ALBA nations prepare to fight for humanity at Durban climate summit

Bolivarian alliance calls for extending and strengthening the Kyoto Protocol and climate adaptation aid to poor countries, and opposes the commodification of forests under REDD

Federico Fuentes, November 23, 2011

Representatives from the Latin American and Caribbean governments that comprise the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) met in Bolivia on November 17-18 to coordinate their battle plan ahead of the international climate change summit scheduled to start in Durban later this month.

ALBA – which includes Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Venezuela – was at the forefront of scuttling attempts at the 2009 Copenhagen summit by rich nations to impose their anti-environmental plans that would set the world on a course towards catastrophic climate change.

This year’s summit will focus on attempts to reach agreement on the commitments for the second period of the Kyoto Protocol, set to begin in 2013.

Rejecting the idea of “voluntary emissions reductions” being proposed by rich nations, which would destroy the Kyoto Protocol and see catastrophic global temperatures rises of more than 5°C, ALBA is proposing the “continuation, preservation and strengthening of the Kyoto Protocol” as the only legally binding international framework in place today.

The conclusions reached at Durban, reads the summit’s final declaration, must be “ambitious, balanced and based on scientific recommendations and evidence, on equity and the rule of law.”

This would require compliance with the principles of the United Nations (UN) convention on climate change, “particularly, the principles of equality and of common but differentiated responsibilities.” Developed nations, the primarily culprits for the current climate crisis, must be the ones to take on the greatest share of the burden in order to reverse current trends.

According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this would require, as a minimum, rich nations implementing carbon emissions reductions of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050 if temperature rises are to be keep at 2°C.

At the 10th ALBA Summit, held in Ecuador in June 2010, ALBA affirmed its position in favour of limiting "the increase in the global average temperature to a level far below 1.5°C, with an ideal stabilisation at 1°C."

To help underdeveloped countries deal with the consequences of climate change, Bolivia raised a proposal, adopted at the ALBA meeting, for a tax to be imposed on international financial transactions. The estimated $400 billion that this would raise annually, would go towards funding technological research and concrete actions that help reduce carbon emissions.

The ALBA bloc also stated that it would fight to ensure that rich nations comply with the agreement reached at the 2010 Cancun summit whereby they would contribute $100 billion a year towards a fund to help underdeveloped countries mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change. To date, contributions for 2011 have fallen far short of this target.

ALBA will also demand that rich countries contribute the equivalent of at least 1.5% of their gross domestic product to the Official Development Assistance to help poorer nations.

The ALBA bloc also agreed to Bolivia’s proposal to reject the idea of seeing forests as simply carbon-offsets to be traded on the carbon market, as it is with the currently promoted policy of REDD. In its place, ALBA will advocate a mechanism denominated “sustainable life of forest” in which an integral vision takes into account the role forest play not only in absorbing carbon but also in regards to food production, water, biodiversity, and land.

Following on from the successful October meeting held in Panama between the ALBA bloc, the African Union, and the Group of Least Developed Countries, which combined represent around 100 countries, ALBA pledged to continue strengthening this alliance of underdeveloped countries.

According to Claudia Salerno, who headed the Venezuelan delegation at the October summit, the three blocs resolved to work together to ensure that “all developed countries… close the gap on two issues in Durban: the mitigation gap by reducing emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and the gap on financing by offering long-term financial support [to underdeveloped countries] for emissions reductions beginning in 2013.”

Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators for Climate Change, stated that while underdeveloped nations “”are doing our part” what is required is for developed countries “to move forward on the issue of financing to combat climate change and reduce emissions… in order to have a successful meeting in Durban.”

Republished from Climate and Capitalism

Bolivia: Solidarity activists need to support process

Federico Fuentes

The recent march in Bolivia by some indigenous organisations against the government’s proposed highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) has raised much debate among international solidarity activists.

Such debates have occurred since the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005 on the back of mass uprisings.

Overwhelmingly, solidarity activists uncritically supported the anti-highway march. Many argued that only social movements — not governments — can guarantee the success of the process of change.

However, such a viewpoint is not only simplistic; it can leave solidarity activists on the wrong side.

Kevin Young’s October 1 piece on Znet, “Bolivia Dilemmas: Turmoil, Transformation, and Solidarity”, tries to grapple with this issue by saying that “our first priority [as solidarity activists] must be to stop our governments, corporations and banks from seeking to control Bolivia’s destiny”.

Yet, as was the case with most articles written by solidarity activists, Young downplays the role of United States imperialism and argues the government was disingenuous in linking the protesters to it.

Others went further, denying any connection between the protesters and US imperialism.

The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB), the main organisation behind the march, has no such qualms. It boasted on its website that it received training programs from the US government aid agency USAID.

