Summary report of the Climate Justice Conference, Bangkok 12-14 July 2008


From 12 to 14 July 2008, over 170 activists including fishers and farmers, forest and indigenous peoples, women, youth, workers, researchers and campaigners from 31 countries gathered at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand for a conference on climate justice. This summary report provides a brief and non-exhaustive summary of the issues discussed, agreements reached, and strategies proposed during the conference. For more information, see the conference website .

GUIDING PRINCIPLES
The following statement was debated and adopted by consensus in plenary:
(download file )
We, members of social movements, indigenous people’s groups and civil society organisations who have come together in Bangkok from July 12-14, 2008, affirm our commitment to the principle of climate justice.

By climate justice, we mean that the burden of adjustment to the climate crisis must be borne by those who have created it, and not by those who have been least responsible. The current reality, however, is that the main victims of climate change are those who did not create it.

We insist that a just solution to the crisis must confront the problem of over-consumption in the North, and also amongst elites in the South. Over-consumption is rooted in the dynamics of capitalism which continually transforms living nature into dead commodities, creating tremendous waste in the process. The destabilisation of the climate is intrinsic to capitalism.

The climate crisis stems from the imposition of the paradigm of capitalist development, whose key dimensions include the continued colonisation of indigenous peoples; the marginalisation of small
farmers, forest communities, fisher people, workers and dalits; and the reinforcement of gender inequality.

We condemn the refusal of the Northern governments to commit themselves to radical, mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. We also condemn their aggressive promotion of false solutions such as carbon trading (including the Clean Development Mechanism and Reduced Emissions from
Deforestation in Developing Countries/and Forest Degradation); techno-fixes such as agrofuels, megadams, and nuclear power; and science fictions like carbon sequestration and storage. These so-called solutions will merely exacerbate the climate crisis and deepen global inequality.

We affirm that labour, the land, water, forests, energy and the atmosphere must not be privatised, commodified or traded. A just and sustainable solution must rest on people’s sovereignty which includes the principles of respect for diversity, equity, democracy, food sovereignty, respect for indigenous peoples’ rights and gender equality.

Dealing with the climate crisis inevitably involves a fundamental departure from the current global order, and a comprehensive transformation of social, economic, political and cultural relations at the local, national and global level.

ISSUES
The following were the main issues discussed in plenary sessions and workshops at the conference:

• Agro-fuels, land, and food sovereignty
• Coastal communities, fishworkers, and climate justice
• Illegitimate debt, ecological debt, and climate justice
• Water and energy sovereignty for climate justice
• Climate change, forests, and REDD ( Reduced Emissions from Deforestation
• in Developing Countries/and Forest Degradation)
• Carbon trading and the Clean Development Mechanism
• Trade and climate justice
• Indigenous peoples and climate justice
• International financial institutions and climate justice
• Gender and climate justice
• China and India: climate politics and development strategies
• Migration and climate justice
• Tourism
• Low carbon development strategies in the South
• New energy paradigms and class relations
• Strategies on technologies and “techno-fixes”
• Strategies for building social movement linkages
• Greenhouse development rights and the right to development
• Small food producers and climate justice (farmers, fishers, livestock
• producers, etc.)

AGREEMENTS & POSITIONS
Through discussions in workshops and plenary debates, participants reached consensus on the following principles and positions:

Protecting the atmospheric commons and opposing carbon trading and carbon offsets

Campaigning against industrial agro-fuels

Opposing the REDD scheme

Opposing loans, aid, and subsidies extended by the World Bank, regional development banks, export credit agencies, and Northern governments for fossil fuel projects and dirty technologies Opposing the financing through loans of climate adaptation and mitigation by international financial institutions (IFIs) and Northern governments; and their imposition of conditionalities through grants, loans, aid, and debt cancellation

