Friday, September 9, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Environmental Colonialism in the Climate Struggle?
Environmental Colonialism in the Climate Struggle?
July 21, 2011
By Editor
What’s in a number? In the case of 330 ppm, a whole lot. “Imperialism, not human nature, has caused this global crisis; anti-imperialism and solidarity are the only paths out.”
by Macdonald Stainsby
Though the arguments made in this article appear to be about the numbers set as targets in parts per million [ppm] of carbon in the atmosphere, it is not the numbers alone that has made this debate necessary. It is, at the essence, how we come to the positions we do that says the most about what kind of organizing we are truly undertaking. It goes far beyond parts per million, even though the highlighted versions of the debate will often come in exactly the ppm debate, posted in a twitter-like condensed version that obscures instead of simplifies.
Evo Morales
Yes, 300ppm is the goal sought by the Bolivian government as well as many other south Pacific island states and social movements from all over the so-called developing world. Indeed, the call for a target of 300 ppm along with the need to calculate a form of climate debt mechanism that will not punish the Global South that has not constructed this crisis– the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and is already facing– and instead offers both development and possible survival. Imperialism, not human nature, has caused this global crisis; anti-imperialism and solidarity are the only paths out.
The number 300ppm is not arrived at in order to pose as “radical”. This number comes from a position of solidarity.
With 300ppm (and an accompanying one degree Celsius rise in global temperature averages) the survival of the water supplying glaciers in Bolivia are possible; the food producing agricultural regions of central Africa may yet produce again; the home supplying land of islands such as the Maldives may continue to exist. Solidarity by definition cannot make a target based on the destruction of some peoples, sacrificed for the expediency of ‘realpolitik’ for rich regions of the world. Yet the movement does not end there, and demands mechanisms that seriously curtail the emissions first of nation-states who created the crisis for their own narrow development while not punishing the (artificially) impoverished regions being decimated atmospherically.
Despite this, larger first world ENGO’s are setting targets that have nothing to do with the survival of people who are already watching their very homes disappear underwater. The concerns in North America are weaker and have nothing to do with power relations between Global North and South. If the need to immediately collapse any further c02 emissions into the atmosphere will mean a drastic reduction in energy use as a starting point– ending fossil fuel production– the “what is possible” arguments about “politically feasible” immediately must end. The arguments are not figuring out:
A) what has a scientific chance of success, but even more so
B) Ignoring the plight of the struggling Global South– already seeing droughts, floods and fires– is seen as ‘natural’ because the only constituency that apparently matters is an amalgam of all North American residents (themselves also seen as all “equal”).
In appeasing the American ‘birthright’ of over-development, concepts of a false “green shift” and “transition to a green economy” are regularly touted as the way forward for North American environmentalists. In fact, not one of the large and powerful environmental groups has ever challenged the notion of a capitalist led growth economy in a time when any growth is inherently suicidal for dealing with climate change– and genocidal in the implications of billions of human beings living with an already unbalanced atmosphere.
We have two major stumbling blocs on the path towards the goal of a green shift.
A): it is an economic non-starter. This green development would be based on the laws of capital accumulation and carried out under a market based economy. You cannot deliberately shrink such an economy without starting an economic freefall.
B): under basic capitalist laws of accumulation when any energy is added to the grid one actually expands the economy– which by the very rules of capitalist production also expands the demand for energy.
In the US and Canada we have the “just transition” version of the same “simultaneous growth and survival” model. This goal itself presupposes a static energy grid in the most unstable economic system, and in the most unstable economic decade in a century. Energy demand goes up when the economy recovers, and the least c02 producing versions of energy still increase the emissions into the air while they also facilitate the increase in more production of fossil fuels.
This campaign is one giant exercise in realpolitik that sacrifices reality in order to facilitate the chance of popular support for a plan of action that will fail. Sadly, the Global North ENGO definition of success is measured in public support not tangible environmental survival.
The approach taken in North America (far less than Europe) is based on consumption guilt, consumption legislation and the imaginary world where we simply stop buying gasoline and ride bikes everywhere with only good argumentation and eco-friendly bank sponsored picnics against climate change. The entire structure of North American society is constructed towards fossil fuels more than anywhere on the planet, while there is already a major shift in energy underway.
