Confronting the Climate Crisis: Preparing for Copenhagen and Beyond

Who we are

The Peoples' Movement on Climate Change (PMCC) seeks to advance the People's Protocol on Climate Change as the Southern peoples' strategy and response to the climate change issue.

About us

About the Protocol

What we advocate

The Peoples' Protocol on Climate Change (PPCC) aims to involve the grassroots sectors in the climate change discourse by developing their capacities for engagement and action. It also aims to pressure governments and international bodies to put the people's perpectives and aspiration on the negotiating table in drawing up a post-2012 climate change framework.

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Why we advocate

The people are the worst affected and yet are the least empowered. It is urgent, more than ever, for the people to unite and create their own spaces to raise their own concerns and issues on climate change.

Syndicate

PPCC's five-point platform for action

Comprehensive and concerted but differentiated and equitable global effort to achieve deep, rapid, and sustained emissions reductions to stabilize CO2 concentrations at 350ppm and hold global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Demand the reparation of Southern countries and the poor by Northern states, TNCs, and Northern-controlled institutions to redress historical injustices associated with climate change.
Reject false solutions that allow Northern states and corporations to continue harming the environment and communities, provide new and greater opportunities for profit, and reinforce and expand corporate control over natural resources and technologies.
Struggle for ecologically sustainable, socially just, pro-people, and long-lasting solutions.
Strengthen the peoples' movement on climate change.

Confronting the Climate Crisis: Preparing for Copenhagen and Beyond

Tuesday, 22 September 2009 08:25

We, the leaders of various people's movements, Community Based Groups, Academia, NGOs and Civil Society Organizations meeting in Nairobi under the banner of Peoples Movement on Climate Change (PMCC) to discuss strategies to confront the Climate Change Crisis for Copenhagen and beyond from 27 to 28 August 2009, Do hereby affirm that:

Irresponsible and unaccountable consumption concentrated in the Industrialised North, and some countries of the South has and continues to cost Africa by creating an ecological crisis;

The people of Africa, as well as other developing nations are creditors of a massive ecological debt;

This ecological debt continues to accrue today through the continued plunder and exploitation of Africa’s resources, its people, labor, and economies;

The groups most affected by climate change are indigenous peoples, women, especially poor women in the rural areas, noting that the phenomenon has a connection with resources such as land or water, and related farming and business activities that they are specifically engaged in;

The negative effects of climate change are sharply felt on agriculture and food sovereignty. This is manifested through soil degradation, deforestation, intensified food insecurity, super weeds, desertification, cultural shock, identity loss and forced consumption of unsafe, untraceable food;

Imposed false solutions (GMOs, Agro-fuels, synthetic fertilisers, agrochemicals) deepen these effects and perpetuate food aid dependency;

The current unbalanced global trade relations and policies between the Industrialised North and the Global South are a contributor to the negative ecological effects of climate change.

Our Calls:

We reject the principle and application of Carbon Trading, which is a false solution based on inventing a perverse property right to pollute. A property right to air;

We demand that human rights and values be placed at the centre of all global, national and regional solutions to the problem of climate change;

We call on colleagues in the social and economic justice movement globally to rigorously campaign against the undemocratic corporate led agendas which will dominate the deliberations and processes at COP 15;

We emphasize that ecological, small holder, agro-biodiversity based food production can ensure food and seed sovereignty and address climate change in Africa.

We support the call by African leaders for reparations on Climate Change and support the initiative of the upcoming AU ministers of environment meeting and call for African governments to embrace more people centered alternatives for the African peoples.

Urge African governments to engage civil society groups positively and collaborate with them to build common national and international responses on the problems of climate change;

Our strategies:

Immediately activate existing networks and resources within our ranks, to build each other's capacities to engage meaningfully on pro-people solutions to the crisis of climate change;

Launch a call to action for a coordinated global response to climate change, based on solidarity and practical collaboration between affected peoples of the Industrialised North and the Global South;

To create synergy of platforms, networks and initiatives amongst African communities most affected by climate change and henceforth use any appropriate political space to articulate their concerns;

That such political spaces should include the annual continental, regional and national social forum spaces, as well as the parallel People's Summit of the people of Southern Africa amongst others;

Facilitate dialogue of women directly affected by climate change to engage with policy makers at both local and national levels as well as regional and global level;

Organize and mobilize communities for action towards food sovereignty-based food self sufficiency through research, articulation of issues and capacity building for informed engagement and alternatives;

To mobilise agricultural, pastoral, fisher folks and other affected communities to have a common face and voice in Copenhagen;

Urgently reform the unbalanced global trade relations and policies, with specific focus on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and their ecological effects on Africa;

To continue our engagement on ecological debt and call for reparations for the climate crisis and seek alternative modes of channeling such resources to the people of Africa;

To support African governments call for reparations and increased space for negotiations for a progressive deal that does not impoverish Africa further;

Commit ourselves to a coordinated follow up on any outputs from Copenhagen.

We the undersigned:

Africa Peoples Movement on Climate Change (A-PMCC)

Nairobi, 30 August 2009.

C/o IBON Africa,
Kirichwa Road, Off Arwings Kodhek,
P.O.Box 5252-00100, Nairobi, Kenya.
Tel: 254 20 3861590
Website: iboninternational.org

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