Derek Wall: Ecosocialism cuts to roots of ecological crisis

British-based economist, activist and writer Derek Wall is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales and is the author of several books on ecology and politics.

Wall will speak via video link at the Climate Change Social Change activist conference in Melbourne over September 30 to October 3. He maintains the ecosocialist blog Another Green World.

He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Simon Butler about the politics of ecosocialism.

What are the most valuable insights ecosocialists can bring to discussions about the source of our ecological problems?

Ecosocialism, without being reductionist, cuts to the roots of the ecological crisis. The destruction of the environment is not an accident. It is not simply a problem of false ideas and it is not a product of inappropriate policies that can easily be dealt with by electing a new set of politicians.

The assault on the basic life support system of our planet, the basic biological cycles, climate being just one, is caused by our economic and social system. We live in a capitalist society and capitalism tends towards the destruction of the conditions necessary to sustain life.

Is Green Growth possible?

by David

Two articles recently linked to on the UNITY Facebook page are worth reading. One is Sue Bradford’s criticism of the new “Pure Advantage” green marketing campaign and the government’s Green Growth paper: “Greed is good, as long as it's green”.

 The other was Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz’s article “The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism”.

Both agree that free market “neo-liberal” capitalism has no answers to the crises we face, Stiglitz calls for state intervention in the economy to reduce inequality and encourage growth, while Bradford argues that even so-called “green growth” will make the ecological crisis worse.

The contradiction between these two articles raise important questions for eco-socialists, especially those advocating some form of Green New Deal.

Video: Capitalism is a doomsday machine

Derek Wall of the UK Green Party speaking at the Coalition of Resistance conference in London, November 27.
Via Climate & Capitalism

Christchurch earthquake and the battle for ‘sustainable’

The following is from Australian blog Climate Change Social Change. As a Christchurch resident, I think the claim that “up to half the buildings in the region need repairing”, is an exaggeration, although I assume they’re simply repeating what they read in the mainstream media.

- David

Thankully, no lives were lost in the September 5 earthquake that hit the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. But it has caused vast damage, up to half the buildings in the region need repairing.

As I watched the evening news report about the disaster, I was struck by a comment a local resident made to reporters. Half jokingly, he said the good news was that the rebuilding effort would help pull New Zealand out of recession.

Without realising, he pointed to a key feature of the present economic system. Capitalism thrives on crisis and destruction. Half of Christchurch is wrecked, but that translates into more jobs, more economic activity and, most of all, more growth.

It reminded me of something the famous economist John Maynard Keynes once said about the way capitalism works.

He said it made more sense to employ people to dig holes then cover them up again than to allow economic growth to stagnate.

The point is that capitalist growth does not have to serve any social need or useful purpose. Capital must expand. Profits must rise. That’s all that matters.

And if the growth machine falters, it’s thrown into crisis — a recession.

Capitalism’s growth drive is what makes it so radically unsustainable. To survive, it needs ever-higher resource use. It needs an obedient workforce, on the lowest wages it can get away with. And it needs those same workers to be high consumers. It has to convince us to buy more and more stuff.

A healthy, expanding capitalist system is unhealthy for people and the planet. The ecological crisis shows us that.

Indeed, the climate emergency has reached truly dire proportions. A 2008 paper by climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows predicted the planet was headed for a minimum 4°C of warming this century, even if sizeable emissions cuts were made. If temperatures do reach this high it would trigger runaway global warming.

The growth economy is also a waste economy: it has to treat the Earth as a giant trash can.
Just one example: a study by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation estimated there was about six times more plastic waste, by mass, in the Pacific Ocean than zooplankton.

A floating rubbish heap, roughly twice the size of Texas, spans an area of the north Pacific.

It’s not that most people don’t care. They do. Concern about these issues has probably never been higher.

But corporate interests exploit and distort this concern. They try to convince us we can consume our way to a sustainable world.

Sustainability is repackaged and sold back to us as merchandise. Most of us are aware that companies use greenwashing to sell their products. But the reason they keep doing it is because it works. Being “green” is a good marketing strategy.

We are in a struggle over the very meaning of “sustainable”. It’s been co-opted. Green capitalism allows industry to give the impression it is changing, even as it continues with business as usual.

At the same time, a relentless cultural message has been hammered home, telling us high individual consumption is the real problem.

So we are left with two ideas, which sum up the philosophy of green capitalism. Bad consumer choices are supposed to be the source of the crisis, while good consumer choices are said to be the path to salvation.

To an extent, this message has tainted the mainstream environment movement. We can see this with events such as Earth Hour, which suggest businesses and individuals have an equal responsibility to ride bicycles more often, have shorter showers and recycle milk cartons.

