Lima, 11 December 2014
The Summit of peoples climate change, held in Lima from 8 to 11 December 2014, is expression of the processes of mobilization and resistance undertaken by a variety of organizations, movements, platforms, networks and collective social, labor, women, indigenous, peasant, youth, environmental, religious, artistic and cultural Peruvian and international. We met to continue discussing and sharing the multiple forms of struggle and resistance, the construction of social justice, against the capitalist system, patriarchal, racist and homophobic, for the respect of the various forms of life, without exploitation and plundering of the resources of nature, by the ability of peoples to decide on their energy sources community, by the reduction of social inequalities, as well as promote good living as a model of life in harmony with nature and mother earth.
Capital seeks to deal with their systemic crisis by imposing the capture water, the sacking of the territories and the natural heritage, predation, fossil fuel production, the increased exploitation of workers, the repression of the social movements and the physical and psychological violence, increasing multiple forms of criminalization of struggles of peoples militarization and territorial control. This is encouraged by media corporations. In addition, this reality you must add capture States and their bureaucracies by economic power, the payment of debts, unjust and corrupt, and a variety of events that benefit exclusively to the true powers after Governments, docile to the mandate of national enterprises and large transnational corporations and their political operatives.
At this juncture the people’s Summit represents the voice of the areas exploited and oppressed of the world, of the marginalized by economic and cultural system that subordinates them to racist, fundamentalist, sexist and employers who benefit from the capitalist model. At this crucial moment facing humanity, in which very serious climate change we are currently experiencing requires urgent part of global society actions, demand to Governments and the United Nations system met the COP 20 agreements that respect and value the life of urban, rural and native peoples, and to promote the preservation of global biodiversity. We reject any market mechanism arising as a solution to climate and environmental problems.
Who we met at this Summit, we collect and make part of processes of earlier struggles that have woven in our villages, and reach this point with that force and collective construction. From this we express and we demand:
The Governments of the world who respect our territories, rights and lifestyles, our cultures, customs and world views on life and the world we inhabit. We denounce the exploitation of our natural resources and territories by extractive industries, affecting our ways of living, our source of identity and the harmonious relationship of our communities with mother earth. We demand the recognition of land ownership of the communities that have traditionally lived on their land. We do not accept external control of the territories, nor the processes of negotiation and implementation of the false solutions to the climate. Governments should have as the central axis of our ancestral ways of life respect and recognition to our self-determination as Nations and peoples.
We demand the States open a debate with civil society on the concept of net emissions avoided, allowing a climate deal 2015 to compensate non-industrialized countries for not exploiting fossil energy sources and so they can finance their energy matrix transformation. We urge adoption of a global tax on international financial transactions, which provide sufficient funds to ensure a just transition towards an inclusive model of social justice.
We also clarified that the set of initiatives to reverse the destructive climatic trend toward which our planet, has been conducted should be considered the historical responsibilities of developed countries and the recognition and repair of historical and ecological debt they have with the global South. In particular, transnational corporations from developed countries private capital must be held responsible for their actions and practices globally. We demand full justice in cases of pollution by Newmont, Doeran in Peru, and Chevron-Texaco, among others, which during his tenure in the Amazon left as a legacy one of the biggest ecocides in the history of the planet.
Governments and companies we demand they accept and respect our human right to decent work, with full exercise of individual and collective rights, and to ensure a transition process fair in a world that will allow us to improve the quality of life. Guarantees universal access to protection and social security systems, we demand respect for our freedom of Association and to a fair and equitable distribution of the wealth produced with our work and expertise.
We believe that no action to tackle climate change will be viable or efficient if not is promoted with effective public policies in favour of small peasant and family agriculture, agrarian reform, sovereignty and food security of our peoples, the auto production sustainable, based agro-ecological, native and free of GMO and pesticides, oriented to human consumption and the preservation of biodiversity. We believe that to move towards a just world and a local economy, solidarity-based, cooperative, feminist and community, it is essential to recognize the human right to food, as well as the great contribution of peasant family farming, which contributes more than 70% of the power in the world. We demand to stop the production and expansion of agrofuels, that promote deforestation, erosion of the land, the source of water and air pollution, and mean a form of territorial recolonization.
