Climate activists arrested by the Danish police. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/TerraViva

By Stephen Leahy

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) There is no Copenhagen climate treaty. History was not made here and no deal was sealed.

After two years of intense negotiations by 194 countries, what is abundantly clear is the enormous divide between the rich and poor countries. Poor countries want deep cuts in emissions by the industrialised world, and the latter continue to resist significant cuts and legally binding targets.

Despite the enormous pressures, high expectations and last minute efforts by 128 heads of state, all that emerged is a vague agreement of sorts called the “Copenhagen Accord”.

“Sealing the deal” on a new climate treaty has been postponed for at least a year.

Speaking of divides, civil society largely calls Copenhagen an utter disaster. It is a failure that “condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life”, said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.

On the other hand, U.S. President Barack Obama argued that a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been made at press conference in the Bella Centre just before midnight Friday. “All major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change,” he said.

Evidently, world leaders hadn’t been paying much attention to the previous 15 years of climate treaty negotiations.

“Heads of state are now fully engaged,” agreed Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for policy planning, speaking at a press conference. “Copenhagen was the first time leaders were using the climate vocabulary.”

“This has put climate on the map for leaders and leaders on the map for climate,” he said.

Orr also said the gap between politics and science is finally beginning to close.

The hour is late for waking up to the reality of climate change. Two new scientific studies suggest that climate feedbacks will make the two-degree C target unlikely to be achieved without “going negative” – meaning not only does the world have to go carbon-free in the coming decades, carbon will need to be removed from the atmosphere to lower concentrations to perhaps 350 ppm from today’s 389 ppm.

It was late last night in the final hours of the meeting when the U.S. president announced that India, South Africa, China and Brazil had agreed to a backroom agreement called the Copenhagen Accord.

However, since it only involved five out of the 193 countries whose officials had spent a long two weeks in Copenhagen, some delegates were visibly upset they’d not been involved previously and the meeting continued all night. By Saturday afternoon, confusion remained over the accord’s legal status, and half a dozen nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bolivia, declined to support it.

In the end, the accord has no legal standing under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and participating countries merely “note” its existence and express their support or not.

Friday night, Obama acknowledged that this was just one step on a long road to meet the apolitical targets of climate science. He insisted the Copenhagen Accord is an important first step because countries agreed to deep long-term cuts in emissions with the goal of holding the increase in global temperatures below two degrees C.

Developing countries also agreed to take both voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase those actions if financial support was provided. And there was agreement that rich countries must mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries protect their forests, adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions.

They also agreed to work towards a legally binding treaty to be concluded by the end of next year in Mexico.

“The U.S. is not legally bound by anything that took place here in Copenhagen,” Obama was careful to point out.

Domestically, the United States is a divided country, and a long way from making binding commitments on climate.

Not an hour after Obama’s opening speech to the plenary Friday morning, several Republican members of Congress and the Senate held a press conference in the Bella Centre denying climate change was caused by emissions of fossil fuels and saying the science of the International Panel on Climate Change and dozens of scientific academies around the world was suspect.

None of the U.S. politicians are scientists and all hail from regions with powerful fossil fuel or automotive interests.

“We have lost many things along the way,” said Dessima Williams of Grenada, spokesperson for the 43-member Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), regarding their reluctant acceptance of the accord. “We have lost a vigourous commitment to stabilising global temperatures at 1.5 C.”

“We believe this is critical to the survival of our member states,” Williams said in a final plenary session Saturday.

Women were also hoping for gender-sensitive text to acknowledge the reality that women are by far the most impacted by climate change, said Ana Rojas of Energia, an International Network of Gender and Sustainability based in the Netherlands.

Only a third of the delegates attending the conference this year are women, which can make it more difficult for equal representation of women and men’s views in relation to climate change.

“We need a shared vision of gender in a final agreement. And not just concerning adaptation but also mitigation and financing,” Rojas told TerraViva.

While acknowledging that the accord represents some progress, it fell far short of the “fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement” that civil society had advocated. Outside the meetings, 1,800 protesters and media spokespersons were arrested on the suspicion they might do something illegal, in what civil society called attempts by the Danish government to suppress legitimate opposition and free speech.