Now don’t get me wrong. We should try to reduce our personal waste and impact where we can. In this sense, we should “practice what we preach”.

But alone, it won’t solve even 1% of our environmental problems. We can’t treat the ecological crisis as independent from the economic system that gave rise to it.

The idea that consumers cause environmental problems obscures the fact that production is dominated by huge corporations. They are the ones pushing unsustainable growth. Collectively, they spend billions on advertising to create new consumer “needs”. They are the vested interests standing in the way of real sustainable change.

The free market won’t allow us to buy the things we really need. We need solar thermal power stations and wind farms. We need a redesign of our entire food system. But the system will not deliver these things in the short time we have left.

And capitalism doesn’t allow most of the world’s people to fulfil their basic needs at all. It excludes them. It leaves 1 billion people without enough food simply because it’s not profitable to have them eat.

To return to the New Zealand earthquake, another remarkable thing is it was slightly stronger than the earthquake that hit Haiti in January. But in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest nations, at least 230,000 people died.

The difference between the two earthquakes is the difference between a natural disaster and an unnatural disaster.

Capitalism is a system of unnatural disasters. It was never sustainable in the first place. It will be even less so in the future.

[Based on a speech delivered at the Green Left Weekly Sustainability Dinner, Sydney, September 11.]

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CONTENTS:

5 Our actions shape the future
Daphne lawless, editor of UNITY

9 The pollution market and the bad banks
DAVID PARKER, eco-blogger

17 Sub-prime crisis, global economic crisis … ecotastrophe?
ROB george, NZEI organiser (personal capacity)

39 How to avoid ecocide at the petrol pump
Kay Weir, editor of Pacific Ecologist

43 The Belém Ecosocialist Declaration

52 The E.I.N., chapter two: what is to be done?
JOEL KOVEL, Ecosocialist International Network

56 Climate Action Now!
Socialist Alliance (Australia)

63 Socialist Alliance 10-point plan

65 Bolivarian ecosocialism
Sam mcgill, Revolutionary Communist Group (Britain)

69 Book review: Will capitalism end in your life?
GRANT BROOKES, Socialist Worker – New Zealand

83 Book review: Plan a city, save the world?
DAVID, Socialist Worker – New Zealand

84 Book review: Ecosocialist solutions to the capitalist crisis
ASH PEMBERTON, Green Left Weekly (Australia)

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UNITY Journal editorial - Our actions shape the future

by Daphne Lawless, editor

A great example of commodity fetishism – or, the way in which living under capitalist society makes us believe that things which are not real are, in fact, real – is what is commonly known as “the miracle of compound interest”. Blogger Erin Burt from kiplinger.com enthuses: “It magically turns a little bit of money, invested wisely, into a whole lot of cash.”

Actually, as any Marxist can tell you, there’s no magic in that. A bank account full of money doesn’t breed as if it were a nest of cockroaches, although there are similarities. Exponential growth in bank deposits is made possible by exponential growth in the real world of commodities which those deposits are designed to purchase. And the exponential growth which – as Waikato union organiser and permaculturalist Rob George puts it in this issue – is “in capitalism’s DNA” is based on continually intensifying exploitation of both labour and nature. The miracle of compound interest is the miracle of how much working people – and planet Earth – can tolerate being vampirized.

In a sense, this issue of UNITY follows on from not only the last issue – which showcased Grant Morgan’s blockbuster article setting out the case that capitalism is on a collapse trajectory – but from our January 2006 issue, “System Change Not Climate Change”. We aim to show in this issue that the natural, physical limits to exponential capitalist growth – the resource and climate crises mentioned in our last issue – will lead to a crash and replacement with some other system, sooner than later, no matter the system’s inbuilt defenses.

Rehabilitating utopia and saving the future

From Blind Carbon Copy

Socialism used to be a rallying point for idealists, utopians, dreamers and those who were simply hopeful. It carried an almost millenarian promise of redemption and salvation. More importantly, it allowed its advocates to exercise their imagination. If socialism was to democratically realise the wishes of the common working people, why should they be restrained in their wishes?

There are pitfalls in utopian imaginings. George Orwell once said that “ ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” Inevitably, some utopian visions have been codified (and ossified) into cult dogma.


When the left banished utopia

But the 20th century left did not in the main succumb to utopian cults. Rather, it lost most of its creative imagination. The state socialist countries of the Eastern bloc as much as the social-democratic and labour movements in the West all succumbed to (or promoted) a grey economic reduction of the socialist vision.

