On Sunday, the first round of activities of the “South-South Summit on Climate Justice and Climate Finance” came to an end. The Summit is taking place as part of the activities parallel to the United Nations Conference in Cancun. On December 3rd, the discussions among Latin American, African and Asian social movements will be resumed.

Valdomir participated in this Summit organized by Jubilee South, the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean. The activist highlighted that the main common point among the movements of the different regions is that “the countries and peoples of the South are the creditors of an environmental, climate and historical debt owed by rich countries of the North”. “They caused the global climate and systemic crises that we are suffering now, and the peoples of the South need to organize themselves to demand the payment of this debt”.

The member of Friends of the Earth also said: “We consider ourselves creditors (of this debt), and we believe we have been impoverished by neoliberal and free-market policies and we are resisting in order to move towards climate justice”.

The activist also made reference to the main issues for the social movements present in the UN COP16. First of all, Valdomir demanded industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gases emissions. “This is unavoidable”, he said.

The environmentalist also highlighted that the World Bank, the “so-called development banks” from Africa, Asia and Latin America, the transnational private sector and the big transational corporations, in addition to the industrialized countries, are the “main drivers of the climate crisis”. “They cannot be involved in the real solutions, the World Bank should not have any role in climate finance. The same goes for transnational companies”, he said. “They only provide false solutions as agrofuels, GMOs, large-scale plantations, mega-dams, REDD projects (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), he said.

Valdomir said that the real solutions to the climate crisis are related to the North countries taking responsibility for their actions and he made reference to climate finance. “The rich countries committed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to provide adequate, sufficient and necessary finance so that developing countries can address the impacts”. “They need to comply”, he said.

Valdomir also regretted that industrialized countries “are counting official development funds as climate finance”, when the funds for climate change adaptation and mitigation should be additional.

FoEI´s Economic Justice-Resisting Neoliberalism Program Coordinator urged rich countries to comply with their

commitments under the Climate Convention, especially in terms of emission reductions and finance. “There is no more time, we can´t afford waiting until South Africa 2011 or Seoul in 2012 (the next UN Conferences on Climate Change)”, he said. “This crisis is causing devastation now, our peoples are being already displaced, they had to leave their lands, mangroves, shores, and they were forced to stop producing food due to the impacts of climate change”. And he concluded: “we have no more time left. We need to commit ourselves now, here, at this COP 16 in Cancun”.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real