The use of “tear gas, pepper spray, mass cages, baton charges and mass preemptive arrests sets a precedent dangerous not only for Denmark, but for the future of the world,” said Tadzio Müller of  Climate Justice Action, an international network of environmental and social justice groups.

“The world is facing tragic crises of leadership [on climate change],” said Greenpeace’s international executive director, Kumi Naidoo.

The accord represents a “major concession to climate polluting industries, especially in the fossil fuel sector”, Naidoo said. “Averting climate chaos has just gotten a whole lot harder.”

La agropecuaria será el sector más afectado por el calentamiento. Crédito: Sociedad de Criadores de Hereford del Uruguay

Por Daniela Estrada – Tierramérica *

COPENHAGUE (Tierramérica) América Latina debería aprovechar el tiempo de que dispone para buscar un nuevo modelo de producción, consumo y distribución adaptado a las realidades del cambio climático. Pero sin un acuerdo mundial para reducir las emisiones contaminantes, para 2100 podría perder casi 137 por ciento de su producto interno bruto (PIB).

Esa es la conclusión del estudio “La economía del cambio climático en América Latina y el Caribe”, presentado el miércoles por la Cepal en la COP-15, que se desarrolla hasta este viernes en la capital danesa.

El informe de la Cepal (Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe) no ingresa en consideraciones sobre el modelo de mercado imperante en las negociaciones climáticas, que soporta una lluvia de críticas en Copenhague, ni ofrece información específica sobre el impacto de este fenómeno en sectores más vulnerables, como la población femenina o los indígenas.

Una nueva fase de estudios debería incluir esos impactos específicos, reconoció Joseluis Samaniego, supervisor del informe.

“Aprovecha este tiempo que tienes para cambiar lo que consumes y produces, para tomar decisiones que te vayan ‘descarbonizando’, para ir revisando la forma en que crecen tus ciudades. Ahora lo puedes hacer con más holgura que en el futuro”, dijo a Tierramérica Samaniego.

“Si además quisieras participar en la compra del ’seguro colectivo’ (acuerdo mundial de mitigación), la parte que te toca no es demasiado cara”, según el director de la División de Desarrollo Sostenible y de Asentamientos Humanos de la Cepal, con sede en Santiago de Chile.

Con datos de 15 países –Argentina, Belice, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, República Dominicana y Uruguay–, la Cepal proyectó los costos del cambio climático en América Latina hasta 2100 en dos escenarios extremos.

En el primero, A2, no existe mitigación de emisiones, y en el segundo, B2, está considerado un acuerdo mundial de reducción de la contaminación climática, como el que se discute en Copenhague.

“En el mejor escenario, con mitigación, la pérdida (al año 2100) puede ser de 34,3 por ciento del PIB de América Latina a valores presentes. Repartido anualmente a lo largo del siglo, es menos de uno por ciento del PIB, dependiendo de la tasa de descuento que se use (valoración del futuro)”, explicó Samaniego.

“En el peor escenario, el impacto es de casi 140 por ciento de la riqueza actual. Es decir, las pérdidas que se registrarán durante el siglo XXI serán una vez y media la riqueza que existe hoy, que es más de un punto porcentual del PIB por año”, acotó.

Suponiendo que América Latina estabilizara sus emisiones a los volúmenes de 2002, y que el valor de la tonelada de dióxido de carbono fuera de 30 dólares, los planes para reducir gases costarían a la región 2,2 por ciento de su PIB en todo el periodo, apuntó el experto.

Entonces, participar del “seguro colectivo” sería barato, insistió. La Cepal estima que entre 2005 y 2100 las emisiones totales de dióxido de carbono, principal gas invernadero, crecerán promedialmente 1,5 por ciento en la región, aunque con diferencias entre los países.

El sector agropecuario será el que más sentirá los daños, pues se esperan aumentos de temperatura de entre uno y seis grados y modificaciones en los patrones de lluvias. También se prevé que continúe el actual derretimiento de glaciares en países andinos y mayores eventos climáticos extremos en el Caribe, América Central y los trópicos y subtrópicos de América del Sur.

Por el aumento del nivel del mar pueden desaparecer los manglares costeros de Brasil, Colombia y Ecuador, y estarán seriamente amenazadas zonas ribereñas de Argentina y Uruguay.

