| 4 September 2010 |
| Injustice is root cause of climate crisis, says People’s Movement on Climate Change |
MANILA (APEN) – A group of individuals and groups have called for political struggles by the people to deal with the root cause of climate crisis.
|
They said that “a grassroots-based people’s movement on climate change” is important to promote the people’s agenda on climate action and social transformation, and fight for social justice and democratic rights of the people.
The People’s Movement on Climate Change (PMCC), which is a collective expression of individuals and organizations around the globe, noted that “Solving the climate crisis requires far-reaching social transformation.”
“Unequal patterns of power behind such injustices as poverty, hunger, exploitation, and colonialism are the same ones that have caused ecological destruction and climate change,” the PMCC said.
The PMCC, which has its secretariat here, is of the view that “the solutions to the climate crisis do not lie in the collusion of profiteers, but in the hands of the people.”
According to it, the real solutions to the climate crisis involve the reallocation of the world’s resources between and within nations for equality and social justice.
The reversal of globalization, the restoration of people’s sovereignty over resources, economies and institutions, and compensation by the North to the peoples of the South for the losses they are forced to bear as victims of climate change and the social system that is sustaining it are also part of the solutions, it said.
The PMCC in a statement expressed the view that the “Current mainstream efforts for climate action have hitherto failed to stem the causes of climate change and bring justice to the poor…”
According to the statement, “Injustice lies at the root of the climate crisis.”
It stated that the main responsibility for accelerating climate change, which has resulted in death and destruction to millions of the world’s poor and the disadvantaged, lies with a minority of the world’s population in the advanced countries in the North.
“Northern corporations have burned vast and increasing amounts of fossil fuels and destroyed forests to feed energy and inputs into production, dumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels that is now warming the planet and disrupting the climate.”
The group representing people movements blamed the Northern governments and corporations for refusing to honor their historical obligation to reduce emissions and support climate actions in the South.
The PMCC also blamed the Northern governments for exploiting the climate crisis to enforce false solutions which “create new profit opportunities, expand their control over natural resources and exacerbate global warming.”
“Powerful Northern and corporate interests have undermined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change, as evidenced by its Kyoto Protocol,” it alleged and said that “the same powers are sabotaging current negotiations for a just post-2012 regime, as they stall on committing emissions cuts that the scientific evidence requires, as well as sufficient funding to cover the costs of adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.”
|
|