With pilot plants for coal to liquids under conceptualization in the US and continued investment into ways to produce oil shale into petroleum in several places (most notably Colorado) and the continued expansion of the largest industrial development in human history in the Albertan tar sands, the energy shift is taking place not at a point of consumption deliberately but in fact at the point of production.
Carbon taxes– even at the level that may actually have a tangible effect on emissions– undermine the need to reduce carbon emissions in a just fashion and rely instead on trying to use economics to deal with what is essentially a political problem. The notion of making the consumer of fossil fuels pay for consumption is a climate version of having you and I pay to ‘rescue’ the banks– when we did not make this mess in the first place. The strengths of the campaigns against developments like the tar sands are when the campaign focuses on the impacts on Fort Chipewyan immediately and across the planet ultimately. When people use arguments about “slowing down” production or how one can consume cosmetics to fight against climate chaos, the message is lost in feel good pointless solutions, or worse– diversion into consumer choices that have no effect but to make one falsely believe they did their part.
The real threat posed by the Albertan tar sands is starting to bleed across the planet and is locking all of humanity into a mode of production that utterly defeats any possibility of realistically tackling climate change. No matter how many “green energy alternatives” get built, if production of bitumen continues to expand in Canada and starts becomes a norm worldwide we have no chance to address the atmospheric levels. No other energy source simultaneously being built will slow that, but in fact speed up the destructive process. We must never call on corporations like BP and TOTAL to “invest in alternative energy”. They just might actually do it.
From Colombia to Scotland and parts of Canada the development of the least climate damaging energy supplies have been used to build new coal mines, power possible shale gas extraction as well as to greenwash energy giants like Suncor and even give them carbon credits to make their legal operation continue. The green shift may take away the only window left to tackle climate change.
Internationally the movement that came out of Cochabamba& Tiquipaya, Bolivia last April called for 300ppm as a target, but with the caveats of no false solutions and that the main needs were to both power down the industrial world and to provide mechanisms for the over-exploited mass of humanity to be able to develop a decent standard of living while tackling the odious task of protecting their own environments. Basically, it’s a global “you broke it, you bought it” to the imperialist countries of North America and Western Europe. But the real kicker is that it is a call that allows all of the human residents of the planet to be valued on the same level, and applies the principles of environmental justice to the international stage. Let’s be clear– the fight will be internationally won or lost.
When 350.org went to Cochabamba, they not only argued for their position of 350ppm despite that the Global South led, initiated and hosted conference had differing positions. They made the same tired arguments around what was “politically feasible”, what was “achievable” and that there was so little support for real action in the US and Canada that this path was at least tenable. In environmental circles, “politically feasible” and bad deals that allow business as usual for industry. Going well beyond parts per million, the people from Africa pointed out that such a call condemns their continent to permanent protectorate status, unable to feed itself and as a mass of humanity treated as a continental invalid. Countries from Southern Pacific Islands point out that the temperature rise associated with 350ppm would leave them underwater and permanent refugees as a modern day series of nations with Atlantis like status.
Let us, however, leave aside the numerical points and talk about what way a movement in the interests of environmental justice will operate. When a pipeline is being proposed the community next to it gets full messaging control and overwhelming precedence. The voices that must be amplified are those of the community whose traditional territory is under siege. Sadly, the history of environmental NGO organizing has been to use their struggle as a great fundraiser, to put some colour on the colourful brochures, to make posters with sayings from elders– sold and used to claim a profit for already well-financed ENGO’s. Now we must apply these principles to what came out of Cochabamba.
The plenaries heeded the voices of the Global South and agreed to endorse no false solutions, power down not power up, no trading the air and the land for carbon credits, and to take the voices of the already suffering as a unified voice to Cancun in December 2010. But what of 350.org? From places of using ‘facilitation’ of plenary sessions to try and manipulate demands downward to falsely taking notes [after the fact], trying (on two separate occasions) to change the text of the agreed upon declarations– and ultimately refusing to sign onto and agree to uphold the principles of the Peoples Agreement that came out of the conference. Instead we have reality distorting pictures of Bolivian children posted during their 10/10/10 “Global work party” with “350.org” painted on their faces.
