Nicole Fabricant & Kathryn Hicks
AT
THE MOST RECENT INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE change negotiations in Doha,
Qatar, Bolivia's minister of environment and water, Jose Antonio Zamora
Gutierrez, played on the famous slogan from the 2000 water wars in
Cochabamba and declared, "The climate is not for sale." In the water
wars, a broad range of popular sectors came together to practice civil
disobedience in the heart of the city and successfully ejected Aguas del
Tunari, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Bechtel corporation, reasserting
the right to public control of this crucial resource. Bolivia's very
recent history of distinct successful "populist movements" allied
against the privatization of natural-resources (from water wars in
Cochabamba to the gas wars primarily centered in El Alto) paved the way
for the election of center-left president Evo Morales and new forms of
state making. However, obstacles are daunting for Bolivian climate
justice activists: They are up against fossil fuel giants from the
Global North intent upon blocking any serious and meaningful progress on
reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions, but also the capitalist economy
itself, and the dependence on non-renewable resources and extractive
industries to fuel a particular way of life in the Global North.
One thing is clear: Bolivia will continue to take a radical stance,
pointing out the ways in which our global economic and financial system
is intimately connected to the destruction of the environment. Zamora
Gutierrez spoke before the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change UNFCCC (COP18) in Doha:
"The causes of the climate crisis are directly related to the
accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few countries and in small
social groups, excessive and wasteful mass consumption, under the
belief that having more is living better ... We will not pay the climate
debt of developed countries to developing countries. They, developed
countries, must fulfill their responsibility."
Further, he pointed toward how Bolivia has come to the fore of the
climate crisis with concrete proposals to strengthen the global climate
system. "We have proposed the creation of the Joint Mechanism for
Mitigation and Adaptation for integrated and sustainable management of
forests, not based on markets, to strengthen community, indigenous and
peasant management of forests. ... We promote consistently the creation
of an international mechanism to address loss and damage resulting from
natural causes and impacts of climate change in developing countries.
Our country will not promote carbon market mechanisms such as REDID."
(1)
On the other end of the spectrum are those who have benefited directly
from capitalist globalization, including investors in coal, oil, and
gas. They rely upon short-term profits from the dirtiest and riskiest
forms of exploitation and work tirelessly to make sure that
representatives from the Global South do not define international
climate policy. While Bolivia has taken a radical stance in
international climate change negotiations, proposing alterations to our
global political-economic system, the country holds very little power
against billion-dollar fossil-fuel giants attempting to paralyze U.S.
climate policy and in turn, meaningful multilateral negotiations. U.S.
intransigence underpins the international impasse at UN climate
conventions. Doha is only the most recent example in a series of failed
attempts to solidify a binding agreement on climate change that accords
with scientific recommendations. (2)
The most disappointing recent international climate change conference,
perhaps, was that of Copenhagen in 2009, Bolivia first emerged as a key
player in the international climate justice movement. In Copenhagen,
President Evo Morales gave a powerful speech about climate debt, or the
fundamental responsibility on the part of the Global North to deal with
the ecological crisis it has created, but that everyone will have to
deal with. Morales, in a well-known speech at the UN conference, linked
exorbitant U.S. spending on "wars on terror" to the minimal
"reparations" for climate change:
"I was looking at some figures. The U.S.--how much does the U.S. spend
to export terrorism to Afghanistan, to export terrorism to Iraq, and to
export military bases to South America. They don't only spend millions,
but billions and trillions. ... Trillions of dollars are going to the
wars, on the other hand, to save humanity and the planet, they only want
to direct $10 billion." (3)
The Copenhagen Accord, drafted by the United States, China, India,
Brazil, and South Africa, recognized climate change as one of the
greatest current challenges and stipulated that actions should be taken
to keep any temperature increases below two degrees Celsius, but it did
not contain any legally binding mitigation commitments from
industrialized nations.
In response, Morales convened a Worlds People's Conference on Climate
Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in which 30,000 activists,
including labor organizers and NGO representatives came together in
Tiquipaya, Cochabamba, to propose an alternative legal framework. The
planning for the climate summit began a few months before the event, as
17 working groups were authorized to explore a variety of topics ranging
from climate debt to food sovereignty.
