Radio Mundo Real

The participants of the Climate Caravan will be heading to Colombia early this week as part of a Latin American tour ahead of the United Nations 20th Conference of the Parties (COP 20) on Climate Change to be held in December in Peru. The Caravan was in Venezuela for 20 days, where it visited local communities to learn about their situation.

Venezuela was the Caravan’s first destination in South America, after travelling over 3,500 miles by land and sea since it kicked off in the north of Mexico on March 1st. It visited seven countries in Central America and over 40 communities until reaching Venezuela.

A press release issued by the Climate Caravan when they arrived in
Venezuela read: “Forty different places that are going through conflict and resisting the pillage of common goods (land, territory, air and water); from protecting a river that is being illegally drained to resisting mining corporations that are destroying entire habitats and corporations that want to impose tourist megaprojects, large monoculture plantations and so-called conservation projects that privatize forests. All this is “legitimized” by corrupt governments that answer to corporate interests, which commit systematic human rights abuses”.

Real World Radio interviewed Cristian Guerrero, one of the participants of the Caravan, when he and his colleagues were back in the city of Maracaibo. They went back from Sierra de Perija on Thursday, on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. There, they expressed the concerns of indigenous peoples over coal mining projects and their impact on water streams.

Cristian also talked about other issues, such as the schedule of the members of the Climate Caravan in Venezuela.

For more information (in Spanish), please visit: http://caravanaclimatica.org/