We support the African countries’ demand for the Kyoto targets and mandatory emissions reductions for rich countries,” said Friends of the Earth International Chair, Nnimmo Bassey, who denounced the dirty negotiating tactic from rich countries by trying to change the rules to favor themselves. “Developed countries are stalling these negotiations as Africa attempts to move them forward,” he stated according to a press release of the environmentalist federation.

Meanwhile, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America (ALBA) also expressed their demands with reference to Copenhagen. ALBA´s Heads of State met on Sunday and Monday at their 8th Summit in Havana, Cuba´s capital city, and ratified the Special Declaration on Climate Change adopted on October 17th in Cochabamba. ALBA is made up by Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and Honduras (country only recognized by the organization under the administration of Manuel Zelaya, ousted by a military coup.)

In the document adopted in October, the ALBA state that developed countries, the main responsible for climate change and its impacts, are not trying to reach fair and just results in Copenhagen. The ALBA countries ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. That is why they strongly reject the attempts to kill and replace these tools with new agreements that erode or modify the binding obligations which developed countries committed to comply with. These obligations include emission reductions, fund transfers to the Global South for mitigation and adaptation, and the transfer of technology so that the economically poor countries can develop in a sustainable way.

ALBA countries also state that the environmental crisis caused by the rise of temperatures is a consequence of the capitalist system, of the long and unsustainable production and consumption model. They highlight as well that developed countries, with only 20 per cent of the world´s population, have a climate debt with developing countries, the future generations and Mother Earth, by consuming their atmospheric space and being responsible for approximately three quarters of the historic global emissions.

They stressed that this climate debt includes an emission debt but also an adaptation debt, which has to be complied with by developed countries through: substantial domestic emissions reductions, transfer of technology to the Global South without intellectual property rights, and transfer of funds for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

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