Para 2100 las tierras degradadas en Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay y Perú oscilarán entre 22 y 62 por ciento del territorio, y los costos anuales asociados a los desastres meteorológicos pueden pasar de los 8.600 millones de dólares registrados entre 2000 y 2008, a 250.000 millones de dólares.

Ante estos escenarios, los estados deberían ordenar el territorio, generar información pública y promover instrumentos de garantías en caso de desastres, propuso Samaniego.

Para Ana Romero, directora ejecutiva de la no gubernamental Presencia Ciudadana Mexicana, “tenemos que pensar cómo cambiar nuestros mercados porque la forma como se desarrollan no va de la mano de la perspectiva ambiental”.

“Estamos explotando nuestros recursos naturales, sin pensar en el largo plazo”, dijo Romero a Tierramérica. Además, se necesitan estudios sobre el impacto diferenciado del cambio climático en las mujeres y los pueblos indígenas, dos de las poblaciones más vulnerables, acotó.

A juicio de Samaniego, es posible mejorar la calidad de vida de la población y al mismo tiempo combatir el cambio climático, perfeccionando el manejo de los residuos sólidos y de las aguas residuales, y con medios de transporte públicos de calidad.

También se requieren ciudades con servicios descentralizados y accesibles y una política fiscal que penalice los combustibles fósiles.

“Estos temas requieren una nueva cultura en la gestión pública, de trabajar transversalmente, y también un gran dinamismo del sector privado, y que la sociedad acompañe eligiendo productos ambientalmente amigables”, señaló Tierramérica el secretario de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable de Argentina, Homero Bibiloni.

Una treintena de organizaciones no gubernamentales de la región exigieron aquí a los gobiernos de sus países considerar como ejes principales de las estrategias nacionales y regionales la “adaptación y la reducción de la vulnerabilidad”.

Se necesita “una distribución equitativa del bienestar y buen vivir, en el que los trabajadores (mujeres y hombres) reciban una justa retribución por su participación en los procesos productivos y de reproducción de la sociedad”, afirma la declaración a la que tuvo acceso Tierramérica.

* Este artículo es publicado por la red latinoamericana de diarios de Tierramérica.

Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) – As they walked down the streets with containers of water resting on their heads – an unusual sight on the streets of Copenhagen – a group of Danish school girls attracted a lot of attention from passersby.

But these girls were not seeking attention for self gratification – they were fighting for an African cause.

With water containers resting on their heads – the way most African women bring home their water – the 45 girls were sending a message that in the face of climate change, young girls are being pushed to a much more vulnerable position.

“It’s the girls’ responsibility to get water from the wells, rivers and other sources which are a long distance from their homes,” said Charlotte Uhel (12). “This in most instances forces the girls to miss school.”

Uhel, like the rest of her colleagues, goes to Horsholm International School, about 30 kilometres from the Danish capital.

“We have a sister school in Kenya, Baharini Primary School, and we know exactly the difficulties that our peers go through every day,” said Uhel.

Organised by the Danish Red Cross, the six-kilometre walk symbolised the average distance African women have to travel to fetch water – often more than twice a day.

“With climate change, the distance will be even longer because water is becoming more scarce every day,” said Anne Mette Meyer, the Danish Red Cross climate change advisor.

“Therefore these girls, aged between eight and 15 are holding hands with their African counterparts to say we are with you.”

If the U.N. Climate Conference fails to reach a legally-binding agreement that would also put mechanisms for adaptation in place, said Meyer, then Africa, especially the drought-prone sub-Saharan region, faces a doomed future.

“We’re already facing a water crisis in this continent and, although mitigation of the greenhouse gas is also important, adaptation should be given priority because we already have to deal with the impact of climate change,” said Meyer.

The girls began the walk in high spirits as they filled their jerry cans (containers) with water and made a procession from Kongens Nytorv Square before reaching their destination 500 metres before Bella Centre.

But the excitement had worn off by the time they got to the final destination where they were received by head of Red Cross Climate Centre, Madeleen Helmer.

“I’m very tired,” said Tina Krume (12). “I wonder how the African girls walk all the way with heavy buckets on their heads on a daily basis.”

Although disappointed that they could not go inside the conference venue as they expected because of the congestion with many people blocking the entrance, the girls felt hey had accomplished their mission.

“By being on the streets and giving people information about the water situation in other parts of the world especially Africa, the girls have created awareness,” said Helmer.

