[IPSM] Evo Morales: Save the Planet from Capitalism

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Climate Change:

Save the Planet from Capitalism

Sisters and brothers:

Today, our Mother Earth is ill. From the beginning of the 21st century 
we have lived the hottest years of the last thousand years. Global 
warming is generating abrupt changes in the weather: the retreat of 
glaciers and the decrease of the polar ice caps; the increase of the sea 
level and the flooding of coastal areas, where approximately 60% of the 
world population live; the increase in the processes of desertification 
and the decrease of fresh water sources; a higher frequency in natural 
disasters that the communities of the earth suffer[1]; the extinction of 
animal and vegetal species; and the spread of diseases in areas that 
before were free from those diseases.

One of the most tragic consequences of the climate change is that some 
nations and territories are the condemned to disappear by the increase 
of the sea level.

Everything began with the industrial revolution in 1750, which gave 
birth to the capitalist system. In two and a half centuries, the so 
called “developed” countries have consumed a large part of the fossil 
fuels created over five million centuries.

Competition and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist 
system are destroying the planet. Under Capitalism we are not human 
beings but consumers. Under Capitalism mother earth does not exist, 
instead there are raw materials. Capitalism is the source of the 
asymmetries and imbalances in the world. It generates luxury, 
ostentation and waste for a few, while millions in the world die from 
hunger in the world. In the hands of Capitalism everything becomes a 
commodity: the water, the soil, the human genome, the ancestral 
cultures, justice, ethics, death … and life itself. Everything, 
absolutely everything, can be bought and sold and under Capitalism. And 
even “climate change” itself has become a business.

“Climate change” has placed all humankind before great choice: to 
continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path 
of harmony with nature and respect for life.

In the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the developed countries and economies in 
transition committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at 
least 5% below the 1990 levels, through the implementation of different 
mechanisms among which market mechanisms predominate.

Until 2006, greenhouse effect gases, far from being reduced, have 
increased by 9.1% in relation to the 1990 levels, demonstrating also in 
this way the breach of commitments by the developed countries.

The market mechanisms applied in the developing countries[2] have not 
accomplished a significant reduction of greenhouse effect gas emissions.

Just as well as the market is incapable of regulating global financial 
and productive system, the market is unable to regulate greenhouse 
effect gas emissions and will only generate a big business for financial 
agents and major corporations.

The earth is much more important than stock exchanges of Wall Street and 
the world.

While the United States and the European Union allocate 4,100 billion 
dollars to save the bankers from a financial crisis that they themselves 
have caused, programs on climate change get 313 times less, that is to 
say, only 13 billion dollars.

The resources for climate change are unfairly distributed. More 
resources are directed to reduce emissions (mitigation) and less to 
reduce the effects of climate change that all the countries suffer 
(adaptation)[3]. The vast majority of resources flow to those countries 
that have contaminated the most, and not to the countries where we have 
preserved the environment most. Around 80% of the Clean Development 
Mechanism projects are concentrated in four emerging countries.

Capitalist logic promotes a paradox in which the sectors that have 
contributed the most to deterioration of the environment are those that 
benefit the most from climate change programs.

At the same time, technology transfer and the financing for clean and 
sustainable development of the countries of the South have remained just 
speeches.

The next summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen must allow us to make a 
leap forward if we want to save Mother Earth and humanity. For that 
purpose the following proposals for the process from Poznan to Copenhagen:

Attack the structural causes of climate change

1) Debate the structural causes of climate change. As long as we do not 
change the capitalist system for a system based in complementarity, 
solidarity and harmony between the people and nature, the measures that 
we adopt will be palliatives that will limited and precarious in 
character. For us, what has failed is the model of “living better”, of 
unlimited development, industrialisation without frontiers, of modernity 
that deprecates history, of increasing accumulation of goods at the 
expense of others and nature. For that reason we promote the idea of 
Living Well, in harmony with other human beings and with our Mother Earth.

2) Developed countries need to control their patterns of consumption - 
of luxury and waste - especially the excessive consumption of fossil 
fuels. Subsidies of fossil fuel, that reach 150-250 billions of 
dollars[4], must be progressively eliminated. It is fundamental to 
develop alternative forms of power, such as solar, geothermal, wind and 
hydroelectric both at small and medium scales.

3) Agrofuels are not an alternative, because they put the production of 
foodstuffs for transport before the production of food for human beings. 
Agrofuels expand the agricultural frontier destroying forests and 
biodiversity, generate monocropping, promote land concentration, 
deteriorate soils, exhaust water sources, contribute to rises in food 
prices and, in many cases, result in more consumption of more energy 
than is produced.

Substantial commitments to emissions reduction that are met

4) Strict fulfilment by 2012 of the commitments[5] of the developed 
countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least by 5% below the 
1990 levels. It is unacceptable that the countries that polluted the 
planet throughout the course of history make statements about larger 
reductions in the future while not complying with their present commitments.

