6 April, 2010 — Climate and Capitalism

• Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth
• Native peoples reject market mechanisms
• Mobilization for the climate and anti-capitalist strategy
• Costing the earth: The challenge of eco-socialism

Draft Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. to be submitted to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Brazil, April 19-22

Mother Earth is an indivisible community of diverse and interdependent beings with whom we share a common destiny and to whom we must relate in ways that benefit Mother Earth; … by attempting to dominate and exploit Mother Earth and other beings, humans have caused severe destruction, degradation and disruption of the life-sustaining communities, processes and balances of Mother Earth which now threatens the wellbeing and existence of many beings.

Climate Change: Native Peoples Reject Market Mechanisms. Daniel Zueras reports on the Latin American Indigenous Forum on Climate Change in Costa Rica.

Proposals from governments and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the Clean Development Mechanism and the UN-REDD Programme (United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), ‘are new forms of economic geopolitics’ that endanger indigenous rights enshrined in treaties, says the final declaration of the forum, which ended Wednesday.

Mobilization for the climate and anti-capitalist strategy. Daniel Tanuro’s report to the Fourth International

It is important as of now to send out a signal, to show we are moving. In Copenhagen, in December, a breach opened. For the first time, a mass mobilization on global environmental issues took on the character of a social struggle against the system in place: ‘Change the system, not the climate’, ‘Planet not profit’. This internationalist movement will develop. It offers us considerable potentialities. An anti-capitalist tendency did not wait for us to develop. We must reinforce it.

Costing the earth: The challenge of eco-socialism. Liam Young in the Scottish socialist journal Frontline

To enable the maintenance of a planet that is not only inhabitable but can also sustain civilization it is necessary to carry through an ecological revolution. As this is incompatible with the system of capitalism any such revolution needs to be linked to a larger social transformation that changes not only the method of production but also the motivations behind production. To achieved this the classes of society that make up the majority of the planets population will need to be mobilized by combining the struggle to protect the planets environment with the struggles for social and economic justice.”