(END/2009)

Alicia Muñoz. Crédito: Stephen Leahy/IPS

Por Daniela Estrada

COPENHAGUE (IPS/TerraViva) La chilena Alicia Muñoz, integrante de La Vía Campesina, el movimiento mundial de pequeños y medianos agricultores, trabajadores y mujeres rurales y pueblos indígenas, lleva una semana en Copenhague participando en diferentes actividades del Klimaforum, la reunión de la sociedad civil paralela a la COP-15.

“La Vía Campesina tiene muy claro que tiene que presionar para que se logre un acuerdo, porque sabemos que las negociaciones no están teniendo un resultado” positivo, dijo Muñoz a TerraViva. Ella es una de las pocas activistas que llegó a la capital danesa proveniente de ese austral país sudamericano.

“Esta historia no la pueden seguir pagando los pueblos”, enfatizó Muñoz, presidenta de la Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Rurales e indígenas (Anamuri) de Chile. “Tenemos la plena seguridad de que esta manifestación va a influir sobre los gobernantes”, sostuvo la activista, recordando el historial de luchas ganada que, a su juicio, tiene La Vía Campesina.

COPENHAGEN (IPS/Terraviva) – One of the key components of global action on climate change will be measures to adapt to changes that are already unavoidable. The Global Gender and Climate Alliance argues that specific attention be paid to the needs of women.

“With climate change taking away their source of livelihood because of the erratic weather patterns preventing them from farming, women must find another means of making a living,” said Rachel Harris, the media coordinator for GGCA.

Women make up a majority of smallholder farmers in Africa and in other developing countries. In contrast to the options open to many men, few women can respond to drought, for example, by relocating to cities or other rural areas in search of work. Women are often tied down by the need to care for children, or social obstacles to mobility; they are also frequently without even the smallest cash savings of their own or assets to sell to bridge hard times.

Rodney Cooke, the director of the Technical Advisory Division at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), admitted that previous funding mechanisms overlooked women farmers. 
 
“We’ve made mistakes before,” said Cooke. “Women make up 70 percent of smallholder farmers, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but somehow funding targets were disproportionately directed towards men.”

Cooke’s employer, IFAD, is the U.N. agency charged with financially supporting rural livelihoods; the organisation was set up in response to a crisis of food security in the 1970s.
Cooke said there were no clear guidelines attached to previous funding on how women would benefit.

The alliance isn’t waiting for a deal to be reached to complain that gender blind funding is failing the women who may need it most. Instead they are initiating proposals that will ensure women are the agents of change, able to create and adopt new agricultural options and explore other entrepreneurial ventures as a way of adapting to climate change.

Constance Okelletti and Rachel Harris at the GGCA stand in Copenhagen. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

Constance Okeletti, a smallholder farmer from Uganda, said women have a lot of knowledge useful for adaptation because they work with the environment through their household duties: include fetching water, gathering firewood and fruits and farming.

“We’ve been trying to adapt since climate change started to affect us. With the money we can do more,” she said.

Okelleti observed that most development aid to African countries does not penetrate to the women at grassroots level because there are no specific provisions of how much of it should go to the poor.

“We don’t know whether it’s eaten by politicians or the workers in the cities,” said Okelleti, who is representing a network of 40 groups of small-scale farmers in Uganda.

“Women fail to hold those in authority to account because we don’t even know how much was meant for helping out women,” she continued.

“We expect the final text of the declaration to emphasise the percentage of the funds that are expected to assist women projects so that they adapt to climate change,” said Okelleti.

GGCA, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has come up with a women’s Green Business Initiative to promote women’s entrepreneurship opportunities in the sphere of climate change adaptation and mitigation to try and tap into the climate change funding.

“For example through the initiative a local women’s group in Rwanda uses a voluntary carbon credit grant to implement a bamboo project for income generation and environmental protections,” said Lucy Wanjiru UNDP’s gender and climate change and GGCA.

She said with funding from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Adaptation Fund, and new money coming from reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) schemes, women could be the ones accessing funds to start ecologically sustainable projects – be that planting trees or managing eco-tourism ventures – and earn a living.

“Agriculture is the sector most vulnerable to climate change,” said Cooke. “An extra two million people in sub-Saharan Africa are going to be affected by water shortages and the majority of these are women.”

