In the days leading up to this year’s Earth Day, thousands will gather in South America to address one of the most critical issues facing our planet – climate change. From April 19th to the 22nd, Cochabamba, Bolivia will host the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Like last December’s COP 15 climate talks, delegates from dozens of governments will be in attendance. Yet next week’s conference hardly resembles the exclusive United Nations event, which will be held next as COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico this November.
Registration to the World People’s Conference is free and open to any “defenders of life and mother earth,” including non-governmental organizations, indigenous peoples, “women, young people, workers, scientists, academics, lawyers, artists, and activists.” Even major Hollywood stars are expected to attend, including director James Cameron, who has recently united with Greengrants grantees in the Amazon to crusade against the proposed Belo Monte dam. All told, more than 7,500 participants will descend on Cochabamba next week to raise their voices and those of the billions more who will be most affected by climate change’s devastation, but have been left out of official climate discussions.
Greengrants has made several small grants to support grassroots participation in the conference, including a $5,000 grant to the Indigenous Environmental Network to help cover travel costs for their representatives. In Nigeria, grantee AIRORG is preparing a publication for the event, entitled “The Road to Cochabamba.” The document is a collection of perspectives from communities in the Niger Delta affected by gas drilling, flaring and exploration, and will bring their voices to the Bolivian conference.
At the end of the COP 15 talks in Copenhagen, Bolivia’s United Nations Ambassador Pablo Solon remarked, “The only way to get climate negotiations back on track…is to put civil society back into the process. The only thing that can save mankind from a [climate] tragedy is the exercise of global democracy.”
This ‘People’s’ Conference provides an opportunity to do just that. Its outcomes—informed by representatives of indigenous peoples, rural villages, and coastal communities—will be powerful forces in re-shaping the climate change policy debate into one focused on the lives and lands at stake in a rapidly changing world.