CANCUN, MEXICO– Members of Climate Justice Now!, a global network of more than 140 movements and organizations committed to the fight for social, ecological and gender justice, spoke out this morning at the start of the 2010 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) with their demands for the negotiations.
Climate Justice Now! (CJN!) seeks:
- “System change, not climate change,” a shift from business as usual in climate change mitigation.
- “Yes” to the Cochabamba Peoples’ Agreement, which includes a revocation of the Copenhagen Accord and consideration for the rights of Mother Earth.
- “No” to REDD, the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD).
- The inclusion of grassroots solutions into global intergovernmental policymaking.
Silvia Ribeiro, of ETC Group in Mexico, acknowledged the advancements made last spring at the Cochabumba Peoples Conference in Bolivia, a gathering of 35,000 participants from 142 countries. “We said clearly that we need real reductions at source,” she said, “not connected to market mechanisms or justifying the introduction of dangerous new technologies.”
Speaking out against World Bank involvement in climate mitigation, Lidy Nacpil, Regional Coordinator for the Asian Pacific Movement for Debt and Development and Jubilee South in the Philippines said, “The World Bank’s governance structures are undiplomatic. Developing countries are least represented inside the bank.
“Developing countries,” continued Nacpil, “contribute little to global emissions and therefore can contribute little to emission reductions—yet we suffer the brunt of the impacts.”
CJN! will hold its next press conference on Thursday, 2 December, 9:30- 10:00 a.m. in conference room 2, Luna, in the Aztec Expo Center at Moon Palace, Cancun, Mexico.