On the site, CIDOB president Adolfo Chavez, thanks the “information and training acquired via different programs financed by external collaborators, in this case USAID”.

Ignoring or denying clear evidence of US funding to such organisations is problematic. Attacking the Bolivian government for exposing this, as some did, disarms solidarity activists in their fight against imperialist intervention.

But biggest failure of the solidarity movement has been its silence on US and corporate responsibility for the conflict.

The TIPNIS dispute was not some romanticised, Avatar-like battle between indigenous defenders of Mother Earth and a money-hungry government intent on destroying the environment.

Underpinning the conflict was the difficult question of how Bolivia can overcome centuries of colonialism and underdevelopment to provide its people with access to basic services while trying to respect the environment. The main culprits are not Bolivian; they are imperialist governments and their corporations.

We must demand they pay their ecological debt and transfer the necessary technology for sustainable development to countries such as Bolivia (demands that almost no solidarity activists raised). Until this occurs, activists in rich nations have no right to tell Bolivians what they can and cannot do to satisfy the basic needs of their people.

Otherwise, telling Bolivian people that they have no right to a highway or to extract gas to fund social programs (as some NGOs demanded), means telling Bolivians they have no right to develop their economy or fight poverty.

Imperialism aims to keep Third World nations subordinate to the interests of rich nations. This is one reason foreign NGOs and USAID are trying to undermine the Morales government's leading international role in opposing the grossly anti-environmental policies, such as Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

REDD uses poor nations for carbon offsets so corporations in rich countries can continue polluting. Support for REDD was one of the demands of the protest march.

Young says “our solidarity should be with grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights, not with governments or parties”.

But, as the TIPNIS case shows, when governments are trying to grapple with lifting their country out of underdevelopment, the demands of social movements with competing sectoral interests may clash.

In fact, some of the most strident supporters of the highway were also the very same social movements that solidarity activists have supported in their struggles against neoliberal governments during the last decade.

In such scenarios, you can only choose between supporting some social movement demands by dismissing legitimate demands of others, as many did with the TIPNIS case.

Lasting change can only come about when social movements begin to take power into their own hands when social movements become governments.

It is this objective that Bolivia's social movements set. They forged their own political instrument through struggle ― commonly known as the Movement Towards Socialism ― and won a government they see as their own.

Having gone from a position of “struggle from below” to taking government from the traditional elites as an instrument to achieve their goal of state power, these social movements have begun winning control over natural resources and enacted a new constitution.

Converting the constitution’s ideals into a new state power remains a task for the Bolivian revolution.

But its success depends on the ability of “grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights” ― operating within and without the existing state ― to struggle in a united way.

Our solidarity must be based on the existing revolutionary struggle in Bolivia, not a romanticised one we would prefer.

A permanent state of protests may be attractive for solidarity activists, but ultimately can only translate into a permanent state of demoralisation unless social movements can go beyond opposing capitalist governments and create their own state power.

Refusing to support the struggles as they exist illustrates a lack of confidence in the Bolivian masses to determine their own destiny. It also displays an arrogance on the part of those who, having failed to hold back imperialist governments at home, believe they know better than the Bolivians how to develop their process of change.

Mistakes are made in any struggle. But such mistakes should not be used to try and pit one side against another. We should have confidence that these internal conflicts can be resolved by the social movements themselves.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Bolivia: Rumble over jungle far from over

Federico Fuentes

Despite the government reaching an agreement with indigenous protesters on all 16 demands raised on their 10-week march onto the capital, La Paz, the underlying differences are far from resolved.

On October 24, Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly approved a new law banning the building of any highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).

Many groups supported the highway, which would have connected the departments of Beni and Cochabamba, and provide poor rural communities with greater access to markets and basic services.

However, it was opposed by 20 of the 64 indigenous communities in TIPNIS. It became the central rallying point of the march led by the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB).

The march gained much sympathy, particularly among urban middle class sectors, after police meted out brutal repression against protesters on September 24.

Bolivian President Evo Morales immediately denied giving any orders to repress the protest. Apologising for the terrible event, Morales ordered a full investigation into the police attack.

Nevertheless, some important mobilisations in solidarity with the marchers were held in the days afterwards.

In response, government supporters took to the streets on October 12. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples, campesinos (peasants), miners and neighbourhood activists from El Alto flooded the capital.

Having reached La Paz on October 19, march leaders sat down with Morales and government ministers for two days to reach agreement on their demands.

These demands ranged from opposition to the highway to land reform and the right of indigenous peoples to receive funds in return for converting forests within their traditional lands into carbon offsets.

It did not take long for the dispute to reignite, this time over the word “untouchable”, which was inserted into the TIPNIS law at the request of march leaders.

