Saturday, May 11, 2024
News and Views from the Global South
COP15 Is a “False Solutions Fair”
- At the climate summit in Copenhagen, it's as if “everyonejust wants to go on avoiding what we really have to discuss, which is whatneeds to be done” to save the planet, says Brazilian feminist Miriam Nobre in this interview.
Miriam Nobre - Daniela Estrada/IPS
Nobre, a Brazilian agricultural engineer and feminist, arrived in Copenhagen Tuesday to take part in Klimaforum09, the civil society summit held in parallel to the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which opened Monday and will run until Dec. 18.
The World March of Women, headed by Nobre, is an international women’s rights movement created in 2000, which is currently active in 71 countries.
The movement’s first campaign was aimed at combating poverty and violence against women, and for 2010 it’s planning its third international action, targeting four objectives: achieving economic independence for women; ending violence against women; promoting peace and demilitarization; and preserving and developing the common good and public services.
Before sitting down to talk with TerraViva, Nobre participated in a coordination meeting with representatives of other movements and NGOs in the colorful Klimaforum, where hundreds of talks, displays, exhibits, documentary screenings, and musical and theatre shows are programmed.
TERRAVIVA: What proposals or demands are you bringing to Copenhagen?
MN: We’ve come to Copenhagen in coordination with Vía Campesina and Friends of the Earth to denounce the false solutions that are put forward for climate change, including monoculture, agrofuel production, and the privatization of nature, through, for example, carbon credits.
We’re also meeting with other organizations, such as Jubilee South, that work on the issue of climate debt.
Our presence here also has to do with a sense of urgency. There’s a feeling that something has to be done now, but that the urgency can’t lead us to be strong-armed into accepting a bad agreement that ignores class, country and gender inequalities in the issue of climate change.
TV: What activities will you participate in?
MN: We have a workshop called “Feminists Struggling Against Climate Change and Privatization of the Environment”, where we’ll examine the state of negotiations, because women are major political actors in this issue.
We will also look at the links and conflicts between the environmentalist and women’s movements and at how women are experiencing the effects of climate change and the forms of resistance and alternatives they’re building.
We will also be holding another activity with the Global Forest Coalition, on the subject of food and energy sovereignty as real solutions to climate change.
TV: Why are women key political actors in climate change negotiations?
MN: There’s a whole host of experiences that women farmers and fisherwomen can contribute, because they haven’t abandoned their traditional ways of producing food, so they offer a true alternative to our fossil-fuel- and oil-dependent societies.
And there’s also the connection we say exists between the fragmentation and commodification of women’s bodies and the fragmentation and commodification of territories themselves.
TV: How do you see the global negotiations at Copenhagen so far?
MN: My first impression was that many have come with the idea of selling their solutions – agrofuels, carbon credits, etc.
I got the feeling that it’s a large fair with everyone hawking their solutions, without really touching on the problem, which is the urgent need for profound changes in the system. We need to change the model, to change the way we organize production and consumption.
It’s like everyone just wants to go on avoiding what we really have to discuss, which is what needs to be done.
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