Day 3: Update from the COP-16 climate summit at cancun, Mexico A) COP-16 / Cancun Update day 3 : Host Mexican Govt attempts to Pick-and-Choose Country-Heads Who Are Invited To The Cancun Climate Summit – Repeating “Copenhagen Accord” model. The UN decision making processes are supposed to be participatory with all member nations being able to express their view-points and take part in the debates and decision making – whatever their positions and size of economies are. In the last climate summit held in Copenhagen, the host...

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Climate Victims shared their testimonies before Jury

Press releaseFarmers, workers, migrants, fisher folk, and tribals seek compensation from the developed countries for climate crisis, ask COP to take note of their miseriesNew Delhi, Nov 16. Narrating stories on how climate change has affected their lives, agriculture and food security, climate victims from all over the country participating in a National Peoples Tribunal on Climate Crisis held at India Islamic Cultural Centre (IICC) demanded justice from the national government and from the developed countries for creating this crisis. The Chief...

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Invitation for National Peoples Tribunal

Dear Friends, We Cordially request your support and invite your participation at theNational Peoples Tribunal on Climate Crisisto be held onTuesday, 16 November 2010at India Islamic Cultural Centre, New De...

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Objective of the National Peoples Tribunal on Climate Crisis

The National People’s Tribunal will be akin to a moot court and will hear and record evidences on impact of climate change in order to ascertain the state responsibility and responsibility of developed countries to redress climate change impacts in developing countries. Based on the evidences recorded and opinion of expert witnesses, the Tribunal will award its verdict which will emphasize how climate change has impacted food security and livelihood...

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NATIONAL PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

November 16th, 2010New Delhi, IndiaThe National peoples Tribunal will develop Peoples jurisprudence on climate change. Despite the deficient legal framework on climate change laws, increasing number of action in courts in different countries prove that there are enough provisions in the Public and private international law and domestic legislations to attempt bring accountability on the national governments to protect people from the climate change impacts. The most popular case in point is Inuit’s case where indigenous people bordering USA and...

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HUMAN RIGHTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE - III

RIGHT TO ADEQUATE HOUSING   Observed and projected climate change will affect the right to adequate housing in several ways. Sea level rise and storm surges will have a direct impact on many coastal settlements. Settlements in low-lying deltas are also particularly at risk, as evidenced by the millions of people and homes affected by flooding in recent years. The erosion of livelihoods, partly caused by climate change, is a main “push” factor for increasing rural to urban migration. Many will move to urban slums and informal settlements...

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HUMAN RIGHTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE - II

RIGHT TO WATERLoss of glaciers and reductions in snow cover are projected to increase and to negatively affect water availability for more than one-sixth of the world’s population supplied by meltwater from mountain ranges. Weather extremes, such as drought and flooding, will also impact on water supplies. Climate change will thus exacerbate existing stresses on water resources and compound the problem of access to safe drinking water, currently denied to an estimated 1.1 billion people globally and a major cause of morbidity and disease. In this...

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HUMAN RIGHTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE-I

RIGHT TO LIFE   A number of observed and projected effects of climate change will pose direct and indirect threats to human lives. IPCC AR4 projects with high confidence an increase in people suffering from death, disease and injury from heat-waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts. Equally, climate change will affect the right to life through an increase in hunger and malnutrition and related disorders impacting on child growth and development; cardio-respiratory morbidity and mortality related to ground-level ozone. Climate change...

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UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS IMPACT

The detection of climate change is the process of demonstrating that an observed change is significantly different from what can be explained by natural variability. It does not necessarily imply that its causes are understood. The climate change can be attributed to anthropogenic causes and at the same time there are non-climate drivers such as land use, land degradation, urbanisation and pollution, affect systems directly and indirectly through their effects on climate. The socio-economic processes that drive land-use change include population...

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HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK AND CLIMATE CHANGE

(Based on the Report Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights A/HRC/10/6, 15 January 2009)The physical impacts of global warming cannot easily be classified as human rights violations, not least because climate change-related harm often cannot clearly be attributed to acts or omissions of specific States.Irrespective of whether or not climate change effects can be construed as human rights violations, human rights obligations provide imprtant protection to the individuals whose rights are affected by climate change or by...

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LEGAL DISCOURSE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

While the final outcome of the international negotiation on climate change is still being debated and anticipated, the impacts have started affecting millions of people in developing and least developed countries and extremely vulnerable countries. The government of Tuvalu is looking to settle its entire population to save them from submergence due to impacts of climate change. It is also contemplating legal action against Australia and other developed countries to claim compensation. Even in the developing countries, the change in precipitation...

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PEOPLE’S JURISPRUDENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The National People’s Tribunal will develop Peoples jurisprudence on climate change. Despite the deficient legal framework on climate change laws, increasing number of action in courts in different countries prove that there are enough provisions in the Public and private international law and domestic legislations to attempt bring accountability on the national governments to protect people from the climate change impacts. The most popular case in point is Inuit’s case where indigenous people bordering USA and Canada brought an action in American...