According to the government, the term “untouchable” required the immediate expulsion of all logging and tourism companies operating within TIPNIS, in some cases illegally.

However, march leaders who opposed the highway defended the industrial-scale logging within TIPNIS.

This includes two logging companies who operate more than 70,000 hectares within the national park and have signed 20 year contracts with local communities.

The government denounced the presence of a tourist resort within TIPNIS, equipped with two private airstrips to fly foreigners willing to pay US$7600 to visit the park.

Of this money, only $200 remains with local communities that have signed the contract with the foreign company.

Rather than defending some kind of romanticised “communitarianism”, much of the motivation behind the march was an attempt by community leaders to defend their control over natural resources as a means to access wealth.

The same is true of many of those groups that have demanded the law be overturned and the highway go ahead. Campesinos and coca growers see the highway as an opportunity to gain access to land for cultivation.

These differences underpin the divergent views regarding the new land law being proposed by campesino groups, but opposed by groups such as CIDOB.

The CIDOB advocates large tracts of land be handed over to indigenous communities as protected areas. Campesino groups are demanding more land be distributed to campesino families.

These differences have led to a split in the Unity Pact, which united the five main campesino and indigenous organisations despite longstanding differences.

This is perhaps the most important divisipn to have opened up within the Morales government’s support base. But is far from being the only one.

The TIPNIS march served as a pretext for opposition parties based among the urban middle classes to break down government support in these sectors.

On October 16, Bolivians took part in a historic vote to elect judges to the Constitutional Tribunal, the Agro-environmental Tribunal and Magistrates Council.

The corporate media used exit poll figures to announce that most had nullified their votes as opposition parties had called for. But the final result showed a different picture.

As votes from rural areas began to be counted, the supposed crushing victory for null votes was whittled away. The final results showed valid and null votes tying at 42%.

The opposition tried to turn the vote into a referendum on Morales.

Despite attempts to portray the null vote as a “progressive” protest vote against Morales, the results clearly showed that opposition to the election of judges was strongest in the right-wing controlled departments of the east and in the urban middle and upper class sectors.

In rural and poor urban areas, such as El Alto, valid votes overwhelming won out.

The null votes came from the same middle class sectors that came out onto the streets of La Paz in support of the indigenous march, and who spat out racist epitaphs against Morales and indigenous government supporters when they marched through the capital.

Meanwhile, territorial conflicts between various departments and local councils scrambling for resources and access to central government funding continue to provide headaches for the government.

Morales called a national summit for December to bring together the country’s social movements to collectively come up with a new “national agenda”.

The likelihood, however, of achieving consensus for a national development plan among competing social organisations, all with their own sectoral interests and who have seen that it is possible to twist the government’s arm by protesting, will no doubt be a difficult task.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Bolivia-USA: Morbid relations beyond diplomacy

Ontober 28, 2011

Juan Carlos Zambrana Marchetti

It’s no secret that diplomatic relations between a poor country and a hegemonic world power are frequently a montage. They are a pantomime written and directed by the stronger, showing it as a hero, and the weaker as a victim rescued from poverty, chaos, or ungovernability. Above all, it’s a theatrical piece meant to hide a scandalous degree of interventionism and domination.

This was the case in the relations between Bolivia and the United States ever since the Rockefeller empire seized the oil industry and, in the 1930s, instigated the war against Paraguay, later selling to the latter the oil that it stole from Bolivia. Bolivia lost sixty-thousand men in that war, and fell into starvation, but from that pain was born the patriotic sentiment in favor of defending national dignity and natural resources.

Thus were born the revolutionary governments, and the first of them nationalized John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company for fraud against the state. That set off an interminable cold war waged by the United States against Bolivia, which drove the small Andean country into a vicious cycle of fraudulent elections and dictatorships in order to impose puppet governments with orders to change the laws so as to impose anew the looting; and, later, the periods of merciless exploitation of the Bolivian people, of popular protests against the abuse, and of massacres in order to repress them.

That period of diplomatic relations of submission to the United States was legalized the year 1951, with the establishment of a framework agreement of relations between a donor country that provided “aid” and a petitioner and receiver of that aid, which was always conditioned upon an absolute subordination to Washington’s policies. Despite its disastrous results and humiliating nature, that type of relations was represented through the pantomime of “good diplomatic relations.”

The period of Evo Morales, on the contrary, is the period of decolonization of the form of government, initiated with the re-founding of the country, a new constitution that impedes the looting, and the implementation of a process of profound change toward a more just society. In it, the state assumes fully its social responsibility, something from which Washington’s neoliberalism exempts the governments that it controls. It’s the era, therefore, of the inevitable confrontation with the hegemonic policy of the United States, which led to the expulsion of DEA and of ambassador Philip Goldberg. From then on, the State Department continued covertly its aggressive low-intensity war unleashed against Morales’ government.

