the so called
"Copenhagen Understanding" had its way, the damages already inflicted
on Mother Earth would become totally irreversible, with a 20 to 30
percent of species condemned to extinction, our forests and glaciers at
risk of disappearing for good, with deserts expanding and droughts and
floods affecting different regions of the planet, jeopardizing world
food production and dramatically increasing the number of the hungry on
the planet, which already exceeds 1 billion people.
The document goes straight to the essence of the problem our world is
facing today, when pointing towards the fact, that the governments of
the so called 'developed' countries, in complicity with part of the
scientific community, are trying to reduce the debate and urgent action
needed to avert the huge danger environmental contamination and climate
change pose for life on planet Earth, to its perceivable effects -
rising temperatures - rather than addressing the underlying root cause,
the capitalist system. The People's Agreement direly warns that we are
witnessing the agony of a patriarchal model of civilization based on
the oppression and destruction of human beings and nature, which had
been sharply accelerated by the industrial revolution and which today
encompasses the entire globe. It states that this model of civilization
-capitalism - has ruthlessly imposed on us its logics of competition
and its notion of 'progress', which equals wellbeing with unlimited
economic growth, no matter the consequences. The document states that
capitalism is a mode of production and consumption which has the sole
purpose of seeking unlimited profits, alienating humans from nature and
converting everything into a commodity: water, land, the human genome,
our ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, people's rights,
death and life itself.
The People's Agreement bluntly shows that humanity today faces the
final disjunctive: Either continue the devastating path of capitalism
towards depredation and death, or start paving the way to a model of
society that learns to live in harmony with nature and respects and
cherishes life. The knowledge, wisdom and the ancestral way of life of
our indigenous peoples, anchored in the concept of Earth as a living
being, that is, as the totality of all the living, moving processes of
which human beings only form a part, is being considered as the only
method to help Mother Earth with all her living relations - humans
included - survive and recover. The document goes on to categorically
state that an alternative society must either live in harmony and
equilibrium with itself and with nature, foster the collective
wellbeing based on complementarity, solidarity and equity, respect
Mother Earth's rights, value humans by virtue of what they are and not
by what they possess, eliminate all forms of colonialism, imperialism
and interventionism and foster peace between the peoples and with
Mother Earth, or otherwise perish.
Thus and according to the People's Agreement, the Universal Declaration
of the Rights of Mother Earth must be adopted immediately and must
comprise her right to life and to existence, her right to be respected,
her right to continue her natural cycles and processes without
alteration by humans, her right to maintain her identity and integrity
as a totality of different, self-regulated and interrelated beings, her
right to water as the spring of life, her right to clean air, her right
to integral health, her right to be free from contamination, pollution,
toxic and radioactive waste, her right not to be modified genetically,
her right to be free from threats to a vital and healthy functioning,
and finally, her right to a full and fast recovery from the violations
of these rights by human activities.
In addition, the People's Agreement demands the creation of an
International Court for Climate and Environmental Justice, and demands
that the so-called 'developed' countries take their full responsibility
as the major polluters and thus restore the environment including the
atmospheric space above the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries, which
has been contaminated by the pollutants of the 'developed' countries.
Furthermore, the agreement demands that the 'developed countries'
provide shelter to the hundreds of millions that will be displaced as a
consequence of climate change provoked by THEIR greenhouse gas
emissions and also provide the means to minimize and deal with the
damage caused by these same emissions. This, of course, sets the stage
for an inevitable confrontation between two radically antagonistic
conception: The World People's Conception which places life over profit
and which seeks an integral solution to climate change by identifying
and tackling the root cause, and the World Elites' 'conception' or
rather shortsightedness, which places profits over life and which seeks
to make profit even from the demise of Mother Earth and life.
In this sense and consequentially, the People's Agreement categorically
rejects the false solutions to climate change, offered by the Elites in
complicity with the established scientific community and profit-hungry,
transnational corporations, which range from 'bio-fuels',
nanotechnology, genetically modified organisms to geoengineering. As
for the latter, the necessity to protect our already contaminated skies
and seas from being totally deprived of the little that is left of
their vital functions by injecting toxic chemicals into the atmosphere
and by dumping iron into the oceans, has led to the creation of the
HANDS OFF MOTHER EARTH CAMPAIGN by a coalition of international civil
society groups, indigenous peoples organizations and social movements,
who participated at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and
the Rights of Mother Earth. The HOME campaign is aimed at raising
public awareness with regard to large-scale manipulation of planetary
sub-systems and provides a platform for individuals and organizations
to voice their opposition to such geoengineering experiments.
Most importantly, the massive, already ongoing 'covert' - and at the
same time openly visible experiments - of "Solar Radiation Management"
MUST BE EXPOSED AND STOPPED.
The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of
Mother Earth has concluded its session on the 22nd of April with the
People's Agreement and the call for immediate coordination of
international action so as to see for the dissemination of its findings
and the implementation of its demands. The Conference calls for the
construction of a World Movement of the People for the Defense of
Mother Earth, because Mother Earth is the only HOME we have.
It's now or never: We have to defend our living planet and planetary
life. Thus, join the Hands Off Mother Earth Campaign! Welcome HOME!
http://www.handsoffmotherearth.org/
Notes
(1) http://cmpcc.org/2010/04/23/acuerdo-de-los-pueblos/
jutta@franzlee.org.ve
http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
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