The planning and the conference itself exposed some important internal
tensions and contradictions within Morales's MAS government. A group
called Mesa 18 encapsulated some of these tensions. The group,
comprising of a few radical Aymara leaders, had a piercing critique of
Morales, bringing to the fore the social conflicts in Bolivia related to
climate change, particularly with respect to extractive industries.
They spoke about the tensions between Morales's strong anti-capitalist
discourse and a simultaneous reliance on extractive industries to
support social programming--something that. Eduardo Gudynas, in this
NACLA Report, refers to as neoextractivism: increased royalties and
taxes on resource extraction to support cash transfers and programs to
the poorest sectors. Despite all the radical rhetoric, as Gudynas points
out, Morales has backtracked on enacting any alternatives to
development, and in a recent book, The Geopolitics of the Amazon, Vice
President Alvaro Garcia Linera, in a desperate attempt to defend the
Morales administration, argues that the extraction of primary resources
is not synonymous with underdevelopment but rather is critical to
generate surpluses "that can satisfy the minimal conditions of life of
Bolivians" and fuel "industrialization and development."
Rafael Quispe, a representative from the National Council of Ayllus and
Markas of Quyasullo (CONAMAQ) disagrees, arguing for the expulsion of
all extractive resource industries from Bolivia because inherent in this
model of development is environmental degradation, social disruption,
and displacement for indigenous peoples. He argued in Cochabamba, and
continues to argue, for a new development model based upon ayllus
(Andean political and territorial units based on kinship groups and
communally held lands) and local self-sufficiency, or what, indigenous
people have called "Andean cosmovisions."
Despite these conflicts, the conference resulted in a signed document
called the People's Accord, (4) which outlined how the Global South
could hold the Global North accountable for emissions reductions and
take preventative measures to protect the rights of Mother Earth. The
accord draws deeply on indigenous concepts of nature as a sacred home,
recognizing the rights of nature, specifically the rights to life and
regeneration, biodiversity, water, clean air, balance, and restoration.
The agreement also called for the establishment of an international
climate court to hold polluters responsible and outlined the indigenous
philosophical tenets of buen vivir (living well). The concept of buen
vivir includes ethical and spiritual practices for an inter-cultural
engagement with society and nature. This conference, then, represented a
great experiment in participatory democracy. As the accord states,
"shared vision for long-term cooperative action" in climate change
negotiations should not be reduced to defining the limit on temperature
increases and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
but must also address the underlying system that created these problems.
Subsequent UNFCCC negotiations, including those in Cancun, Durban, and
most recently Doha, have produced some small steps forward, which may
benefit people in the Global South. These include establishing
accountability mechanisms for emissions levels, financial flows, and
technology transfer as well as new protocols to protect indigenous
rights; although many of these measures have yet to be enacted.
Meanwhile, the world moved several steps backward when the Cancun summit
adopted the Obama administration's proposal to make carbon-emission
reductions "voluntary," thereby undermining the core purpose of the
convention. The world had been waiting for the United States to join the
global community in committing to cut its carbon emissions. Instead,
all governments agreed to let each other off the hook by effectively
allowing everyone's emissions to rise. Bolivia was the only exception,
refusing to ratify the treaty. Equally troubling are the actions of
other Global North nations following the U.S. lead, such as Canada's
rwhich recently withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol.
The so-called Doha Climate Gateway extends the Kyoto Protocol for eight
more years and paves the way for talks on a new global UN pact to enter
into force in 2020. At this conference, the United States lobbied to
protect the world's largest polluters from liability for damage caused
by climate change. As Samantha Smith, a U.S. World Wildlife Fund
representative, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, "This was an
incredibly weak deal ... It will do nothing to make sure that emissions
go down and not up. It will do nothing to bring finance over the long
term to poor countries that are suffering from climate change. And it
will do nothing to pave the way for the global deal that we have all
been promised in 2015." (5) She pointed toward the most recent
"superstorm" Sandy, which devastated the northeastern shore of the
United States. Despite hopes that this disaster would spur action, the
United States refused to make any commitment to long-term financing of
the Global South and refused to cut emissions by 17%.
