In response to the utter failure of the world’s governments to tackle the climate crisis in Copenhagen, the left wing government in Bolivia has organised a people’s summit.

Bolivia, Venezuela and other radical developing countries refused to sign the deal that rich countries like Britain and the US tried to force through the Copenhagen summit, exposing it as a scam that would have shifted responsibility on to poorer nations instead of those responsible for climate change. In response, the British government withdrew £2.3 million of climate aid from Bolivia.

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is bringing together 15, 000 people from environmental groups, organisations for indigenous people, writers, scientists and activists. It’s taking place in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, where 10 years ago the people won a historic victory against water privatisation that helped pave the way for a left wing government taking power and the moves towards socialism that grassroots organisations in Bolivia are trying to carry out now.

The summit is expected to take proposals to the next UN meeting on climate change in Mexico later this year. These are expected to include a global referendum asking people to vote on solutions to climate change, as well as in an international climate justice court in which major polluters could be prosecuted for their harm to the planet. The conference will demand that rich countries open their borders to allow in the millions of climate refugees created by their own pollution. They also want the UN to draw up an international charter of rights relating to climate change and the environment, such as the right to clean, unpolluted fresh water.

Bolivian President Evo Morales

Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the summit with a chant of “For the planet or for death!”, and went on to say:

“Capitalism is the major element responsible for the destruction of the Earth.  Capitalism depends on the greatest profit possible.  Yet globalization is manifestly creating poverty.  For capitalism, we’re only consumers or workers.  There is no other aspect to our identities.  Capitalism commodifies everything.  We must choose either corporations and death or life.  We cannot live in harmony with Earth when a few people are controlling the vast majority of the planet.  Our new system of collectivist socialism will solve these problems.  We are against unlimited development.

We are united here to celebrate the role of indigenous peoples as stewards of the Earth and as an alternative to unsustainable development.  Mother Earth belongs to all of us and cannot be sold.  Capitalism is synonomous with the destruction of the planet.”

He went on to criticise dependence on plastic materials, which pollute the environment for thousands of years. He contrasted ponchos made of plastic to traditional indigenous ones made of wool, pouring water over the wool poncho to demonstrate how it was more waterproof. This was evidence, he said, of how we needed to return to indigenous ways in order to save the planet.

Political Prisoner of the US, Leonard Peltier

Some of the most inspiring messages to the conference came from people who couldn’t attend it physically. Leonard Peltier is a Native American political prisoner in the US. He has been imprisoned since 1977 for a murder he did not commit. Peltier was one of a group of civil rights activists who were attacked by the FBI on a reservation in 1975, and in the resulting shootout an activist and two FBI agents were killed. It should be remembered that at this time the FBI was effectively at war with the people of the Pine Ridge reservation, which had a higher murder rate than the city of Detroit, as many activist were killed or disappeared with no investigation. At Peltier’s trial witnesses were coerced and false evidence introduced, leading to his sentence of life imprisonment.

In his message to the conference in Cochabamba conference, Peltier said:

“My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most.

The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction.

In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage.

To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.

It is time for all our voices to be heard.”

You can read the full text of what he had to say here.

Another person who couldn’t be there was the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. Galeano is a left wing journalist, historian and novelist, who has had to flee Latin America several times for fear of being killed by right wing dictatorships supported by the US. Perhaps his most well known work is ‘The Open Veins of Latin America,’ which tells the story of how Europeans and the US have plundered Latin America and destroyed its environments and peoples since their first arrival over 500 years ago. The book has been hugely influential, being translated into 20 languages. It was banned by the right wing dictatorships that once held power in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Last year, Venezuelan President Huge Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy at a summit to try and help him understand the revolutionary processes underway in Latin America.

Galeano’s message to the summit said:

Eduardo Galeano

“Bolivia is one of the American nations where indigenous cultures have managed to survive, and their voices are now ringing with more force than ever before, despite the scorn and persecution they suffered for a long time.

The entire world, stunned as it is, is wandering about like a blind man in the middle of a crossfire, having to listen to those voices. They teach us that we, tiny beings called humans, are part of nature, relatives to all those who have legs, paws, wings, or roots. The European conquest condemned the indigenous, who lived in that communion with nature, for idolatry, and for believing in that communion they were flogged, their throats were slit, or they were burned alive.

From the times of the European Renaissance, nature has been turned into a commodity or an obstacle to human progress. And, to this day, this divorce between us and her has persisted, so much so that there still are people of good will who are moved by poor nature, so abused, so wounded, but are seeing her only from outside.

Indigenous cultures see her from inside. Seeing her, I see myself. What is done against her is done against me. In her I find myself, my legs are also the road on which they walk.

Let us celebrate, then, this Summit of the Mother Earth. And may the deaf listen: the rights of human beings and the rights of nature are two names of the same dignity.”

You can read the full text of what Galeano had to say here.