Admittedly, even among the most authoritarian of the Stalinist parties, they never truly killed off creativity. The Communist Party of Australia had workers’ theatre. The USSR had Shostakovich and the Bolshoi Ballet and more. But the creative urge was de-coupled from the political project: it became a pressure relief valve for the masses. In the west, union campaigns for shorter work hours were probably the most creative movement, but the liberatory potential of freeing people from work was largely negated by the greater focus on wage rises and the related growth of consumerism.

The culture and dreams of working people have thus been privatised by the old, official “left”. State socialism and social democracy sought to out-compete the capitalists in economic growth and consumerism - without success. Clearly, if the aim was to enable working class people to be overweight, bored couch potatoes in front of a very big TV, capitalism won that competition.

Texts from the People’s Conference on Climate Change

Links has all the key documents from the World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth availiable here.

Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth

April 27, 2010

This Declaration was adopted by the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Bolivia. The Bolivian government has submitted it to the United Nations for consideration.


Preamble 

We, the peoples and nations of Earth:

considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny;

gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well;

recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation, abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change;

convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth;

affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so;

conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth;

proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt it, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching, education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms, national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance among all peoples and States in the world.

Article 1. Mother Earth 

(1) Mother Earth is a living being.

(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.

(3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth.

(4) The inherent rights of Mother Earth are inalienable in that they arise from the same source as existence.

(5) Mother Earth and all beings are entitled to all the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as may be made between organic and inorganic beings, species, origin, use to human beings, or any other status.

(6) Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the communities within which they exist.

(7) The rights of each being are limited by the rights of other beings and any conflict between their rights must be resolved in a way that maintains the integrity, balance and health of Mother Earth.


Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother Earth

(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent rights:

(a) the right to life and to exist;

(b) the right to be respected;

(c) the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions;

(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and interrelated being;

(e) the right to water as a source of life;

(f) the right to clean air;

(g) the right to integral health;

(h) the right to be free from contamination, pollution and toxic or radioactive waste;

(i) the right to not have its genetic structure modified or disrupted in a manner that threatens it integrity or vital and healthy functioning;

(j) the right to full and prompt restoration the violation of the rights recognized in this Declaration caused by human activities;

(2) Each being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her harmonious functioning.


(3) Every being has the right to wellbeing and to live free from torture or cruel treatment by human beings.


Article 3. Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth

(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth.


(2) Human beings, all States, and all public and private institutions must:

(a) act in accordance with the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;

(b) recognize and promote the full implementation and enforcement of the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;

(c) promote and participate in learning, analysis, interpretation and communication about how to live in harmony with Mother Earth in accordance with this Declaration;

(d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth, now and in the future;

(e) establish and apply effective norms and laws for the defence, protection and conservation of the rights of Mother Earth;

(f) respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth;

(g) guarantee that the damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration are rectified and that those responsible are held accountable for restoring the integrity and health of Mother Earth;

(h) empower human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings;

(i) establish precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles;

(j) guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons;

(k) promote and support practices of respect for Mother Earth and all beings, in accordance with their own cultures, traditions and customs;

(l) promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth and in accordance with the rights recognized in this Declaration.

Article 4. Definitions 

(1) The term “being” includes ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth.


(2) Nothing in this Declaration restricts the recognition of other inherent rights of all beings or specified beings.

The Cochabamba Protocol: People’s Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

April 26, 2010

Final Declaration of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia

Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger.

If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20% and 30% of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people.

The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.

Indigenous Peoples’ Declaration: “Mother Earth can live without us, but we can’t live without her”

 “The aggression towards Mother Earth and the repeated assaults and violations against our soils, air, forests, rivers, lakes, biodiversity, and the cosmos are assaults against us.”

Indigenous Peoples’ Declaration adopted at the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Translation by Ben Powless, who was co-chair of the Indigenous People’s Working Group.

We, the Indigenous Peoples, nations and organizations from all over the world, gathered at the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, from April 19th to 22nd, 2010 in Tiquipaya, Cochabamba, Bolivia, after extensive discussions, express the following:

We Indigenous Peoples are sons and daughters of Mother Earth, or “Pachamama” in Quechua. Mother Earth is a living being in the universe that concentrates energy and life, while giving shelter and life to all without asking anything in return, she is the past, present and future; this is our relationship with Mother Earth. We have lived in coexistence with her for thousands of years, with our wisdom and cosmic spirituality linked to nature. However, the economic models promoted and forced by industrialized countries that promote exploitation and wealth accumulation have radically transformed our relationship with Mother Earth. We must assert that climate change is one of the consequences of this irrational logic of life that we must change.