Note that 350.org is funded by unaccountable foundations that have historical ties to industry, and that 350.org itself steadfastly refuses to list any solutions, but instead delivers solar panels to the White House for stunt effect.
Meanwhile Bolivia (and the social movements that built the People’s Agreement) were hung out to dry in Mexico at COP16. That didn’t happen overnight. At meetings in advance of Cancun, 350.org “backed” small island states into a corner, “helping” them once they dropped “silly” demands and adopted the 350.org platform (or lack of one). Among other ENGO’s at Cancun were the usual competing voices, all demanding different things from almost all the governments in the world. The declarations from the Peoples Agreement had already been delivered to the UN, and were being demanded by hundreds of social movements from all over the Global South and dozens of nation states to be presented for real discussion and legally binding enforcement on the global level. ENGO’s didn’t promote the agreement (many actively undermined such, with Greenpeace promoting REDD and the Mexican government) and such demands collapsed.
Silence on this dynamic runs counter to organizing an international resistance movement based on solidarity. Big money and slick advertising campaigns are trying to silence the voices emerging from all those gathered last April 2010 in the shadows of the melting glaciers of the Andes. It is the path to justice to fight to make certain that this legitimate voice for transformation is not turned into another prop of coloured peoples on a “professional” campaign. It is often accurately pointed out that this kind of division over the numbers 300 vs 350 is silly when we are almost at 400 already. That is agreed in the abstract, but this debate is not about the numbers. It is a struggle for recognition on a global scale– one that goes way, way beyond parts per million debates. It is pointed at a revolutionary approach.
Macdonald Stainsby is a social justice activist, journalist and professional hitchhiker looking for a ride to the better world. He is the coordinator of http://OilSandsTruth.org and can be reached at: mstainsby@resist.ca
http://politicalcontext.org/sci-tech/2011/07/environmental-colonialism-in-the-climate-struggle/Tuesday, July 12, 2011
La Via Campesina Africa Declaration
* * * *
La Via Campesina Africa Declaration
1st Encounter of Agroecology Trainers in
Shashe Declaration
12-20 June 2011
Africa Region 1 of La Via Campesina
Msvingo, Zimbawe We are 47 people from 22 organizations in 18 countries (Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Angola, Uganda,
Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Central African Republic,
Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Portugal, USA, France, and Germany). We are
farmers and staff representing member organizations of La Via
Campesina, along with allies from other farmer organizations and
networks, NGOs, academics, researchers, interpreters and others. We have been meeting at the Shashe Endogenous Development Training
Centre in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe to plan how to promote
agroecology in our Region (Southern, Eastern & Central Africa). Here
we have been privileged to witness firsthand the successful
combination of agrarian reform with organic farming and agroecology
carried out by local small holder farming families. In what were once
large cattle ranches owned by three large farmers who owned 800 head
of cattle and produced no grain or anything else, there are now more
than 365 small holder peasant farming families with more than 3,400
head of cattle, who also produce a yearly average of 1 to 2 tonnes of
grain per family plus vegetables and other products, in many cases
using agroecological methods and local peasant seeds. This experience
strengthens our commitment to and belief in agroecology and agrarian
reform as fundamental pillars in the construction of Food Sovereignty. Threats and Challenges to Small Holder Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Our region of Africa is currently facing challenges and threats that
together undermine the food security and well-being of our
communities, displace small holder farmers and undercut their
livelihoods, undermine our collective ability to feed our nations, and
cause grave damage to the soil, the environment and the Mother Earth. These include local and regional manifestations of the global food
price crisis and the climate crisis that have been produced by runaway
neoliberal policies and the greed and profit-taking of Transnational
Corporations (TNCs). Cheap subsidized food imports brought by TNCs,
made possible by misguided free trade agreements, lowers the prices we
receive for our farm products, forcing families to abandon farming and
migrate to cities, while undermining local and national food
production. Foreign investors, invited in by some of our governments,
grab the best farm land, displacing food producing local farmers, and
redirecting that land toward environmentally devastating mining,
agrofuel plantations that feed cars instead of people, and other
export plantations that do nothing to build Food Sovereignty for our
peoples, and only enrich a few. At the same time, uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions and air
pollution from Developed Countries and from the global corporate food
system based on long distance transport and industrial agriculture are
changing the climate in ways that directly affect farmers. Our lands
become more arid, with water ever more scarce, we face rising
temperatures, and increased extreme weather conditions like severe
storms, floods and droughts. The dates of the rainy season have become
completely unpredictable, so that nobody knows when to plant anymore.