Calling for adaptation and mitigation programs that are democratically
designed and managed and which do not involve the institutions that
caused the debt crisis
Demanding that all public financing for climate change adaptation and
mitigation must recognize the rights and roles of affected and
marginalized peoples, including indigenous peoples, fishers, peasants,
women, etc
Supporting China’s and the G-77’s opposition to the World Bank’s Climate
Investment Funds
Opposing IFI funding of commercial fishers in the name of joint ventures
Opposing granting of investment incentives to foreign vessels that
destroy the livelihood of small fishers
Opposing IFI financing of tourism infrastructure and unsustainable
transportation systems
Opposing the privatization of coastal resources and marine protected
areas and stopping the eviction of coastal communities for tourism or
under the guise of protecting them from ‘natural disasters’
Stopping the control of transnational corporations over natural resources
Rejecting the Doha Round of Negotiations in the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and calling for the WTO out of agriculture
Demanding that the ecological debt of the North to the South must be
recognized and restituted before any new trade negotiations
Opposing techno-fixes such as sea walls, bio-shields, urea dumping and
artificial reefs that harm coastal communities, the environment and
fishworkers
Opposing mega-projects such as dams
Promoting the land and resource rights of indigenous peoples and local
communities
Demanding that indigenous peoples and marginalized communities be the
prime beneficiaries of water and energy projects which impact them or
take place in their lands
Demanding the recognition of the customary system of indigenous peoples
dependent on the coastal region
Increasing effective and progressive food subsidies for the poor
Taxing oil corporations’ profits
Taking into consideration national and regional realities, taking up the
issues of oil subsidies and eliminating value-added taxes on oil, with
the principle of making the rich pay and protecting the poor
Ending direct subsidies and tax exemption for air fuel and cruise ship fuel
Promoting community-based small-scale clean alternative energy
Calling for a shift towards responsible and community-based tourism
Ensuring wider discussion and consultation  within organizations and
among networks regarding the proposed “Greenhouse Development Rights”
Playing a more active role in the discussions and negotiations at the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other venues
Linking  campaigns in the North and South on the United Nations climate
talks



STRATEGIES
The main strategies and action proposals raised in the workshops and
presented to the plenary included:


The UN and other international institutions:
Mobilizing at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
meetings in Copenhagen and in home countries in December 2009
Influencing China’s and India’s position in the climate negotiations
Incorporating climate concerns into trade-related demands and to
integrate climate justice considerations within trade campaign work;
ensuring that trade justice becomes a point of analysis and mobilization
in the UNFCCC mobilization in Copenhagen in 2009


Agriculture and agro-fuels
Supporting the European campaign for a moratorium on targets and
subsidies on agro-fuels and campaigning to stop industrial agro-fuels
everywhere
Calling for legislation to support sustainable agriculture and
sustainable local industries
Campaigning for just land reform and against investment agreements and
market-based land reforms


Indigenous Peoples:
Promoting the understanding and affirmation of the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by governments, NGOs,
and social movements
Convening more international and regional meetings of indigenous peoples
to strengthen united action for climate justice
Supporting indigenous peoples’ participation in UN and other
international negotiations
Opposing World Bank and other IFI projects on the ground, by
communities, indigenous peoples’ organizations and other local groups


Women and gender:
Promoting legislation and implementation of gender-sensitive
environmental/climate change laws
Integrating gender perspectives in all upcoming national and
international events
Conducting more collaborative research on women and climate change


Public policy:
Campaigning for public investments in sustainable public transport
Promoting the banning of and/or taxation of plastic bags and bottles


Technology:
Building awareness of the social justice and environmental implications
of new technologies, such as geo-engineering and converging technologies
at the nano-scale
Highlighting good examples of appropriately applied, climate-friendly
technologies that strengthen equity, social justice and well-being
Supporting demands for new grant-based technology funds within the
UNFCCC framework on the condition that the participation of recipient
states, civil society and affected groups is integral.


Corporations
Tracking and monitoring corporations pushing large-scale technological
solutions to climate change


International financial institutions (IFIs):
Opposing World Bank mechanisms and role in confronting climate change,
including
Pressuring northern governments not to contribute to its Climate
Investment Funds (CIF), and mobilizing Southern governments to oppose
accepting loans from the CIF
Mobilizing opposition to the consultation process in the lead up to
finalization of the Bank’s Strategic Framework on Climate Change and
Development, and
Developing activities for the Global Week of Action Against Debt and
IFIs (12-19 October 2008) that puts emphasis in climate change
Using all means to educate the people on climate change and the role of
the IFIs, including popular materials to educate grassroots groups and
social movements
Develop linkages among different campaigns such as debt, trade,
Indigenous Peoples, environment, anti-privatization, gender vis-a-vis
the World Bank and IFIs


Building the climate justice movement
Using national campaigns and national, regional and international events
to promote mobilizations about climate justice. Especially, ASEAN summit
in December 2008 and Copenhagen 2009
Producing popular education materials in local languages and dialects on
climate change
Organising a joint activity during the Belem World Social Forum 2009 on
the links between environmental justice and climate justice
Building capacity on climate change and climate justice to multiply
information (for example, activists teach-in for climate justice)
Disseminating information and building communication networks
Organising a workshop on migration and climate change at the Global
Forum on Migration and Development in the Philippines, 27-30 October 2008.
Building linkages and solidarity among organizations from different regions
Increasing the participation of social movements in official
international conferences (ASEAN Summit, WTO, COP, etc) and parallel
events to these summits.


You can read detailed reports from all the issue and strategy workshops
at www.focusweb.org/climatechange


If you agree with these guiding principles, we invite you to join our
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