Australian socialist: Some Initial Reflections on the Summit in Cochabamba

Ben Courtice is a member of the Australian Socialist Alliance who attended the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. He posted this article on April 25 on his blog, Blind Carbon Copy. This version is copied from Climate & Capitalism. 


by Ben Courtice
April 24, 2010

This is just a first reflection on the monumental World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth which just finished in Cochabamba. I will post more on particular aspects of the summit soon.

The event was huge, with at least 20 000 (I’ve heard over 30 000) attending at the university Univalle in Tiquipaya, a municipality on the northwest edge of Cochabamba. There was a huge attendance from Bolivians, who are very much engaged in the political process of their country, and generally very supportive of their charismatic President Evo Morales. Delegations came, many in their traditional costume (which they still wear every day), from indigenous tribal people in the Amazon, from the Aymara and Quechua peoples of the Andes, from a plethora of unions, peasant and indigenous associations and NGOs, from all of what is called the “plurinational state of Bolivia.”

There were also big delegations from pretty much all the countries of Latin America. There was a fair scattering of North Americans, a few from Central America, and a pretty sparse representation from the rest of the world. Europe, Asia and Africa were under-represented partly because any flights going through Europe were cancelled after the volcanic eruption in Iceland. It was a clearly left gathering: the conservative NGO and aid milieu were keeping a low profile if they were there.

The summit had 17 working groups to write a document each for adoption by the summit. Topics of these ranged from the somewhat esoteric “shared vision” to concrete discussions such as on forests, and on a world referendum on climate action proposed by the Bolivian government.

In many ways the summit was driven by the radical agenda of the Latin American socialist governments – Bolivia of course, and Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador. The discourse from the Bolivians, in particular, was largely based on an indigenous philosophy of vivir bien – living well – in harmony with Pachamama – mother earth.

Democracy Now! videos interviews from Climate Change Conference

Democracy Now! has heaps of coverage of the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in both video and transcripts.

Below are a few of the videos, with links to the transcripts.

From Melting Glaciers to Structural Adjustment: Maude Barlow on the Need for Water Justice

Transcript here at Democracy Now! webpage.

Mesa 18: Dissident Groups Host Alternative Meeting Outside World Peoples’ Climate Summit

Transcript here at Democracy Now! webpage.

 

Bolivia Climate Conference Moves to Establish Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth

Transcript here at Democracy Now! webpage.

20,000 at Bolivia climate conference

 Delegates at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia (Pic: Kris Krüg)

By Suzie Wylie and Jonathan Neale
in Cochabamba, Bolivia
From Socialist Worker UK

Some 20,000 people gathered for a “people’s conference on climate change” in Cochabamba, Bolivia, this week.

The event is historic. The leaders of the world’s major powers decided that they would do nothing about climate change at the UN’s climate talks in Copenhagen last December.

Many environmentalists were enraged. The same leaders who were prepared to bail out the banks were not prepared to save the planet.

There was a danger that the climate movement would collapse in demoralisation.

But Evo Morales, the left wing president of Bolivia, called a global conference of the social movements to continue the fight against climate change.

Canadian youth activist reports from Cochabamba

Kimia Ghomeshi from the Canadian youth climate movement reports back from Cochabamba:

I am now about half way through the 3 day peoples conference and feel a great sense of empowerment and sadness all at once.  I feel a deep sadness for our civilization that is so incapable of living in harmony with one another and with mother earth.  The developing world are to this day paying the price for colonialism in the form of neoliberal and capitalistic practices that are destroying their air, land, water and food – destroying their way of life.  I feel a deep sadness that capital accumulation has taken precedence over human life so that developed countries like Canada can continue to develop, exploit and consume.

But I also feel incredibly empowered because what I am seeing before me, here in Cochabamba, is a truly global resistance.  A resistance to the world’s greatest polluters– polluters who refuse to accept their responsibility for causing this global catastrophe.   And this movement is building, becoming more tactful, more united, more committed, with a common vision: Systems change, not climate change. 

Read Ghomeshi’s full report here: http://www.ourclimate.ca/wordpress/

Hat tip http://climateandcapitalism.com

Voices from the first day of the Bolivian Climate Change Conference

Report by Anjali Kamat and Rick Rowley
Democracy Now

As the peoples’ climate change talks here move into their third day, thousands of participants from across Latin America and around the world are streaming into this small Bolivian town to discuss how to slow the impact of global warming. Anjali Kamat and Rick Rowley file this report on Tuesday’s opening ceremony.




Click link below to read Rush Transcript

World People’s Conference on Climate Change starts today

From Without Your Walls

At least 15,000 people from 126 countries are expected to attend the World People’s Conference on Climate Change which has been called by Bolivia as a response to the failure of the recent COP15 climate change negotiations.