5) Establish new minimum commitments for the developed countries of 
greenhouse gas emission reduction of 40% by 2020 and 90% by for 2050, 
taking as a starting point 1990 emission levels. These minimum 
commitments must be met internally in developed countries and not 
through flexible market mechanisms that allow for the purchase of 
certified emissions reduction certificates to continue polluting in 
their own country. Likewise, monitoring mechanisms must be established 
for the measuring, reporting and verifying that are transparent and 
accessible to the public, to guarantee the compliance of commitments.

6) Developing countries not responsible for the historical pollution 
must preserve the necessary space to implement an alternative and 
sustainable form of development that does not repeat the mistakes of 
savage industrialisation that has brought us to the current situation. 
To ensure this process, developing countries need, as a prerequisite, 
finance and technology transfer.

An Integral Financial Mechanism to address ecological debt

7) Acknowledging the historical ecological debt that they owe to the 
planet, developed countries must create an Integral Financial Mechanism 
to support developing countries in: implementation of their plans and 
programmes for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change; the 
innovation, development and transfer of technology; in the preservation 
and improvement of the sinks and reservoirs; response actions to the 
serious natural disasters caused by climate change; and the carrying out 
of sustainable and eco-friendly development plans.

8) This Integral Financial Mechanism, in order to be effective, must 
count on a contribution of at least 1% of the GDP in developed 
countries[6] and other contributions from taxes on oil and gas, 
financial transactions, sea and air transport, and the profits of 
transnational companies.

9) Contributions from developed countries must be additional to Official 
Development Assistance (ODA), bilateral aid or aid channelled through 
organisms not part of the United Nations. Any finance outside the UNFCCC 
cannot be considered as the fulfilment of developed country’s 
commitments under the Convention.

10) Finance has to be directed to the plans or national programmes of 
the different States and not to projects that follow market logic.

11) Financing must not be concentrated just in some developed countries 
but has to give priority to the countries that have contributed less to 
greenhouse gas emissions, those that preserve nature and are suffering 
the impact of climate change.

12) The Integral Financial Mechanism must be under the coverage of the 
United Nations, not under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and 
other intermediaries such as the World Bank and regional development 
banks; its management must be collective, transparent and 
non-bureaucratic. Its decisions must be made by all member countries, 
especially by developing countries, and not by the donors or 
bureaucratic administrators.

Technology Transfer to developing countries

13) Innovation and technology related to climate changes must be within 
the public domain, not under any private monopolistic patent regime that 
obstructs and makes technology transfer more expensive to developing 
countries.

14) Products that are the fruit of public financing for technology 
innovation and development of have to be placed within the public domain 
and not under a private regime of patents[7], so that they can be freely 
accessed by developing countries.

15) Encourage and improve the system of voluntary and compulsory 
licenses so that all countries can access products already patented 
quickly and free of cost. Developed countries cannot treat patents and 
intellectual property rights as something “sacred” that has to be 
preserved at any cost. The regime of flexibilities available for the 
intellectual property rights in the cases of serious problems for public 
health has to be adapted and substantially enlarged to heal Mother Earth.

16) Recover and promote indigenous peoples practices in harmony with 
nature which have proven to be sustainable through centuries.

Adaptation and mitigation with the participation of all the people

17) Promote mitigation actions, programs and plans with the 
participation of local communities and indigenous people in the 
framework of full respect for and implementation of the United Nations 
Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The best mechanism to 
confront the challenge of climate change are not market mechanisms, but 
conscious, motivated, and well organized human beings endowed with an 
identity of their own.

18) The reduction of the emissions from deforestation and forest 
degradation must be based on a mechanism of direct compensation from 
developed to developing countries, through a sovereign implementation 
that ensures broad participation of local communities, and a mechanism 
for monitoring, reporting and verifying that is transparent and public.

A UN for the Environment and Climate Change

19) We need a World Environment and Climate Change Organization to which 
multilateral trade and financial organizations are subordinated, so as 
to promote a different model of development that environmentally 
friendly and resolves the profound problems of impoverishment. This 
organization must have effective follow-up, verification and sanctioning 
mechanisms to ensure that the present and future agreements are complied 
with.

20) It is fundamental to structurally transform the World Trade 
Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the 
international economic system as a whole, in order to guarantee fair and 
complementary trade, as well as financing without conditions for 
sustainable development that avoids the waste of natural resources and 
fossil fuels in the production processes, trade and product transport.

In this negotiation process towards Copenhagen, it is fundamental to 
guarantee the participation of our people as active stakeholders at a 
national, regional and worldwide level, especially taking into account 
those sectors most affected, such as indigenous peoples who have always 
promoted the defense of Mother Earth.

Humankind is capable of saving the earth if we recover the principles of 
solidarity, complementarity, and harmony with nature in contraposition 
to the reign of competition, profits and rampant consumption of natural 
resources.

November 28, 2008

Evo Morales Ayma

President of Bolivia