Indigenous climate-change organizing has had a powerful influence on
other negotiating forms as well. At the Rio+20 Conference--the UN
Conference on Sustainable Development, which took place in Rio de
Janeiro in June 2012,20 years after the landmark 1992 Earth
Summit--world leaders, along with thousands of participants from the
private sector NGOs, came together to shape policy. The negotiations
focused on how to reduce poverty, advance social equity, and ensure
environmental protection. The official discussions focused on two
critical themes: (a) how to build a green economy to achieve sustainable
development and lift people out of poverty and (b) how to improve
international coordination for sustainable development. From this
perspective, the solution, then, to the current ecological crisis is in
large part tied to a green economics or the idea that economic policies
should build environmental costs into the price of products and
services. Built on regulation theory, or the idea that the crisis
tendencies of capitalism--in this case, the tendency of capital to
destroy the conditions of its production--can be managed, green
economics, accepts the possibility of "clean capitalism." (6)
This means that a framework has been created for folding indigenous
ideals like respect for Mother Earth (Pachamama) and buen vivir into the
"green economy," which simultaneously opens up new frontiers for
business by turning natural-resources and nature's functions and cycles
into things that can be bought and sold--commodities. The Rio+20
framework, some Bolivian activists argue, simply bolsters the current
neoliberal economic model, with symbolic respect for indigenous
principles. This symbolic respect is included to legitimize present
extractive policy by adorning legislation with the popular language of
the green economy as a way of legitimating this phase of "sustainable"
neoliberal development and the free market.
It is on this basis that the Bolivian Platform for Climate Change--an
association of civil society organizations focused on climate
change--asserted that "the green economy is a distraction that does not
resolve our dependency on extractive industries and fossil-fuels. It is
simply a way of maintaining the same capitalist model that is destroying
the environment and deepening climate change with token 'green' changes
and a whole new set of markets to invest in 'natural capital.'" (7) The
group expressed a list of concerns and made them public in the wake of
UN decisions, including a rejection of green economics and technological
solutions like nuclear energy and carbon capture. At the end of their
document, they stated, "The vision of Living Well proposes to live in
harmony with Mother Earth on the basis of complementarity and solidarity
between peoples according to logic distinct from that of the market. It
will not be possible to find a solution to the current crisis in an
economic vision based on the ownership of nature. We do not own nature;
we are part of Mother Earth."
This hijacking of indigenous philosophical tenets at Rio+20 in the
summer of 2012 brought to the fore important issues regarding corporate
intentions to silence and undermine the radical proposals of the climate
justice movement internationally. The ongoing deadlock over global
warming negotiations is no accident. So what, or who, exactly is
intervening to deter action? In order to understand the current
deadlock, we must follow the money trail. At a 2011 international forum
on globalization, Victor Menotti outed the "international billionaires."
He stated that, in an "attempt to wring out the last dregs of
fossil-fuel profit from a depleted planet, the oligarchs of gas, coal
and oil are pushing the limits by resorting to increasingly costly,
dirty and risky forms of exploitation--from tar sands and 'Cracking' to
mountaintop removal and deep-sea drilling. Cooperative global action to
address the most daunting challenge humanity has ever faced is being
held hostage by a handful of profiteers who wield decisive power over
our governments." (8)
The report reads like a who's who of the world's wealthiest men, from
Carlos Slim, who built an empire on the control of communication (the
wealthiest with $63.3 billion) to mining magnate Dorothea Steinbruch and
family ($5.8 billion) in Brazil. The common themes in this report are
that all of these billionaires acquired profits from non-renewable
fossil-fuels, extractive industries, and public entities like
transportation. Most revealing about this report, however, is that
Menotti also fleshes out a story linking their corporate investments to
their carbon footprint. Further, they all have vested interest and
investment in the UN energy and climate change advisory groups. For
instance, Slim hosted a meeting in 2010 to promote public and private
partnerships and increase energy access and efficiency. Others like
Sheldon Adelson ($21.5 billion), who made his money from casino
development, fiercely opposes international climate treaties because of
the possibility of reducing the use of fossil-fuels.
Perhaps the most influential of these are the fossil fuel billionaires
David and Charles Koch. The Koch brothers--carbon billionaires whose
combined net worth totals $80.2 billion--have cashed in on "polluting
our planet." (9) Of the 50 wealthiest individuals working to influence
U.S. public policy on the climate, the Koch brothers are today's top
spenders. They have mobilized their vast personal wealth to lobby
politicians/Congress to vote in favor of fossil-fuels and increase
subsidies and to promote climate-denial science. Specifically, they
spent $12.6 million on campaign contributions to both houses of
congress, including to non-incumbents, to support minimal emissions
standards. Further, they spent $100,000 on the congressional campaign of
Mike Pompeo, (R-Kan.), who happens to sit on the Committee for Energy
and Commerce, to back fossil fuel subsidies and resist financial support
for wind energy. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the Koch brothers
have provided over $60 million to groups denying climate science over
the period of 1997-2010.
