Jose Arturo Cardenas Yahoo News 19 Apr 10;
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AFP) – Environmental activists, indigenous leaders and Hollywood celebrities are gathering in Bolivia ahead of a self-styled global people's conference on climate change starting Tuesday.
Thousands of attendees intend to highlight the plight of the world's poorest who they argue were largely ignored at the official United Nations-sponsored summit in Copenhagen last December.
The Copenhagen meeting was widely drubbed for failing to produce a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, with Bolivia, along with Cuba and Sudan, among the leading voices questioning the climate accord.
Critics say that deal will not avert a catastrophe and the "People's World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights," which runs through Thursday, aims to draft new proposals for consideration at the next UN meeting in Mexico at the end of the year.
Bolivia's UN ambassador Pablo Solon said the conference, which was expected to be attended by some 18,000 people, was "the only way to get the climate change talks back on track."
And Bolivian Environment Minister Juan Pablo Ramos described the Cochabamba meeting as "a major mobilization to fundamentally influence the next climate summit in Mexico in December."
Developing nations have resisted a legally binding climate treaty, arguing that wealthy nations must bear the primary responsibility for climate change.
Nearly 130 countries, including many of the world's poorest, will be represented at the Cochabamba conference, which symbolically reaches its climax on Earth Day.
Individual participants include an assortment of anti-globalization activists like writer Naomi Klein of Canada and Jose Bove of France.
Also invited is James Cameron, the Canadian-born director of the blockbuster film "Avatar" and James Hansen, a US researcher who was among the first to warn about climate change.
Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, noted for his demonstrations against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, was also due to take part, as was Hollywood actor and political activist Danny Glover.
"We have great extremes of heat and cold, and as a result we're seeing illnesses and outbreaks that once had disappeared," said Nilo Cayuqueo, a Mapuche Indian preparing to attend the summit.
Cayuqueo described seeing the effect of climate change every day in his Argentine homeland, saying "there are no more butterflies in the air or worms in the earth" due to the impact of global warming.
This week's gathering will also give a giant megaphone to a left-leaning bloc of Latin American leaders, including presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales, the indigenous president of host nation Bolivia.
The conference will seek to refine proposals presented by Morales in Copenhagen that included the creation of a world tribunal for climate issues and a global referendum on environmental choices.
Presidents Chavez and Morales were among the harshest critics of the December 2009 Copenhagen conference, arguing that developing countries were largely ignored in the debates.
The conference begins the day after representatives from the world's leading economies gathered in Washington for a preparatory meeting ahead of the December UN summit in Cancun.
The US-led Major Economies Forum comprises 17 countries responsible for the bulk of global emissions and excludes smaller nations such as Sudan whose firebrand negotiators held up sessions at December's Copenhagen summit.
Washington hopes the closed-door talks will allow key nations to quietly assess what they can achieve heading into the next major climate summit in December in Cancun.
"Clearly, there is still a gap between the views of the developing and developed world," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. "We're going to see if we can, through the course of this discussion, narrow that down."