The changing climate is also implicated in epidemics of communicable
diseases of humans, crops and livestock. All of this hurts farming
families and affects food production. We face TNCs who want to force GMO seeds into our countries, whether
or not we currently have GMO bans, and agencies like the Alliance for
a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) who conspire with TNCs like
Cargill and Monsanto and with our governments to buy off national
research and seed systems in order to sell GMO seeds. These seeds
threaten the integrity of our local varieties and the health of our
consumers. The same companies even manipulate regional farmer
organizations to push GMOs, and we call on such organizations to
resist being used in such ways. While our soils, agroecosytems and forests are ever more degraded by
industrial agriculture and plantations, and local seed biodiversity is
lost, the costs of production under the conventional “Green
Revolution” model are more expensive and out of the reach of small
holder farmers. The price of chemical fertilizer on the world market,
for example, has risen more than 300% in the last few years. Faced with this bleak situation for small holder agriculture and Food
Sovereignty in our region, as members of organizations belonging to La
Via Campesina we take the following positions: Positions of La Via Campesina in Africa Region 1 We believe that… • Agroecological farming as practiced by small holder farmers, and
Food Sovereignty policies, offer the only reasonable and feasible
solutions to these multiple challenges facing our Region. • Only agroecological methods (also called sustainable agriculture,
organic farming, ecological agriculture, etc.) can restore soils and
agroecosystems that have been degraded by industrial agriculture. Even
chemicals do not work after severe degradation, but with agroecology
we can restore soil organic matter and fertility, along with
functional agroecosystem processes and services like nutrient
recycling, soil biology, natural pest control, etc. We have seen that
small holder agroecological systems have much greater total
productivity than industrial monocultures, with little or no purchased
inputs, reducing the dependency and increasing the autonomy and
well-being of rural families while producing abundant and healthy food
for our peoples. Global research by La Via Campesina demonstrates that
Sustainable Peasant Agriculture Can Feed the World, based on
endogenous knowledge and agroecology. • The global food system currently generates between 44 and 57% of
global greenhouse gas emissions, almost all of which could be
eliminated by transforming the food system based on the principles of
agroecology, agrarian reform and Food Sovereignty. Sustainable Peasant
Agriculture Cools the Planet, and this is our best solution to climate
change. • In order to adapt to a changing climate we need the greater
resiliency of diversified agroecological systems (and water
conservation and harvesting, watershed management, agroforestry,
ground cover, etc.) and the genetic diversity of local peasant seeds
and peasant seed systems. We demand that our governments withdraw
support from the corporate seed industry with it’s standardized and
often genetically modified seeds, and instead support peasant seed
systems based on recovering, saving, multiplying, storing, breeding
and exchanging seeds at the local level. • Our national education and research systems are heavily biased
toward the very industrial agriculture practices that are killing our
planet and contributing to the failure of Africans to feed ourselves.
