| 8 September 2010 |
| Stopping climate change requires basic social transformation, says people’s movement |
MANILA (APEN) – A people’s movement concerned with climate change have called the rich countries to reduce emissions based on binding domestic cuts.
|
The People’s Movement on Climate Change (PMCC) called for emissions reduction of 95% to 100% by the middle of this century.
The PMCC also called for an end to fossil fuel use, carbon-intensive activities and all investments on them by the countries in the North.
In a statement on “the 2009 UN climate change conference and the Copenhagen accord,” the PMCC said that “Science requires that warming be held to as far below 1.5 degree C as possible, and that to achieve this, emissions must peak no later than 2015 and approach zero by 2050.”
The statement noted that for equity and justice the North should compensate the South, “first, by taking on deep emission cuts – 45% to 50% by 2020 and 95% to 100% against 1990 levels – and second, by enabling Southern adaptation and low-carbon development – through sufficient, long-tern, and mandatory technology transfer, capacity building support, and provision of finance amounting to $500 bn to 1$tn annually as reparations for climate debt.”
The PMCC called for full reparation of climate debt owed by the North to the South through unconditional and mandatory transfer of technology and finance without the involvement of international financial institutions, aid agencies and carbon markets.
To achieve these obligations, an international enforcement and compliance architecture that legally binds the North to fulfill their commitments were demanded by the PMCC.
The UN climate summit failed to meet any of these demands, the statement said, and added that the Copenhagen Accord, a document was “parachuted on the conference in its final hours, is a hollow, unjust, and potentially disastrous agreement.
“…the Accord sketches out a toothless and patchwork architecture for global climate action that would likely leave even its measly targets hanging unfulfilled,” the statement noted.
The PMCC termed the 2 degree C that the Accord has set as “dangerously conservative” which ignores the growing scientific consensus and popular demand for the safer warming limit of 1 degree C and below.
Blaming the Northern governments for this, the PMCC criticized the developed countries for not offering the numbers for emission cuts and funds for an effective deal.
The PMCC felt that “Corporations have hijacked official climate policy” both at the national and international levels.
Nearly all solutions on the table are about managing climate change through market and technology quick-fixes such as carbon trading and offsetting, agro-fuels, nuclear power, “clean coal” and genetically modified organisms.
The power of corporations and elites over the UN process shows that arresting climate change requires no less than fundamental social transformation.
The PMCC rejected false solutions that allow the North and corporations to continue inflicting social and ecological harm, provide new and greater opportunities for profit and corporate control over natural resources and technologies.
It also called for building of movements of farmers, workers, women, fisher folk, youth and indigenous people around the people’s agenda for climate justice and social change, “and to take our struggle forward.”
|
|