If a deal reached at the U.N. Conference on Climate Change is to achieve its objectives, he said, it will have to incorporate a gendered perspetive.

(END/2009)

Charcoal stoves made of recycled metal. Credit: Impact Carbon

By Joshua Kyalimpa

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) When Impact Carbon’s team leader Evan Haigler got involved with a stove improvement project for Uganda, his dream was to make efficient and affordable wood and charcoal stoves that created less smoke.

Six years later, his dream has come to fruition, and a cleverly-designed clay and steel stove is on the market.

The compact centre of the improved stove is made of clay, which contains and concentrates a maximum amount of heat from a smaller amount of charcoal than a standard recycled metal stove.

The stoves also improve indoor air quality by producing less black carbon or soot due to inefficient combustion.

Traditional charcoal stoves produce large amounts of black carbon or soot produced during cooking. This is particularly dangerous to the health of the women and children who spend long hours in kitchens in Africa. Globally, indoor air pollution from burning of biomass in smoky, inefficient stoves leads to nearly three million premature deaths each year.

This is according to David Hanrahan, formerly head of environment programs and the World Bank, and now head of operations for Blacksmith Institute, an independent environmental group working on pollution in the developing world.

Haigler and other scientists have been speaking about the benefits of using the improved charcoal stoves at the U.N Conference on Climate Change conference here in Copenhagen.

His group, Impact Carbon, works to develop and distribute improved stoves and other clean energy technologies at the household level. The aim is to protect the environment and people’s health as well as save income that would otherwise be spent on fuel.

The holder of an MS in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, Evan Haigler at Impact Carbon partnered with a local business, UGASTOVES, and carbon offset group JP Morgan Climate Care to develop the Efficient Cooking with Ugastoves project.

The outcome was a stove that reduced charcoal and wood use by up to two-thirds.

“UGASTOVES aim not only at reducing the carbon emissions, but the cutting down of trees to get the charcoal.”

The UGASTOVES have so far reached 300,000 families in Uganda’s major towns who Haigler says are now saving over 80 U.S. dollars each on charcoal a year, enough to buy a bicycle.

A similar project run jointly by Enterprise Works Ghana, the Shell Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development is building and installing high-efficiency cooking stoves to replace the stones that are traditionally used to support a pot above an open fire in Ghana.

In 2008, 68,000 new stoves, each costing 30 to 50 dollars, were sold in Accra and Kumasi, potentially providing cleaner kitchen air for approximately 400,000 women, including 160,000 children.

The locally made Gyapa Charcoal and Wood Stoves reduce levels of harmful soot in homes by 40 to 45 percent. Since 2002, the joint project has worked to create a network of local craftspeople and entrepreneurs who can profitably manufacture the metal stoves and their ceramic liners.

Demand for the stoves is strong, driven by a public awareness campaign on the health effects of cooking fire.

By the end of the year what started as small charcoal stove improvement idea will have sold at least 100,000 stoves in Ghana alone, and thousands others in Uganda and other parts of the world.

The version of this story uploaded Dec. 10 2009 incorrectly the potential reduction in carbon emissions by the UGASTOVE model, as well as implying Impact Carbon was involved in a similar initiative in Ghana. IPS regrets the errors.

(END/2009)

Dorah Lebelo: women should not be perceived only as victims of climate change. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi

By Mantoe Phakathi

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva)  While climate change affects everyone, women bear a heavier burden – and gender activists say they should have a greater say in planning the response to climate change.

Dorah Lebelo says millions of women around the world are subsistence farmers and erratic weather patterns have affected their ability to feed themselves, let alone produce a surplus to sell. Women, Lebelo continues, are very much dependent on natural resources such as water, firewood, or wild fruits which sell.

Lebelo is a member of Gender CC, a global women’s rights network that is lobbying for the incorporation of a gender perspective into the final document of the climate change meeting at the Danish capital.

“The advancement of women, their leadership and meaningful participation, and their engagement as equal stakeholders in all climate-related processes and implementation must be guaranteed,” she says.

Gender CC wants the deal to explicitly highlight the rights of women and children in the context of climate change.

Gotelind Alber, a researcher for the U.N.’s agency for housing, UN-HABITAT, has studied climate change policies in many countries including South Africa and Kenya and found them silent on gender. Women, she says, are classed “as just vulnerable groups in the policies, something that is vague.”

Alber, who presented her findings at a workshop on gender, cities and climate change, said women in city slums are more vulnerable after natural disasters – women are often last to hear warnings of coming disasters, unable to move quickly while safeguarding children in their care, and in the breakdown of order that typically follows, exposed to violence.

“We need to acknowledge the special vulnerabilities of women which are caused by climate change,” said Alber.

Gender CC – Women for Climate Justice wants the negotiated agreement to fully account for gendered questions on adaptation, mitigation, technology sharing, financing and capacity building.

This, according to Catherine Mungai from Kenya, will ensure that local and national governments in every country explicitly plan for women and children in their climate change policies. Right now, said Mungai, women and children’s protection are very much absent in the most climate change policies.

“A declaration with a clear stand on women and children’s rights is going to help us NGOs hold our governments accountable,” said Mungai.

For now, said Lebelo, the negotiations on climate change are not reflecting the issues that are affecting women and children’s rights which is a serious oversight in the whole process. She said although issues such as loss of biodiversity, loss of forest tenure, rising temperatures, disease, agriculture, and food insecurity are discussed, nobody seems to be acknowledging the effects on women and children these matters have.

“We’ll continue lobbying right up to the end of this conference because we want justice,” she said.

Lebelo said women should not be perceived only as victims of climate change; they should also be part of making decisions about this global phenomenon.

“Women have been able to adapt through the use of indigenous knowledge. They just need to be involved from the lowest to the highest level of decision making,” said Lebelo.

A deal that fails to account for gender, concluded the activists, will be no deal at all.

(END/2009)

Miriam Nobre. Credit: Daniela Estrada/IPS.

Daniela Estrada interviews Brazilian feminist MIRIAM NOBRE

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) – The climate change conference looks like a “big solutions fair,” where everyone avoids discussing the root problem, which is the need to change the model of development, Miriam Nobre, coordinator of the secretariat of the World March of Women, told IPS.

Nobre, a Brazilian agricultural engineer and feminist, arrived in Copenhagen Tuesday to take part in Klimaforum09, the civil society summit held in parallel to the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opened Monday and will run until Dec. 18.

The World March of Women, headed by Nobre, is an international women’s rights movement created in 2000, which is currently active in 71 countries.

The movement’s first campaign was aimed at combating poverty and violence against women, and for 2010 it’s planning its third international action, targeting four objectives: achieving economic independence for women; ending violence against women; promoting peace and demilitarisation; and preserving and developing the common good and public services.

Before sitting down to talk with TerraViva, Nobre participated in a coordination meeting with representatives of other movements and NGOs in the colourful Klimaforum, where hundreds of talks, displays, exhibits, documentary screenings, and musical and theatre shows are programmed.

TERRAVIVA: What proposals or demands are you bringing to Copenhagen?

MN: We’ve come to Copenhagen in coordination with Vía Campesina and Friends of the Earth to denounce the false solutions that are put forward for climate change, including monoculture, agrofuel production, and the privatisation of nature, through, for example, carbon credits.

We’re also meeting with other organisations, such as Jubilee South, that work on the issue of climate debt.

Our presence here also has to do with a sense of urgency. There’s a feeling that something has to be done now, but that the urgency can’t lead us to be strong-armed into accepting a bad agreement that ignores class, country and gender inequalities in the issue of climate change.

TV: What activities will you participate in?

MN: We have a workshop called “Feminists Struggling Against Climate Change and Privatisation of the Environment”, where we’ll examine the state of negotiations, because women are major political actors in this issue.

We will also look at the links and conflicts between the environmentalist and women’s movements and at how women are experiencing the effects of climate change and the forms of resistance and alternatives they’re building.

We will also be holding another activity with the Global Forest Coalition, on the subject of food and energy sovereignty as real solutions to climate change.

TV: Why are women key political actors in climate change negotiations?

MN: There’s a whole host of experiences that women farmers and fisherwomen can contribute, because they haven’t abandoned their traditional ways of producing food, so they offer a true alternative to our fossil-fuel- and oil-dependent societies.

And there’s also the connection we say exists between the fragmentation and commodification of women’s bodies and the fragmentation and commodification of territories themselves.

TV: How do you see the global negotiations at Copenhagen so far?

MN: My first impression was that many have come with the idea of selling their solutions – agrofuels, carbon credits, etc.

