Do or Die : Support For People's Protocol on Climate Change

Support for the People's Protocol on Climate Change

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Climate change is an issue that requires the urgent collective action from the civil society and marginalized sectors -especially from the South- who will be most affected by climate change.

Below is the draft People's Protocol on Climate Change which reflects the aspirations and demands of the people on how climate change should be addressed. The draft People's Protocol on Climate Change has already undergone a series of workshops in Indonesia. It will be finalized and ratified through a grand People's Assembly spearheaded by the Pesticide Action Network International (PAN International), Coalition of Agricultural Workers International (CAWI), People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) and the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) during the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change meetings.

Hundreds of signatures have already been gathered and thousands more are expected at a nationally coordinated people's actions in 19 key cities in Indonesia on December 10, International Human Rights Day.

We need your support. Please endorse the draft People's Protocol on Climate Change by following the link http://www.petitiononline.com/ppcc

Please circulate.
Thank you.

Regards,
Ava Danlog (IBON Foundation), Don K. Marut (INFID), Syamsul Ardiansyah (INDIES), Flint Duxfield (Aid/Watch), Andreas Iswinarto (Sarekat Hijau Indonesia)

If you would like to comment on the petition, or otherwise communicate
directly with the petition author, you can contact the author at:
Ava Danlog, adanlog@ibon.org


Endorsed, Re-publish and re-circulate by Andreas Iswinarto-Sarekat Hijau Indonesia
(sekjen@sarekathijauindonesia.org)



People’s Protocol on Climate Change (draft)

Preamble

The planet is experiencing a climate crisis of catastrophic proportions. Drastic action is required to reverse the situation. Global temperatures have increased twice as fast in the last 50 years as over the last century and will rise even faster in the coming decades. Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) are among the 12 warmest years on record. This is disrupting weather patterns, severely damaging the environment, and destroying lives and livelihoods - especially of the poorest and most vulnerable.

This dangerous climatic change is driven by the unprecedented increase in human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The most dangerous increase is in CO2 emissions from the ever-mounting burning of fossil fuels for industry, commerce, transport and militarism. The planet’s capacity to process these emissions has also been crippled by widespread deforestation. As a result, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now far higher than its natural range over the last 650,000 years. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide, again caused by human industry and agriculture have also increased dramatically and are also implicated in causing global warming.

Climate Change will be universally adverse for the world’s people with greater and more frequent extremes of heat and rainfall patterns as well as tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes. Africa, Asia and Latin America face shorter growing seasons, lower yields, lost or deteriorated agricultural land, decreased agricultural production and freshwater shortages. Droughts in Africa will bring widespread hunger and famine. Asia is already confronting flooding, avalanches and landslides, which will increase illness and death. In Latin America, higher temperatures and reduced biodiversity in tropical forests will devastate indigenous communities. Globally, rising sea levels will flood low-lying areas, increased storm surges will threaten coastal communities, and warmer sea waters will diminish fish stocks.

The last centuries have been heralded for great strides in technology, production and human progress – but these advances have precipitated global ecological and development disasters. On one hand a privileged global elite engages in reckless profit-driven production and grossly excessive consumption. On the other hand, the mass of humanity is mired in underdevelopment and poverty with merely survival and subsistence consumption, or even less. The world’s largest transnational corporations (TNCs) based mainly in the Northern countries and with expanding operations in the South, have long been at the forefront of these excesses. Indeed the powerful industrialized nations of today were built on the severe exploitation of the human and natural resources of the global South. The pursuit of growth and profit is at the core of exploitation, structural poverty and global warming.

There have already been high-profile schemes for concerted action and co-operation to combat global warming. This includes the landmark 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the succeeding Kyoto Agreement. Yet the problem has not been stemmed or much less reversed, indeed it has worsened as the limited targets and timelines set by the Kyoto Protocol have made no headway. Importantly, the Kyoto Protocol does not decisively acknowledge the real roots of climate change - globalization and the mad pursuit of TNCs for profits. Instead, Kyoto has diminished responsibility and accountability for the climate crisis through the marketization of energy resources and supply. The offsets and emissions trading system transfers adjustment costs from rich to poor, creates new dependencies, rewards corporations for polluting and increases their opportunities for profits. Northern TNCs and investors have sustained and even increased their energy intensive operations through relocation to Southern countries, capturing and co-opting local elites into the destructive process of capitalist-dominated production and consumption.

Selengkapnya...