Cochabamba People’s Agreement: Annotated – JSTOR Daily

“Humanity can either save capitalism or our Mother Earth,” proclaimed then-President of Bolivia, Evo Morales.

This sentiment still resonates today across academic disciplines, policymakers, and social movements. In April 2010, it seemed clear that the leaders of the highest polluting nations on Earth were unconcerned with problematizing the structural systems that have caused the climate crisis; therefore, representatives from 140 countries came together at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to create a vision for the future that would not only safeguard nature, but imagine a world under a different paradigm of thinking and being.

Prior multilateral climate agreements

Prior multilateral climate agreements, such as the Copenhagen Accord, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Rio Summit Agreement, failed to address the underlying causes of the climate crisis and include less-than-ambitious targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions (the pathways outlined in these agreements would set global temperatures at well above 4 degrees C in 2050). Attendees of the World People’s Conference drafted the groundbreaking Cochabamba People’s Agreement to wrestle with the issues of global overconsumption, endless growth, and environmental injustice that have caused the climate crisis experienced today. As of fall 2023, the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, one of the leading multilateral international governing bodies dedicated to tackling climate change, has yet to meaningfully engage with the calls expressed in the agreement.

People’s Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth

Today, our Mother Earth is wounded and the future of humanity is in danger.

1. If global warming increases by more than 2 degrees Celsius, a situation that the “Copenhagen Accord” could lead to, there is a 50% probability that the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be completely irreversible. Between 20 percent and 30 percent of species would be in danger of disappearing. Large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen. Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish in the world, causing catastrophic impact on the survival of inhabitants from vast regions in the planet, and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people.
2. The corporations and governments of the so-called “developed” countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.
3. We confront the terminal crisis of a civilizing model that is patriarchal and based on the submission and destruction of human beings and nature that accelerated since the industrial revolution.
4. The capitalist system has imposed on us a logic of competition, progress and limitless growth. This regime of production and consumption seeks profit without limits, separating human beings from nature and imposing a logic of domination upon nature, transforming everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself.
5. Under capitalism, Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are.
6. Capitalism requires a powerful military industry for its processes of accumulation and imposition of control over territories and natural resources, suppressing the resistance of the peoples. It is an imperialist system of colonization of the planet.
7. Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation, and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

Proposed Principles for a New System

It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. And in order for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings. We propose to the peoples of the world the recovery, revalorization, and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples, which are affirmed in the thought and practices of “Living Well,” recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship. To face climate change, we must recognize Mother Earth as the source of life and forge a new system based on the principles of:

• Harmony and balance among all and with all things;
• Complementarity, solidarity, and equality;
• Collective well-being and the satisfaction of the basic necessities of all;
• People in harmony with nature;
• Recognition of human beings for what they are, not what they own;
• Elimination of all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism;
• Peace among the peoples and with Mother Earth;

The model we support is not a model of limitless and destructive development. All countries need to produce the goods and services necessary to satisfy the fundamental needs of their populations, but by no means can they continue to follow daily.jstor.org

Join us, as fellow seekers of change, on a transformative journey at https://sdgtalks.ai/welcome, where you can become a member and actively contribute to shaping a brighter future.