I got the feeling that it’s a large fair with everyone hawking their solutions, without really touching on the problem, which is the urgent need for profound changes in the system. We need to change the model, to change the way we organise production and consumption.

It’s like everyone just wants to go on avoiding what we really have to discuss, which is what needs to be done.
(END/2009)

Miriam Nobre. Crédito: Daniela Estrada/IPS

Por Daniela Estrada

COPENHAGUE (IPS/TerraViva) La conferencia sobre cambio climático parece una “gran feria de soluciones”, donde la gente evita hablar del problema de fondo, que es el cambio del modelo de desarrollo, dijo a TerraViva Miriam Nobre, coordinadora del secretariado de la Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres.

Nobre, ingeniera agrónoma y feminista brasileña, arribó el martes a Copenhague para participar en el Klimaforum, la cumbre de la sociedad civil paralela a la COP-15, inaugurada el lunes y que se extenderá hasta el 18 de este mes.

La Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres, liderada por Nobre, es un movimiento feminista internacional que nació en 2000 y está organizado en 71 países.

Empezaron con una campaña contra la pobreza y la violencia que soporta la población femenina y para 2010 están preparando su tercera acción internacional con cuatro objetivos: autonomía económica de las mujeres, lucha contra la violencia, paz y desmilitarización y promoción del bien común y los servicios públicos.

Antes de detenerse a conversar con TerraViva, Nobre participó en una reunión de coordinación con representantes de otros movimientos y organizaciones no gubernamentales en uno de los espacios del colorido Klimaforum, donde se han programado centenares de charlas, muestras, exhibiciones de filmes documentales y espectáculos musicales y teatrales.

TERRAVIVA: ¿Qué propuestas o demandas traen a Copenhague?

MIRIAM NOBRE: A Copenhague venimos articulados con La Vía Campesina y Amigos de la Tierra Internacional y estamos denunciando las falsas soluciones a los cambios climáticos, que tienen que ver con la producción de los monocultivos, los agrocombustibles y la privatización de la naturaleza, como los créditos de carbono.

También estamos en diálogo con otras organizaciones que trabajan el tema de la deuda climática, como es el caso de Jubileo Sur.

Asimismo, nuestra presencia acá tiene que ver con un sentido de urgencia. Hay una sensación de que algo debes hacer ahora, pero que no se puede aceptar, por este tema de la urgencia, un chantaje donde se nos imponga un mal acuerdo, donde no se reconozca la desigualdad de clase, de país y de género, en el tema de los cambios climáticos.

TERRAVIVA: ¿En qué actividades participarán?

MN: Tenemos un taller que se llama “Feministas en lucha contra las falsas soluciones del cambio climático y contra la privatización de la naturaleza”, donde escucharemos cómo está el proceso de negociaciones, porque las mujeres son sujetos políticos importantes en este tema.

También recordaremos los vínculos y las fricciones que hay entre el movimiento ecologista y el feminista y cómo están viviendo las mujeres los efectos del cambio climático, y las resistencias, las alternativas que ellas están construyendo.

Además tendremos otra actividad con la Coalición Mundial de los Bosques sobre la soberanía alimentaria y energética como soluciones reales a los cambios climáticos.

TERRAVIVA: ¿Por qué son importantes las mujeres como sujetos políticos en las negociaciones sobre cambio climático?

MN: Hay toda la experiencia de las mujeres campesinas, pescadoras, que siguen afirmando sus maneras tradicionales de producir el alimento y que entonces son una alternativa real a la sociedad dependiente del petróleo y de los combustibles fósiles.

Y hay también toda la relación que nosotras hacemos con lo que es la fragmentación y la mercantilización de los cuerpos de las mujeres y la fragmentación y la mercantilización de los territorios mismos.

TERRAVIVA: ¿Cuál es su percepción del avance de las negociaciones mundiales en Copenhague?

MN: La primera impresión que tuve es que la gente viene mucho con el sentido de vender sus soluciones, el agrocombustible, el mercado de carbono.

Da una sensación de una gran feria de soluciones, que pasa alrededor del problema, que es la necesidad urgente de un cambio profundo del sistema, del modelo, de cómo organizamos la producción y el consumo. Es como si la gente siguiera evitando discutir lo que, de hecho, es necesario hacer.