We demand the reorientation of research toward farmer-led methods and
agroecology, and the transformation of curricula at primary and
secondary schools levels, and in higher education, to focus on
agroecology. • We call for an end to trade liberalization and the renewed
protection of domestic markets so that African farmers can receive the
fair prices that will enable us to boost production and feed our
peoples. • We call on governments to create comprehensive programs to support
agroecological farming by small holders and to rebuild Food
Sovereignty, including genuine agrarian reform and the defense of
peasant lands from land grabbing, the reorientation of government food
procurement from agribusiness toward purchasing ecological food at
fair prices from small holders to supply schools, hospitals,
institutional cafeterias, etc., as a way to support farmers and to
provide healthy food to children, sick people and government
employees, and programs of production credit for small holders engaged
in ecological farming instead of subsidies tied to chemical
fertilizers and pesticides. • At the COP-16 in Cancun, Mexico, the governments of the world
(except Bolivia) met to conduct business with TNCs who traffic in
false solutions to climate changes like agrofuels, GMOs, carbon
markets, REDD+, etc., instead of meeting to seriously and effectively
reverse global warming through real emission reductions by Developed
Countries and the transformation of our global food, energy and
transport systems. We demand that our governments behave more
responsibly at COP-17 in Durban, South Africa, refusing to sign
agreements imposed by the North and by TNCs, instead supporting the
Cochabamba Principles on the Climate and the Rights of the Mother
Earth. Commitments of La Via Campesina While we demand that our governments act in all the ways mentioned
above, and will turn up the pressure on them to do so, we will not
wait for them. Instead we pledge to continue to build agroecology and
Food Sovereignty from below. We pledge to take the following practical
steps: • We will build organizational structures in La Via Campesina at the
regional level to support our national member organizations in their
work to promote agroecology among their member families. This includes
regional training programs, exchange visits, the production and
sharing of educational materials, and the identification and
documentation of successful cases in the region so that all can learn
the lessons they offer. Among the structures we will build is a
network of agroecology trainers and practitioners in La Via Campesina
in our Region. • We will promote the creation of agroecology training programs and
schools in our organizations, and farmer-to-farmer and
community-to-community agroecology promotion programs. • Through our own organizations we will promote the creation and
strengthening of local peasant seed systems. • We will document the experience in Zimbabwe of agrarian reform and
organic farming by beneficiary families, as successful steps toward
Food Sovereignty that we who are in other countries can learn from. • We will work to “keep carbon in the ground and in trees” in the
areas under our control, by promoting agroforestry, tree planting,
agroecology, energy conservation, and by fighting land grabs for
mining and industrial plantations. • We will engage and pressure governments at all levels (local,
traditional provincial, national and regional) to adopt Public
Policies that favor agroecology and Food Sovereignty. • We will build a powerful small holder farmer and peasant voice to be
present with other sectors of civil society at COP-17 in Durban, and
at Rio +20 in Brazil, with the message that we oppose false solutions
to climate change and demand the adoption of the Cochabamba
Principles. We will insist on Small Holder Sustainable Agriculture and
Food Sovereignty as the most important true solutions to climate
change. Africans! We Can Feed Ourselves with Agroecology and Food Sovereignty! Sustainable Agriculture by Small Holder Farmers Cools the Planet! No to the Corporate Food System, GMOs and Land Grabbing! Yes to Agrarian Reform and an Agroecological Food System! Globalize Struggle! Globalize Hope! Masvingo District, Zimbabwe, 20 June 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Paulina Hernandez, SONG, on La Onda Bajita!
Paulina Hernandez, Co-Director and Co-Founder of Southerners Organizing on New Ground, Atlanta, GA
on La Onda Bajita, 9 pm, Friday July 1, 2011, on the eve of the National Day of Noncompliance!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Open Letter to My Sisters (originally posted Jun 22, 2011)
Sisters,
I strongly support the call by NWSA members to honor the GA travel, conference and tourism boycott due to the recent passage of HB87.
At this moment in time, we all see the crisis in governance, the crisis of capitalism, of identity in our country. As any astute scholar or practitioner of justice-making change knows. there are moments when it is clear that a line in the sand has been drawn. That line, in terms of human rights, wimmin's rights, and migrant rights, was SB1070 in Arizona.
As people of conscience, peoples whose very existence in the academy, whose very voices in public discourse are only possible because of social movements and other people in previous generations who took risks and hits to do what was clearly the right and just thing to do, we *must* stand with our sistren and brethren, and our members who are the targets of this legislation to fight injsutice, as well as take a clear stand against those who perpetrate hate crimes through so-called legal systems.
In addition, like the forced sterilizations of eugenics science policy from the 1920s through the 1960s that targeted poor white, Black, Latin@ and native Americans in the US and in places including Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Nicaragua, racist policies are often carried out with a particularly brutal force on systemically vulnerable groups of women and children. These are the sisters who have taught me, mentored me, challenged and supported me over the years.
