Indigenous People Take on the Climate Crisis in Cochabamba. By Daphne Wysham, AlertNet, April 21, 2010. "Four months after world leaders who gathered in frigid Copenhagen failed to agree on a binding climate treaty, a peoples' summit on climate change and the rights of Mother Earth is underway in the sun-dappled hills of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Convened by Bolivian President Evo Morales, allegedly the first fully indigenous president since the Spanish conquest, the conference is an attempt to place indigenous peoples -- and marginalized peoples from around the world -- at the center of the global conversation on climate change. At this conference, indigenous peoples are in the majority. They have arrived from all over South America by the thousands. And because many have come long distances with little funding, food at the conference is free -- offered up to all attendees.
"Here, instead of women with cell phones walking briskly from one late-night climate negotiation to another, women in traditional dress and mothers with babies strapped on their backs with colorful woven cloths sit side by side with elder women in workshops. They participate in preparing statements on everything from a shared vision of climate justice to green jobs and forest preservation. In accordance with indigenous tradition, each working group must be led by both a man and a woman... And so hopes are high that this summit will represent a turning point, in both the process and the product of climate negotiations. The indigenous moment in the climate crisis has arrived here in the hills of Cochabamba, a breath of fresh if rarified air. On the fortieth anniversary of the first Earth Day, it has arrived not a moment too soon." Daphne Wysham is a Fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and host of Earthbeat Radio.
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