For Immediate Release
- Friday 12 December 2008
Climate
Justice Now! Network: Radical New Agenda Urgently Needed
Poznan, Poland - Members of the
Climate Justice Now! Network - representing over 160 organisations
fighting for climate justice - issued today (Friday 12 December) a
joint statement calling for a radical change in direction to put climate
justice and people's rights at the centre of the UNFCCC negotiations.
The statement asserts that: "Solutions
to the climate crisis will not come from industrialised countries
and big business. Effective and enduring solutions will come from
those who have protected the environment ? Indigenous Peoples, women,
peasant and family farmers, fisherfolk, forest dependent communities,
youth and marginalised and affected communities in the global South
and North."
Alicia Munoz from Via Campesina
in Chile stated, "We are shocked by the level of corruption that
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
has reached in allowing corporations to take over the political space
and process of climate negotiations."
Muñoz continued, "Instead
of tackling climate change in Poznan they are discussing how to create
business opportunities while we face a global disaster."
Ana Filippini from the Uruguayan
organization World Rainforest Movement added, "The UNFCCC is
peddling market driven solutions for climate change. Private investors
are circling the talks like vultures, swooping in on every opportunity
for creating new profits."
Filippini added, "Local livelihoods
are given little consideration and even actively undermined in many
of the countries where the Clean Development Mechanism projects are
implemented."
According to North American-based,
Indigenous Environmental Network representative, Ben Powless, "Indigenous
Peoples have the most at stake in these negotiations, as well as the
most to offer to terms of solutions, but they have been systematically
excluded."
Anne Peterman, the spokesperson
for the Global Justice Ecology Project, concluded, "In the lead-up
to the 2009 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen and beyond,
the Climate Justice Now! Network will continue to monitor governments
and to mobilise social forces from the south and the north to achieve
climate justice."
For more information, please contact:
Nicola Bullard, Focus on the Global South: +48-78-577-9886/+66819875011,
n.bullard@focusweb.org
Michael Dorsey, Durban Group for Climate Justice:
+48-78-526-7098/+1734-9456424, mkdorsey@professordorsey.com
Notes:
The CJN Poznan statement can be seen at:
http://focusweb.org/radical-new-agenda-needed-to-achieve-climate-justice.html?Itemid=1
