Environmental activists, indigenous leaders and Hollywood celebrities gathered in Bolivia yesterday ahead of the first self-styled “people’s conference” on climate change.
Attendees said the summit would focus on the plight of the world’s poorest, which they said went largely ignored at official UN-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December.
The Copenhagen meeting was widely drubbed for failing to produce a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions and critics said the deal it produced would not avert a climate catastrophe.
PHOTO: EPA
The “People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights,” which runs until tomorrow, will draft new proposals to be offered for consideration at the next UN climate talks in Mexico at the end of the year.
Bolivian Ambassador to the UN Pablo Solon said the summit, which was expected to draw 18,000 people, was “the only way to get the climate change talks back on track.”
Developing nations have resisted a legally binding climate treaty, arguing that wealthy nations must bear the primary responsibility for climate change.
Nearly 130 countries, including many of the world’s poorest, will be represented at the Cochabamba conference. Anti-globalization activists Naomi Klein of Canada and Jose Bove of France were set to attend. Organizers have also invited James Cameron, director of the blockbuster film Avatar, and James Hansen, a US researcher who was among the first to warn about climate change.
Indigenous leaders, including Nilo Cayuqueo, an indigenous Mapuche from Argentina, were also in town, concerned about the impact of climate change on their homelands.
“We have great extremes of heat and cold, and as a result we’re seeing illnesses and outbreaks that once had disappeared,” Cayuqueo said.
This week’s gathering will also give a giant megaphone to a left-leaning bloc of Latin American leaders, including Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales.
The conference will seek to refine proposals presented by Morales in Copenhagen that included the creation of a world tribunal for climate issues and a global referendum on environmental choices.
The conference begins the day after representatives from the world’s leading economies gathered in Washington for a preparatory meeting ahead of the December UN summit in Cancun.
The US-led Major Economies Forum comprises 17 countries responsible for the bulk of global emissions and excludes smaller nations such as Sudan whose firebrand negotiators held up sessions at last year’s Copenhagen summit.
Washington hopes the closed-door talks will allow key nations to quietly assess what they can achieve heading into the next major climate summit in Cancun.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS