In the picture, Coca-Cola propaganda announcing its supposed commitment with the environment was covered with graffiti saying “look beyond greenwash”
The Klima Forum has so many debates, workshops, movies, concerts and theatre plays simultaneously that it is very difficult to choose where to be at any time. Omnipresence, there’s the last frontier for activism.
I began to watch a debate on wastepickers’ role in recycling. In the global South, 15 million poor people earn a living by collecting waste and selling it to recycling plants. But their activity is at risk due to the privatization of dumps. When a dump is given to private companies, wastepickers are expelled and a larger proportion of recyclable trash is sent to incinerators.
The debate, organized by GAIA – Global Action for Incinerator Alternatives (link), showed various successful attempts to organize wastepickers in India and Latin America. By forming cooperatives, the wastepickers gained the recognition from the local communities and governments and even set up a door-to-door trash collection business.
On another room, the Climate Camp organized a debate on climate and capitalism. The activists mentioned that their anti-capitalist stance has been criticized by some environmentalists, as climate change is such an urgent issue that we shouldn’t create ideological divisions. As a reply, they say that there is no contradiction between fighting climate change and simultaneously acting against the profit-based system which created climate change.
As for the stance we should take on the COP summit, the Climate Camp activists are very critical of the strategy followed by mainstream NGO’s that continue to base their action in lobbying government delegates. Even if we accept that a global deal on climate change must be signed within the UN, a consensual idea, we must confront world leaders with their inability to reach an agreement that does the job. That’s why the Reclaim Power action, on the 16th, when thousands of activists will storm the COP to organize a Peoples’ Assembly on Climate Change, is so important.
This powerful message came at a precious time. Yesterday, the Guardian published a leaked memo (link) which showed that industrialized countries met before the COP to negotiate among themselves a draft agreement. The “Danish draft”, prepared by the Danish presidency of the COP, buries the Kyoto process by substituting it for a non-binding agreement. The text also mentions that climate financing should be managed by the World Bank and that it should be given only to least developed countries that reduce emissions.
What is on the table, therefore, apart from the expansion of the carbon markets (to please speculators and investment banks), is the transfer to the poorer countries of the responsibility for climate change mitigation. The news set the COP on fire, when the representative of G77 plus China characterized the “Danish draft” as unacceptable. Lots of movements and NGO’s prepared an open letter to the Danish presidency of the COP to shelve this secret agreement and involve the global South in the preparation of the post-Kyoto climate agreement.
At the same time, a lebanese journalist next to me was saying that the borders with Germany had been closed. The police has mobilized thousands of its officers for Copenhagen, ready to fill the improvised prision that they created in an abandoned warehouse, where up to 350 activists will be arrested in cages.
This is how world leaders of the capitalist casino protect themselves from the ones confronting their power. It’s going to be a hot summit on a cold city.
