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Climate Change and "Buen Vivir": People's World Conference on Climate Change

In response to the UN conference on climate change held in Copenhagen in December 2009, where many industrialized countries demonstrated their inability to make real commitments on the issue, the Plurinational State of Bolivia will host a historic conference.  Called “Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth,” is taking place on April 19-22 in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This forum will openly discuss causes and solutions to climate change.  The conference is expecting around 12,000 participants including government officials, scientists, academics, jurists, social movements and organizations from over 130 countries.  Check out these resources for updates from the conference:

• It's Getting Hot in Here: "Dispatch 1: Rumbo a Cochabamba"
• Oakland Local: "Oakland Institute Fellow Jeff Conant reports from People's Climate Summit in Cochabamba"
• IPS News: "Voice of Civil Society Loud and Clear in Cochabamba"
• AFP: "Eco-activists mass for alternative climate summit in Bolivia"

This month also marks the ten-year anniversary of the Water Wars in Cochabamba, when people took to the streets to protest the Bechtel Corporation and the privatization of their water supplies.  Democracy Now, which is covering the summit all week, posted this video reflecting on that history of protest:

Video: MADRE at the Inauguration of the Bolivian President

This video conversation was recorded on January 22, when I had the chance to speak via Skype with MADRE Program Coordinator Natalia Caruso about her trip to Bolivia.  She was there for a conference on Indigenous women's political participation, organized by the International Indigenous Women's Forum.  She also had the chance to attend the inauguration of President Evo Morales.  Click here or on the video above to watch.

The Inauguration of Evo Morales, President of Bolivia

MADRE’s program coordinator, Natalia Caruso, this week attended the inauguration ceremony of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. The ceremony took place at the Indigenous sacred site Kalasasaya, in Tiwanaku, before a crowd of 60,000 people, most of them belonging to different Indigenous groups from around the country.

Although the majority of the population is Indigenous, Bolivia has long been characterized for its high rate of discrimination and violence towards Indigenous Peoples.  Rising to power, Evo Morales has become a widespread and powerful symbol for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

As the first Indigenous president in Bolivia, with a majority Indigenous population, Evo Morales not only represents a victory over discrimination and inequality in the country but also stands in contrast to hundreds of years of oppression against Indigenous groups not only in Bolivia, but around the world.

In his heartfelt words at the ceremony, Morales vowed, in his mother tongue Aymara, then Quechua and Spanish, to serve Bolivia and guarantee equality among the people. President Evo Morales recognized the many underlying issues that have not been addressed, including the defense of women’s rights.

Over the next few days, we will follow up on this blog with more information from Natalia as she returns from Bolivia.

For more information:

• In pictures: Bolivia celebrates presidency, BBC
• Evo Morales y Álvaro García asumen su segundo periodo, Los Tiempos (in Spanish)

*Photo credit: One of the many Indigenous Bolivians present at the inauguration ceremony. http://www.flickr.com/photos/presidenciaecuador/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Who Took Away Bolivia’s Water?

Yesterday, one of the front page stories of the New York Times described the terrible and worsening situation of people in Bolivia’s whose water supplies are disappearing.  As a land-locked country, Bolivia has relied on glaciers to provide water – and those glaciers are melting at a rate faster than anyone had predicted.  The article explains:

“The effects are appearing much more rapidly than we can respond to them, and a reservoir takes five to seven years to build. I’m not sure we have that long,” said Edson Ramírez, a Bolivian glaciologist who has documented and projected the glaciers’ retreat for two decades.

The retreat has outpaced his wildest predictions. He had predicted that one glacier, Chacaltaya, would last until 2020. It disappeared this year. In 2006, he said El Alto water demand would outstrip supply by 2009. It happened.

While acknowledging that climate change is at the root of these dramatic changes, the article also places the blame on “checkered management” by the Bolivian government, saying:

Urban water supplies are also taxed by population growth as well as checkered management, in part because there is little money to manage anything, but also because the government nationalized the water company a few years ago, having declared water a human right. El Alto still does not employ a full-time water technician.

This logic suggests that the declaration of water as a human right, and the move away from privatized water supplies, has resulted in diminished access to water.  The opposite has been true.  Compared to the fuller history of Bolivian people’s fight to access water, we can see why.  

In the 1990s, the World Bank and other international financial institutions pushed privatization of public services—including water provision—as a condition for countries to receive aid.  In Cochabamba, a city in central Bolivia, the process of privatization meant that corporations like the US-based Bechtel Corporation gained control over the city’s water.  As the cost of water doubled or more for many, in 2000 people across the city turned to the streets in protest, asserting that “The water is ours.”

The principle that water is a human right motivated people to demand access and to refuse to let their lives be threatened by the rush towards privatization.  The citizens of Cochabamba were able to push Bechtel out of their city and reclaim their right to water.  But now, largely through the carbon-emitting activities of industrialized countries including many of those same corporations, the water supplies of Bolivia are again compromised.