As one of the few countries that openly criticised the negotiations in Copenhagen and has refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord, Bolivia has invited governments, organisations and people to take part in finding real solutions to fight climate change.

Auckland event, 3rd May: 
New Zealander Sandy Gauntlett of Global Forests Coalition and the international Climate Justice Now! network will be speaking on what happened at the conference on his return to New Zealand. 
For more details and to confirm your attendance [via facebook] click here.

 
The objectives of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth are:

1)    To analyze the structural and systemic causes that drive climate change and to propose radical measures to ensure the well-being of all humanity in harmony with nature

2)    To discuss and agree on the project of a Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights

3)    To agree on proposals for new commitments to the Kyoto Protocol and projects for a COP Decision under the United Nations Framework for Climate Change that will guide future actions in those countries that are engaged with life during climate change negotiations and in all United Nations scenarios, related to: Climate debt, Climate change migrants-refugees, Emission reductions, Adaptation, Technology transfer, Finance, Forest and Climate Change, Shared Vision, Indigenous, Peoples, and others. These are split into 17 working groups, which will form basis of the final document of the conference.

4)    To work on the organization of the World People’s Referendum on Climate Change

5)    To analyze and develop an action plan to advance the establishment of a Climate Justice Tribunal

6)    To define strategies for  action and mobilization to defend life from Climate Change and to defend the Rights of Mother Earth.







Keep updated and participate:

You can follow what’s going on the following this blog, this blog and social network sites

Watch the conference live

Mobilisation for the climate and anti-capitalist strategy

The following article dealing with capitalism’s climate crisis was presented at the 16th World Congress of the Fourth International, held in Belgium in February 2010.
 
It raises similar issues and comes to striking similar to Socialist Worker NZ’s annalysis of the probability of capitalist collapse, as outlined in Grant Morgan’s essay ‘Beware! The end is nigh!’ Why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for a decent future.


By Daniel Tanuro

Three billion human beings lack the essentials of life. The satisfaction of their needs requires increased production of material goods. Therefore increased consumption of energy. Today, 80 per cent of this energy is of fossil origin, and consequently a source of greenhouse gases which are unbalancing the climatic system.

As Glaciers Melt, Bolivia Fights for the Good Life

by Jessica Camille Aguirre
Yes Magazine

Bolivia is watching its glaciers melt, early casualties of a changing climate. As communities struggle to adapt and the government tries to pioneer an alternative way forward, rural Bolivians believe the answer lies not in consumerist striving to live better, but in learning to live well.

Don Alivio Aruquipa [pictured right] is smiling as he gestures around his community. Behind him, groups of yelping children kick a soccer ball around a sloping green plaza. Every so often, the ball goes flying off the mesa into a plot of cultivated land below, and the children send someone to go retrieve it.

Looming over the verdant square that stretches among squat square buildings is Illimani, a blue, breathtaking colossus of craggy rock and snow.
 
On the other side of the mountain sits La Paz, the burgeoning capital city of Bolivia. But here, in the village of Khapi, the hush of remote tranquility is interrupted only by children’s cries.

Alivio, stocky and affable, is one of Khapi's community leaders. He turns somber as he explains how yellow water is beginning to come down from Illimani. The animals don’t like it, he says; they get sick or they refuse to drink. The water flowing down from the mountain has also become unpredictable, he adds. It has become impossible to know when to plant the crops.

Khapi is a village of 40 families in the western part of the Bolivian altiplano; its residents rely on agriculture to survive. It is the closest community to Illimani (the name for both the mountain and the glacier atop it, which provides water not only to Khapi but also to La Paz). For as long as anyone who lives here can remember, the community has relied on water from the glacier to drink, wash, cook, and cultivate food. But now Illimani is disappearing.

Bolivia creates a new opportunity for climate talks that failed at Copenhagen

Bolivia’s UN ambassador Pablo Solon-Romero during a press conference.

Photograph: Paulo Filgueiras/UN Photo

By Pablo Solón Romero

In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, those who defended the widely condemned outcome tended to talk about it as a “step in the right direction”. This was always a tendentious argument, given that tackling climate change cannot be addressed by half measures. We can’t make compromises with nature.

Bolivia, however, believed that Copenhagen marked a backwards step, undoing the work built on since the climate talks in Kyoto. That is why, against strong pressure from industrialised countries, we and other developing nations refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord and why we are hosting an international meeting on climate change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from April 19 to 22, 2010. In the words of the Tuvalu negotiator, we were not prepared to “betray our people for 30 pieces of silver”.