Cochabamba Postscript: Lessons, Reflections & the Road to Cancun
By Jason Negrón-Gonzales
April 2010
I’m on the plane back to the US flying at 29,000 feet over the Amazon. A green carpet of trees, only interrupted by winding veins of brown rivers, stretches to the horizon. From time to time where a larger river appears, a small cluster of buildings sits like a speck on the side of the river. Later, geometric patterns interrupt the expanse of the forest in areas where trees have been cut. In their place are roads, but few buildings and no crops or livestock. Suddenly, these clearings disappear and only forest and clouds are visible again. The forest is immensely beautiful, and just seeing it there gives me hope – even knowing the challenges the forest and it’s people face, climate change being just one of them. It’s hard to look at something so huge, a system that’s so complex and beyond human comprehension, and know that many think it won’t exist in 100 years. The forest and its people may well become victims of the greed and myopia of those who run today’s world.
The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC) ended on Thursday in Cochabamba and every airport I’ve stopped in (more than a few now) has been filled with people heading home with new energy, new direction, and excitement to get back to work. But before the movement moves on I want to share some last reflections that we’ll be taking forward.
The meaning of Cochabamba
When I asked Colin Rajah of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights what he thought the significance of the CMPCC was, he replied, “Cochabamba changed the game. The US will push what it’s going to push, but now there is a new proposal on the table. It’s a counter balance.” This new proposal, brought together by social movements from around the world, and anchored by Bolivian and South American social movements will exist as both a synthesis and a roadmap, not just for climate negotiations but also for our movements themselves. The conference successfully wove together the experiences and analytic strengths of many movements. At times differences emerged (which I’ll talk about more below), but overall the conference was remarkable for the level of agreement expressed.
What was this agreement? The content of the proposals is too vast to list here (click for Spanish text or partial English translations) but it was remarkable for being intersectional, based on a structural analysis, rooted in the experiences of communities on the ground, and supportive of expanding democracy. The outcome makes clear that solutions to climate change won’t come from the back room or the board room but from real people making decisions about their future.
The question now is: will it have legs? As an organizer from Vía Campesina Mexico pointed out in one of the opening sessions of the conference – what is possible in Cancún (where the next UN Conference of Parties will meet to try to negotiate a global climate policy) will depend on what is developed internationally prior to November. He also pointed out that the success of the movement in Copenhagen of resisting the imposition of a bad deal rested on the ability to advance unified demands. The proposals coming out of Cochabamba are comprehensive enough to be a map for the movement in the coming months. More work is needed –and happening– to make sure that enough of us are going to the same place.
Markets, Oppressed Communities, and the Right to Development
At the conference, a particular flash point for debate was on the issue of REDD- Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. REDD is a proposal to put the conservation of forests into the global mechanisms developed to fight climate change. Supporters say it would give a money value to forests, which today only have value when they are cut down. This would then slow deforestation, provide funds to forest communities, and address the contribution of deforestation to climate change. Opponents’ say that REDD is just a scheme to commidify the world’s forests in a carbon market, creating profits rather than conserving forests. They also contend that in existing REDD projects, indigenous people have been displaced from the forests or coerced into signing away their land, and that forests have been razed and replaced with plantations (which are also considered forests under REDD).
At one workshop I attended, representatives from indigenous communities and the government in Bolivia laid out information and arguments on their REDD pilot project and why it was beneficial. The crowd in attendance was skeptical but reserved. The working group on forests was another story. Indigenous organizers and leaders from the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) worked very hard to include a condemnation of REDD in the working group text and ran into head-on opposition from Bolivian government representatives and some Southern indigenous leaders in the group.
The REDD debate points to a larger dynamic at work in climate policy, a dynamic that is familiar from other kinds of organizing work. Forest communities, and especially indigenous communities, have been marginalized and impoverished by decades of neoliberal policy, not to mention centuries of colonialism. Now REDD appears, and communities have to decide whether they want to make a deal with the devil. If they refuse, then conditions stay the same – they are still poor and their forests are still under attack. Maybe they decide that by accepting they can work the program to their advantage, kind of like a climate community benefits agreement. [I assume with this above scenario that the community is giving free, prior, informed consent, which is almost never true. In most cases these projects, like many rural development projects in the South, are forced on communities by their national governments.]
The lesson here is that we can’t forget that communities have issues that are already extremely dire, and we want to create the conditions where they don’t have to choose between their short and long term survival. Movements have done this in many ways in the past. Whether through the right to development, “el vivir bien”, the just transition, or what people have begun to call an E –squared approach (addressing ecology and economy), it’s up to us to build a movement where people’s ecological and economic needs aren’t easily counter posed.
The Politically Possible vs. the Materially Necessary
Even in Cochabamba, there were places where the inside strategies of governments and the outside strategies of social movements diverged. A key area where this happened was in the area of carbon markets, which social movements generally opposed. The governments that were present opposed carbon markets in concept, but given the current context of negotiations, they supported the continuation of the Kyoto protocol as a tactical demand.
This tactical position made some participants uncomfortable. If capitalism and neo-liberalism are causing climate chaos, how can we take a position in favor of Kyoto, which not only had a carbon market, but has also driven all kinds of destructive projects in the South? The discomfort felt by social movement leaders is historically rooted. For years, big mainstream NGO’s have played the politics of the possible. They have kept social movements on the outside, and have increasingly supported ineffective or damaging corporate-led policy. Wasn’t the position taken by the ALBA governments in Cochabamba just the same thing?
My answer would be no, and here’s why. We need to keep an eye on both what’s politically possible and what’s materially necessary, and then struggle to make more of what is necessary possible and to make false solutions (like carbon markets) politically unviable. In this political moment, we need to take stock of where our forces and our allies are at and figure out the best way to play our hand. Given the state of affairs today that definitely includes: 1. Influencing and gaining support from a much bigger segment of the population, in particular in communities that are and will be first and worst impacted, and 2. Impeding the US government’s ability to screw up this global process. I think the ALBA governments are attempting to do #2.
Additionally, international climate negotiations like Copenhagen and Cancún are only one, rather limited, front that we’ll be working on. The core of our work in the US will be to build political power, consciousness, and alliances at the levels where we can have the most impact right now – locally and regionally. Whatever we decide to do will be a tactic towards advancing our long-term goals, all of which can’t be realized right now. The clearer idea we have about what we want to do and why, the better chance we have of managing our alliances in the next period of time.
The Road to Cancún
We are leaving Cochabamba, en route to Cancún by way of our communities. We have our work cut out for us, but I believe that we are up to the task. In the next seven months we can build a stronger, more grounded climate movement than this country has ever seen. We can win support, and put the “army of cynics” that president Obama described during his campaign (and who’s ranks he should leave as soon as possible) on their heels. We can strike a blow for our allies in the South and derail the Copenhagen Accord. And we can begin the hard task of transforming this country, to meet the needs of the people and Mother Earth.
We don’t lack talent or desire, so let’s not lack confidence or imagination. As Eduardo Galeano wrote in his letter at the opening of the conference, “May we be able to do everything that is possible, and the impossible too.” ¡Pachamama o muerte venceremos!