For more on why water rights are women’s rights, click here.

Update: This video, via GRITtv, has more.

Day of Indigenous Resistance

Today is a day that has embedded itself in the public consciousness of many people living in the US—but too often for the wrong reasons.  Today, school children will be taught about an explorer who “sailed the ocean blue,” but many will be denied the knowledge of the destruction he wreaked upon his arrival.  Parades will be held and people may take the day off work, all the while disregarding the cruelty of celebrating the decimation of Indigenous Peoples.

These are not long-forgotten tragedies, as some might flippantly argue.  Their impact carries on to this day.  Indigenous Peoples continue their generations-long struggle, fighting against unjust laws that force them off their lands and advocating for the preservation of Indigenous cultures and communities.

There have been devastating setbacks in this struggle, such as the massacres of Peruvian Indigenous protesters in June of this year by government forces.  Climate change has already triggered environmental shifts that threaten traditional livelihoods, from floods in Nicaragua to drought in Kenya.  An on-going epidemic of violence threatens the lives and well-being of Indigenous women worldwide.  The list goes on.

But there have also been inspirational victories, such as the passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples or powerful Indigenous women’s organizing that demands action on violations of women’s human rights.  Across the globe, the Indigenous Peoples’ rights movement continues to demand that the injustices of yesterday are exposed and confronted today—Indigenous Peoples’ lives continue to depend on it.

We do such a movement a grave injustice when we continue to blindly honor Columbus, perpetuating a historical dishonesty that ignores the price that Indigenous Peoples have paid.

In many places, people are turning an increasingly critical eye on the stories we’ve been told.  In Pennsylvania, one class of fourth-graders put Columbus on trial and sentenced him for his crimes.  The video below, sponsored by the United Confederation of Taino People, asks us to reconsider the mythology we’ve been given.

Take today as an opportunity to learn more about the histories of Indigenous Peoples in this country and elsewhere, and about the global Indigenous Peoples’ rights movement.  These resources can get you started.

• Bolivia: Demanding a Political Voice for Women
• International Indigenous Women’s Forum
• Chirapaq, Centro de Culturas Indígenas el Perú
• Tebtebba, Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education
• UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
• Global Mobilization for Mother Earth
• Re-remembering Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day (via The Progressive)
• A Peoples History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (via Truthdig)
• TAKE ACTION: Grassroots International Call to Replace NAFTA

International Women’s Day 2009: A Global Blog Round-Up

We continue our blog series this week of International Women’s Day commentary from around the world with this: a round-up of some interesting perspectives we found on other blogs this week.

First, let’s start off with some photos, gathered by the bloggers at the Feminist Peace Network, in this blog entry, “International Women’s Day 2009: This Is How We Celebrated (Pictures From Around the World).”

Eduardo Avila, a blogger for Global Voices Online, examines the reactions of bloggers in Latin America to International Women’s Day in his entry entitled, “Americas: Celebrating Women’s Day,” with some of the following examples:

In Peru, blogger Susana Villarán also presents some alarming data about the state of women in the Peruvian region of San Martín [es]:

Es una región en la que la tasa de mortalidad materna es de 30 por cada 100,000 nacidos vivos, donde el índice de analfabetismo es muy alto en las mujeres de las zonas más pobres en el área rural de San Martín, en la que la cobertura educativa en la primera infancia es de solamente 5%, donde han elegido una sola alcaldesa, en la que los niveles de violencia física, sicológica y sexual son preocupantes…

It is a region where the maternal mortality rate is 30 for every 100,000 live births, where the rate of illiteracy is very high for women in the poorest areas of the San Martín countryside, where the educational coverage for the first infancy is only 5%, where only one woman mayor has been elected, where the levels of physical, psychological and sexual violence are alarming…

In another diverse country, Cristina Quisbert of Bolivia Indigena [es] honors the indigenous women of El Alto, Bolivia, who can be often seen with the traditional textile called the aguayo that are used to carry goods and their children:

Muchos y muchas de nosotros de seguro que hemos recorrido kilómetros y kilómetros cargados en un multicolor aguayo sobre las espaldas de nuestras madres. Hoy, como ayer, muchas son las mujeres que recorren las calles de El Alto, del área rural o de otras ciudades, ya sea trabajando o participando de las actividades ciudadanas.

Many of us surely have traveled kilometers and kilometers being carried in a multi-colored aguayo on the backs of our mothers. Today, like past days, many women walk the streets of El Alto, from the rural areas or from other cities, working or participating in other activities.

Meanwhile, Juliana Rincón Parra, also of Global Voices Online, brings us videos of International Women’s Day activities from Chile, Peru, and Nepal in her blog post, “Video: Celebrating Women on their International Day.”

Do you have any other resources to share?  Leave them in comments.