The success of these and other efforts are evidenced by the dramatic
decline over the past few years in the percentage of Americans who
accept the existence of global warming, removing any public pressure for
action. Another important victory for oil companies, in particular,
lies in the ongoing tax subsidies they receive in the United States,
despite record profits.
So Bolivia, along with the rest of the nations in the Global South, is
up against a lot: powerful billionaires making money and building
empires based on the extraction of non-renewable fossil-fuels, and
political and economic might which ultimately shapes science and policy.
But as social critic Naomi Klein has argued, building a transformative
movement may not be as challenging as it appears. She argues that the
earth's atmosphere cannot safely absorb the amount of carbon we are
pumping into it--and this is a symptom of a much larger crisis, one that
is based upon an unsustainable economic model. She claims that we must
break every rule in the free-market playbook and do so with great
urgency by rebuilding the public sphere, reversing privatization,
heavily regulating and taxing corporations, ending the cult of military
spending, and recognizing the North's debt to the Global South. (10)
Some might doubt that even a "post-neoliberal" government in Latin
America would suddenly wrench itself free of fossil-fuels. (11) Further,
there remains considerable controversy over what kind of
political-economic system will facilitate the scale of change necessary
to alter our relationship to nature. For example, some radical Aymara
activists in Bolivia are equally skeptical of capitalism and socialism.
One thing seems critically important in the present moment: the need for
a global movement. If there is any hope of holding northern nations
accountable for their carbon-dioxide emissions, then, a massive
transnational movement for climate justice must link popular sectors in
the Global North and South, in order to rein in the market forces that
have created and are deepening the crisis. This will be a major
challenge in the United States given the weakening of labor unions and
the ongoing efforts of industrialists with an interest in maintaining
the status quo. But only a popular uprising of unprecedented scale will
prompt nations of the Global North to take their responsibility to the
rest of the globe seriously, and restrain the coercive forces that
constrain states like Bolivia.
Republished from NACLA
Nicole
Fabricant is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Towson
University in Mao/land. She is author of Mobilizing Bolivia's Displaced:
Indigenous Politics and the Struggle Over Land (UNC Press, 2012).
Kathryn Hicks is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University
of Memphis. Her work on food insecurity in Memphis and global warming in
Bolivia examines the intersection between political economy, human
environment interactions, and health disparities.
Footnotes
(1.) For the full speech, see Jose Antonio Zamora Guitierrez, "Doha
Climate Talks: Bolivia Declares, 'The Climate Is Not for Sale!,'" Links
International Journal of Socialist Renewal, December 5. 2012, available
at links.org.au/node/3130.
(2.) For more on this, See Michael Grubb, "Cancun: The Art of the Possible," Climate Policy 11 (2011): 847-50.
(3.)
"Bolivian President Evo Morales: 'Shameful' for West to Spend Trillions
on War and Only $10 Billion for Climate Change," Democracy Now!,
December 16, 2009, available at democracynow.org.
(4.) The full accord is available at pwccc.wordpress.com.
(5.)
Amy Goodman, "Incredibly Disappointed: Civil Groups Decry Weak COP18
Denial Among Deadly Proof Climate Change," Democracy Now!, December 12,
2012, available at democracynow.org,
(6.) For more on this, see James O'Connor, "On the Misadventures of
Capitalist Nature," Capitalism Nature Socialism 4 (1993): 7-40, and
Michael Lowrey, "What Is Ecosocialism?" Capitalism Nature Socialism
16(20051: 15-24.
(7.) Available at globaltransition2012.org.
(8.) See Victor Menotti, Individuals of Undue Influence, special report (International Forum on Globalization, 2011).
(9.) Joakim Hellberg, Victor Menotti, Anjulie Palta, and Michael
Pineschi, Faces Behind a Global Crisis: US Carbon Billionaires and the
UN Climate Deadlock, report, UNFCC's COP 18 (Doha, Qatar. International
Forum on Globalization, 2012).
(10.) Naomi Klein, "Capitalism vs. the Climate." The Nation, November 9, 2011
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