As an expression of this strategy of capital, the processes of privatization, marketization and financialization of nature, expressed in the principles of the green economy, which presents us with the false solutions to the climate crisis have intensified in recent years. Some of them are: mechanisms of clean development (CDM), projects for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests (REDD), transgenic, agrofuels, geoengineering, nuclear plants, hydroelectric megaprojects, split hydraulics (“fracking”), climate-smart agriculture.
The strategy of capital also goes through what we call architecture of the impunity of transnational corporations and Governments, through the Treaty of free trade and protection of investments, among others, seeking to privatize essential services such as water, education, health and housing, and threaten the human rights of workers and peoples. The people’s Summit rejects all of these strategies of capital.
As we expressed before, denounce the capitalista-patriarcal system that maintains the oppression and control over the body, work and life of women, promotes sexual violence and trafficking, it marginalizes them from various fields of social and public life. It is necessary to move to another social division of labour, that eliminates the subordination of women’s work, that does not invisibilice the work of care that enables social reproduction or subordinated it to the mandates of the market. We demand a radical change that recognizes the reproductive work as the basis of human sustainability and the relationship between individuals and communities. All alternatives should incorporate a feminist perspective and promote a fairer relationship between men and women.
We advocate the promotion of a consumption responsible and not alienated, based on the adoption of habits and consumption patterns, and according to the need for human, not subject to the ambition of the capital. A consumer who does not contribute to environmental pollution or climate change. We encourage the responsible use of vital resources, recycling and sustainable management of solid waste. We are committed to promoting awareness citizen with respect to the actions that we can take forward individually and collectively to advance towards a world more just.
States should take decisions and measures of protection, conservation and restoration of watersheds, ecosystems, high mountains, wetlands, wetlands, moors, steppes, forests, aquifers, lakes, rivers, springs, coastal marine zones, which feed on mother earth. These ecosystems and water sources are affected by the activities of the extractive industries, such as mining, oil, coal and gas, the felling of trees and the bravery of waste, among other causes. It must guarantee the human right to water and sanitation, in equal conditions, access and health. This only they can guarantee with companies public in hands public.
The Summit of peoples questions the inconsistency of the Peruvian Government in its capacity as President of the COP 20. By environmental, labor and tax policies recently adopted in favour of private investment by lowering standards and regulations that affect groups, environmental and cultural rights. We denounce the repression suffered by indigenous representatives, trade union leaders and peasants, environmental activists, as well as the harassment to delegations that arrived at the Summit of peoples from different regions of the country and abroad.
The Summit of peoples questions the corporate capture of the framework Convention of the United Nations on climate change. Large transnational corporations “to companan” to Governments in the global negotiations to agree on measures that have the sole purpose cleaning responsibilities to industrialized countries by their gas emissions of greenhouse effect gases and for being the main cause of climate change. We demand that payments for services of external and internal debt – which choke the people and limit the ability of States to meet basic needs of the populations, intended to deal with the environmental and climate crisis because it depends on the survival of humanity and all living species on the planet.
The people’s Summit salutes the committed and enthusiastic mobilization of tens of thousands of citizens from around the world who participated in the great Global March in defense of mother earth (10/Dec) in Lima and other cities of the planet. This large concentration of organizations, movements, and delegations of the Peru and numerous countries is the clearest expression of the position of the people in favour of a just and democratic world that ensures harmony between human existence and the rights of nature and mother earth.
We will continue to strengthen the articulation of our struggles, active and permanently in multiple demonstrations of 2015, with a special moment of activism in Paris, France, where the COP 21 will take place. Now the social movements of the world prepare to give continuity to the struggles from our territories in defense of life, until our demands are met. We will continue in the struggle to change the system… Not the climate.
Summit of the peoples
Lima December 10, 2014