Declassified documents obtained by renowned American investigator Jeremy Bigwood (www.boliviamatters.wordpress.com) revealed that from the beginning of the 1990s, long before Evo became president, the United States already identified him as a “danger to its plans for the hemisphere”, and put into effect a campaign against him that implied an “alarming interventionism” in the internal affairs of Bolivia. Documents from 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006 revealed that the U.S.A. intervened not only openly, through its embassy, calling for a firm hand from the presidencies that it controlled, such as that of Tuto Quiroga, but also covertly, through programs financed by USAID to make contact with the indigenous people of the TIPNIS with the goal of making use of the conflict that they had with the coca growers of the Chapare due to an illegal settlement of those territories.

In this way, it exacerbated rivalry among sectors and articulated a coalition of forces opposed to Morales that included the power groups of Santa Cruz that came together in the CAINCO. The United States financed programs with political goals of that entrepreneurial organization through another of its agencies, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), by means of which it had established with CAINCO a historical political alliance. Finally, it directed the use of the media to systematically discredit Morales, promote discontent, and thus manufacture an adverse public opinion.

These cultivated anti-Evo forces finally converged on Saturday, October 22, 2011 in Plaza Murillo, historic setting of so many lynchings of presidents and the overthrow of popular governments. it was the march on behalf of the indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS demanding to negotiate directly with the President. It was time to clench the teeth, because nobody in Bolivia forgets the river of blood that has flowed in the past in similar circumstances. It was time for the perhaps tragic outcome awaited by the sectors opposed to Morales, stuck like leeches to the cause that they managed to manipulate. When the police denied entry to Plaza Murillo to all of them, the infiltrators in the March began to shout “Villarroel”, “Villarroel”, alluding to the hanging of the former president. Sunday was an important day, which will be studied for a long time at universities, because what happened then was as unexpected as it was surprising.

“We’re screwed,” said on Monday afternoon a bewildered member of the opposition, scratching his head while talking with an Indian, trying to understand in depth what they had done. His concern was understandable. Morales had not only survived the attempt to destabilize his government, but also dissolved in 48 hours the subversive plot, which, according to the aforementioned evidence, the United States had been organizing since the beginning of the 1990s. Evo granted the indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS literally everything they asked for. The indigenous, on the other hand, recognized that several of the points alluding to problems outside the TIPNIS were not their petitions, but those of their “affiliates”, which they had included in the original 16-point petition, in return for the support they received for the march.

Negotiations almost broke down when the Indians saw in writing what they had requested, and decided to back off. The protection of the natural reserve was so absolute that it meant the postponement of any aspiration of integration for its inhabitants. The territory was being declared indivisible, un-attachable, imprescriptible, inalienable, and irreversible, but, above all, untouchable. It was a victory for foreign “environmental” groups, financed from the United States and other developed countries that become rich by polluting the atmosphere of the planet with their deregulated industries; and that now, because the TIPNIS is the “lungs of the planet”, condemned its inhabitants to eternal isolation, and therefore, made them pay for the historical ecological debt that industrialized countries are still accumulating.

The Indigenous who negotiated with Morales were filled with doubts, perhaps for the first time, but they had their persuasive “ecological advisers,” including foreigners, breathing down their neck. The latter persuaded them once again, and the indigenous signed the agreement. Evo passed it to the Legislative Assembly, the Act was passed, and the president signed it in record time. The TIPNIS became, according to the law now in effect, forever cloistered and without roads, thus making very difficult the provision of schools, hospitals, electricity and water, while industrialized countries, led by the United States, still polluted the air of the planet while refusing to reduce their carbon emissions. With regard to the environment, it was once again the old formula of “the clever lives off the donkey, and the donkey eats straw.” The United States’ political objective of boycotting the pole of development of the Chapare, under the community production model that so frightens it, was achieved with the complicity, conscious or not, of some Bolivians. Intervention in internal affairs remains alarming, and that forces us to reflect.

We all want the re-establishment of diplomatic relations based on mutual respect and equality of rights and obligations, but, considering that Bolivia does not conspire against the government of the United States, demanding only mutual respect, it is the Department of State that has to make a conscious effort to change its pattern of interventionist conduct in Bolivia.

This type of asymmetric diplomacy is as unfair as it is unsustainable. It is therefore urgent to sign the new framework agreement for diplomatic relations based on mutual respect, so that the Bolivian ambassador in Washington may finally be a dignified defender of his or her fatherland, and not, as was the case before, a simple agent of Washington working to persuade his own country to submit. It is time for a new type of diplomacy, honest and without paternalism.

Republished from www.juancarloszambrana.com