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Delegation of Bolivia: Climate Negotiations – Agriculture

On the issues that need to be resolved for COP 16, it is essential that the policy framework for agriculture be appropiate for the purpose of addressing the climate crisis and to meet the interests of local communities, indigenous people and protect the environment.This would require a change in provisions of trade agreements, loan and aid conditionality's.As well as stopping the unlawful practice of illegal subsidies and dumping, which distorts food prices affecting the food sovereignty and increasing the vulnerability of developing countries...

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Is Bolivia taking the right steps?

By Soumya Dutta, Cochabamba, 22 April 2010On this Earth Day at the historic People's Conference on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth, standing at the Estadio Felix Capriles de Cochabamba (Felix Capriles Stadium of Cochabamba) full of enthusiastic crowd of climate justice activists, peasants movements, anti-mining groups, and all sorts of left-leaning social formations - numbering about 25,000 ad full of vibrant energy, it would probably not be right to have any negative thoughts about anything that is happening here in Bolivia. The spirit...

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City of eternal spring carries the expectation of the world

by Ajay K Jha, PAIRVI.The city of epic struggle against water privatization, Cochabamba carries the expectation of the world for a just and equitable climate deal. Besides the warmth of the people from Cochabamba, one can definitely feel and poise and expectation in the air. More than 7 million people stranded at airports of northern Europe, many thousands among them definitely destined to the small tropical town and third largest city of Bolivia, has failed to dampen the spirit and enthusiasm of Bolivia to play a crucial leadership role in arriving...

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Voice of Civil Society Loud and Clear in Cochabamba

by Daniela Estrada - TierramericaThe success of the climate change conference taking place in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba will depend on how unified civil society ultimately is in its efforts to influence the United Nations Climate summit in Mexico, say Latin American Activists.The bulk of the debate in People's Conference will be led by civil society, which tends to oppose the market-based mechanisms proposed by most of the governments to fight climate change, and this is fuelling doubts about just how much impact the Bolivian forum...

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Conflicts within Bolivia - even with the government of Evo Morales

The "Plurinational State" of Bolivia has convened the World People's Conference on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth in the city of Cochabamba. The policies of this government are quite progressive in many terms, particularly when compared to many of the developing countries in our part of the world. The HISTORIC PEOPLES REBELLION AGAINST WATER PRIVATISATION, the toal and forceful rejection of the crooked Copenhagen accord, the recognition that the earth herself has rights and that has to get primacy - many such visionary advances in the...

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Evo Morales’ message to grassroots climate talks – planet or death

Bolivia's President opened the inaugural international 'People's Conference' at Cochabamba, with delegates from 125 nations. "Planet or Death!" chanted Bolivia's leftwing president, Evo Morales, to a crowd of 20,000 people. "We will be victorious!" the crowds answered back, waving rainbow-coloured, chequered Andean indigenous flags.Morales was officially inaugurating the first international "people's conference" on climate change - the grassrotts...

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Inauguration of the Cochabamba Conference

by Soumya Dutta, SADED, a Delegate of Beyond Copenhagen CollectiveToday on the 20th here in Cochabamba, Bolivia standing under the mighty Andes mountains, the conference was inaugurated by the Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma, which was preceeded by presentations by people´s representatives from different continents.Over 14-15 thousand people from all across the globe came in their colourful atires, with the lively & colourful Latin American...

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About the Cochabamba Climate Conference

by Soumya Dutta, SADED, a delegate of Beyond Copenhagen CollectivePeople from around the world are attending the Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia this week as a follow up to the failed UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen, Denmark last December.Social movements have converged in Cochabamba to rally opposition to the push by the world's leading carbon emitters to promote unjust and false solutions to climate change such as carbon offsets, and to make a collective push for stricter binding carbon...

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Working Group 17: Agriculture and Food Sovereignty

Courtesy: http://pwccc.wordpress.coma. We declare and denounce that agribusiness and the inherent logic of production of foods oriented towards the market and not for the right to food, is one of the main causes of climate change through changes in the use of land (deforestation and the expansion of the agricultural frontier), monocrops, the excessive use of products derived from the petrochemical industry, food processing, and all the logistic involved in the transportation of food towards the consumer and also through the model of society,...

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For Media Persons

Historic First World People’s Summit on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, called by President Evo Morales after the failure of UN Climate talks in Copenhagen, has attracted more than 130 countries and more than 12,000 delegates. It is likely that the North American mainstream media will ignore it. However, the Summit can be followed live on internet TV, on alternative media rabble.ca and Democracy Now and in European media Guardian UK....

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Bolivia pushes for climate crimes tribunal

Courtesy: JEFF MCMAHONDiplomats from the 17 largest economies are meeting behind closed doors for a second day today in Washington D.C. to work out their differences on climate change. As the name suggests–the Major Economies Forum–all the major players are there: the U.S., the European Union, Japan, China, India, Brazil, South Africa…But 4,000 miles to the south, as many as 15,000 people are expected to gather at the municipal coliseum in Tiquipaya, Bolivia, to open the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth....

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