Radio Mundo Real

What they are doing at the COP 15 on Climate Change is mainly business, said one of the coordinators of the Climate Justice and Energy Program of Friends of the Earth International, Hildebrando Vélez.

He explained carbon markets and their mechanisms including agrofuels, the new biotech industry and GMOs.

He said the whole chain is linked by a new element that is the value attributed to the atmosphere: “a negotiable value, a commodity”.

“The commodification of the atmosphere, of nature, are in the heart of this model”, said Hildebrando in an interview with Real World Radio at the end of the Klimaforum activity in parallel to the official summit (The Klimaforum gathers hundreds of social movements and organizations of all over the world).

The activity dealt with food and energy sovereignty as the main flags of the struggle for climate justice.

Velez spoke about the big mega projects of the “capitalist model that wants to be green”.

He said the ones that promote them “use repression and militarization, violence against the native peoples of the land”.

The Colombian activist said the poor peoples are the hope because they know how to live with very little.

The poor have not been consumerists, he explained. “If we look at them as a powerful social category, the poor somehow are the power of redemption and transformation of injustice in the world”, he concluded.