As sisters, we must stand in strong solidarity with each other, now. We are more powerful than I think we know. This is the moment to honor the words of June Jordan, immortalized by Sweet Honey in the Rock, that honored the sisters in struggle against apartheid in the townships of South Africa. We are the ones we've been waiting for. These, and other reasons, are why I support the call to honor the travel ban and the boycott.
In addition, I know that many things are not what they seem. In the spirit of openness and transparency, as I know that in general we in NWSA share the values of justice and fairness, I would like to hear from the NWSA leadership:
(1) What steps did you take to explore the option of honoring the travel boycott and moving the conference out of Georgia before they sent us the email on May 16?
(2) What steps are you taking to substantively meet the call by Georgia organizations to meet with the organizers if an organization cannot or will not honor the travel boycott?
Thank you.
In loving, powerful sisterhood,
Diana Pei Wu
Antioch University Los Angeles
... "But some of us are brave." :: NWSA and the GA Boycott of HB 87
... "But some of us are brave."
Sisters, these are the moments when we are called, not only to be brave, but to be bold in doing so.
Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, when transgender women of color led the fight against unjust police repression and surveillance of trans and queerfolk in Greenwich Village, New York City.
Today, courageous youth and young people "came out" in the Georgia City Capitol and in the streets near the Gold Dome. They have come out as undocumented and unafraid, as has Jose Vargas, the queer Filipino Pulitzer Prize winning journalist formerly with the Washington Post, in the New York Times and last night on the Maddow Show.
This fight, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is against the re-institution of Jim Crow legislation in the South and throughout the nation. The target is "migrant"-looking people right now - that means many of us, our families, loved ones, communities.
And if not now, history shows that unjust means of surveillance and state-sponsored violence often start off with a test population and then expand the technology to the general population once the technology of repression is honed and ready to be implemented at scale. That's the rest of us.
History shows that the impacts on women of color in these kinds of times can particularly inhumane: women have had their children taken from them and put under CPS even as they are put into deportation proceedings.
A woman who called the local police in a DV case found herself put under deportation proceedings. There are several documented such cases across the U.S.
When we look back, will we, NWSA, have stood against fear and hatred, or will we have done nothing in the name of financial expediency and procedural ease?
I urge us to begin and continue, publicly, the deeper process necessary to be able for us to honor the boycott of HB87 and to stand with love and justice, now, and in the future.
* * * * *
To summarize a few hours of research, here are some of the options thus far, most of which have not yet been explored, to the best of our collective knowledge:
I sent this list of options in a different version of this email to the NWSA Staff and Governing Council and have not received any reply, so I am posting it publicly.
Additional resources for moving the conference:
Other conferences that moved from Arizona last year:
* MALCS
* and a good 50 or so organizations who have said that they will not go to AZ as long as SB 1070 is on the books. http://altoarizona.com/az-boycott.html
Other conferences that moved their conference for another reason:
* American Studies Association (San Antonio, TX) - to honor a labor boycott of the hotel
What happened to a conference that didn't move AND didn't treat their membership with respect when asked:
* American Bar Association (bad publicity for the Association AND for the hotel: this has been used successfully in other conference negotiations to convince a hotel to allow an organization to break the contract without losing the deposit)
INMEX: www.inmex.com
* INMEX is a social justice event planning service that helps organizations negotiate contracts that can be re-negotiated in the event of labor, environmental and social justice boycotts; started by some folks who used to work with UNITE HERE. We (NWSA) could contact INMEX and ask for help. In addition, I would offer that NWSA could consider always using INMEX in the future.
Current organizations honoring the GA Boycott: http://www.wearegeorgia.org/action-center/boycott-signon-supporters/
Paulina Hernandez (Southerners on New Ground, one of the lead organizations calling for the boycott and Somos Georgia) and Lisbeth Gomez. Email: paulina@southernersonnewground.org
We can do this! We must.
If in good faith, NWSA has exhausted all the above options after carefully exploring and considering them, and only then finds that we cannot move the conference, the community organizers and many of us would be down to help NWSA make the conference a true support to the many multi-layered struggles happening in Georgia and the region, in principled, just, loving, brave and bold ways.
In sisterhood, love and justice,
Diana Pei Wu, PhD
Antioch University Los Angeles