Wednesday, April 14, 2010

World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth about to open

Great to see this conference about to start. This is a good example of how indigenous peoples can lead the world.

From the Guardian UK
"In what is becoming the hippest environment meeting of the year, presidents, politicians, intellectuals, scientists and Hollywood stars will join more than 15,000 indigenous people and thousands of grass roots groups from more than 100 countries to debate climate change in one of the world's poorest nations.
The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth which opens next week in the small Bolivian town of Cochabamba, will have no direct bearing on the UN climate talks being conducted by 192 governments. But Bolivian President Evo Morales says it will give a voice to the poorest people of the world and encourage governments to be far more ambitious following the failure of the Copenhagen summit.
Morales will use the meeting to announce the world's largest referendum, with up to 2 billion people being asked to vote on ways out of the climate crisis. Bolivia also wants to create a UN charter of rights and to draft an action plan to set up an international climate justice tribunal.
More than 90 governments are sending delegations to Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city. Also expected to attend are scientists such as James Hansen, James Cameron, the director of Avatar, the linguist Noam Chomsky, author Naomi Klein of Canada, anti-globalisation activist José Bové of France, and actors Danny Glover, Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon are expected.
Awesome initiative and whilst I am not such a fan of actors leading the cause - we will take anyone and everyone.

The world leadership being shown by Morales and Bolivia is heartwarming and inspirational.

Who from this country is going?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't it be great if some of the flax-roots environmental activists could be funded to go. Let's hope our politicians stay away! They won't learn anything or be inspired and will have nothing meaningful to contribute.