Category Archives: COP 17

Sunday Tribune: Climate clash as groups hijack city rally

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http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/climate-clash-as-groups-hijack-city-rally-1.1191755

By Yusuf Omar and Amanda Khoza

Climate clash as groups hijack city rally

It was meant to be a rally to highlight civil society’s united demand for action against climate change, but tensions flared as political groups hijacked the Global Day of Action rally through the Durban city centre on Saturday.

Chants of “amandla” (“power” in Zulu) and “amalungelo ethu” (our rights) could be heard inside the International Convention Centre, venue of the COP17 conference as about 5 000 people took to the streets.

While civil society groups, trade unions, faith-based organisations and members of the public rallied against climate change, two political groups used the platform to push their own agendas.

It was a bitter twist to an otherwise peaceful event, which started at about 10am at the bottom of West Street. But shortly after the march began, the ANC Youth League, employed as COP17 volunteers and dressed in green, taunted the Democratic Left Front, a new political movement which carried posters saying “10 more years of Zuma” and sang anti-government songs.

The two groups burnt each other’s posters and fist fights broke out. Riot police had to intervene throughout the march. “The ANCYL are against our march. We are socialists,” said Democratic Left co-ordinator Alan Goatley. “We are a front for many different community organisations and interest groups. We want service delivery. They (the ANCYL) tore our placards and burnt our flags because we chanted anti-government sentiments.”

“I’m in solidarity with everyone here – but not them. They are insulting our president. These are not socialists. They are anarchists hiding as socialists,” said ANCYL KZN official Jomo Sibiya.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi led a group of Clicks workers and union members who demanded a R350 pay rise. Asked what this had to do with climate change, Vavi said: “It’s the right time and place to be discussing this. Jobs and climate change go hand in hand.”

Also part of the crowd was the Right2Know movement, rallying against the Protection of State Information Bill. The National Union of Mineworkers toyi-toyied for more mining jobs, contradicting environmental calls for the end of coal mining. There were also many NGOs and civil society marchers who blew vuvuzelas, calling for climate action.

No one cried at the New Orleans-style funeral procession for “King Coal”, as marchers carried his coffin. Others carried a gigantic inflated black-and-white octopus representing greedy multinational companies.

Durban-born Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace, laughed at how, in 1985, he was arrested during an anti-apartheid march on the same street. He said: “The turnout has been decent but we need much more. This is about the unions, and labour movements, not simply NGOs, because climate change affects everybody. We want the COP17 negotiators to listen to the people, not the polluters. Every year 350 000 people die because of climate change.”

Tasneem Essop, a spokeswoman for WWF International, marched in a black-and-white panda bear T-shirt. “We want to save the Kyoto Protocol. It’s not looking good, but we still have a week. We want the heads of state to be bold.”

However, many delegates say an extension of the protocol, or the signing of a new Durban Protocol, is looking highly unlikely. “COP17 does not represent the voices of the poor. We are here to tell people how we are living in the shacks and how climate change is affecting our lives,” said Bandile Mdlalose, secretary general of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers movement. “Our shacks have been demolished by the floods.”

Outside the ICC, leaders from each organisation made speeches before their statements were handed to UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.

Many delegates were in full support. “We are saying a lot of what these protesters are saying. We are in full support because public support is very important,” said a US NGO delegate.

Both UN and ICC security refused to open the gates when the Sunday Tribune asked to leave the premises.

Meanwhile, Sue Bannister, head of the city’s Strategic Projects Unit, said everything had gone “well”. “We’ve had no major problems.” The biggest challenge was caused by the weather.

“Any roof that could leak, did leak. So there were mop-up operations. But those have all been handled,” she said. She didn’t expect problems when state leaders arrived.

La Via Campesina Declaration in Durban

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http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1174:la-via-campesina-declaration-in-durban&catid=48:-climate-change-and-agrofuels&Itemid=75

La Via Campesina Declaration in Durban

Assembly of the Oppressed, 5th December 2011, Durban, South Africa

As the Assembly of the Oppressed we are gathered here to demand the transformation of the entire neo liberal capitalist system. The fight against climate change is a fight against neoliberal capitalism, landlessness, dispossession, hunger, poverty and the re-colonization of the territories of the people’s of Africa and the global South. We are here to declare that direct action is the only weapon of the oppressed people of the world to end all forms of oppression in the world.

We are here in Durban, South Africa where the 17th United Nations Conference of Parties is taking place and are discussing false solutions to the climate crisis. And we can see that the future of Mother Earth and of humanity is in peril as those responsible for nature’s destruction are attempting to escape their responsibility and erase history.

We, La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasants, small-scale and agricultural family farmers, is severely dismayed at the attempts of the developed countries to further escape their historic responsibility to make real emission cuts and push for more false and market based solutions to the climate crisis.

Here in Durban, they are discussing a “new mandate” as an outcome of the COP 17, one which contains market mechanisms and a voluntary pledge system in order to move away from the mandated program of working towards legally binding commitments to cut emissions. Also, developed countries are working hard to escape their historical responsibility and not pay their climate debt by pushing for a green climate fund that involves private capital and the World Bank. Finally, there is a push to include agriculture in the negotiations, treating agriculture as a carbon sink rather than a source of food and livelihood. For La Via Campesina, with this trend of negotiations, it is better to have no deal than a bad deal that condemns humanity and our planet to a future of climate catastrophe.

We are now at the worst moment for agriculture and small farmers and for nature. The impacts of climate change are steadily worsening, leading to harvest failures, destruction of habitats and homes, hunger and famine and loss of lives. The future of humanity and the planet is in critical danger and if these false solutions push through, it will be a catastrophe for nature, future generations and the whole planet.

We therefore demand to all governments in the negotiations:

– For all countries from the global South to stand up for their people and to defend the people and the planet with dignity and conviction. The government of South Africa has already sold out its people in this regard.

– For all the developed countries to live up to their historical responsibility of causing this climate crisis and to pay their climate debt and commit themselves to at least 50% domestic emission reductions based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.

– Stop industrial farming that promotes pollution and climate change through high levels of use of petroleum based chemicals

– Governments must support agro-ecology

– For all countries to listen and work for their people and not be under the control of transnational corporations.

– For all countries to stop trying to save capitalism and making the people, including small farmers, pay for their economic and financial crisis.

We as La Via Campesina, demand the implementation of the people’s global agreement on climate agreed on in Cochabamba. And here in Durban and in a thousand Durbans, we strongly reiterate our solutions to the climate crisis.

– Further global warming must be limited to a rise of 1 degree Celsius only.

– Developed countries must make domestic emission reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.

– Developed countries must commit to payment of their climate debt and give funding from at least 6% of their GDP. All funds for this climate finance must be public and be free from the control of the World Bank and private corporations.

– All market mechanisms must be stopped, including REDD, REDD++ and the proposed carbon markets for agriculture.

We reiterate that there will be no solution to climate change and the predatory neo-liberal system that causes it, without the liberation of women, and rural women in particular, from age old patriarchy and sexist discrimination. We therefore demand as part of comprehensive action against patriarchy and sexism:

The promotion of women’s land access and rights through targeted redistribution
Laws and policies must be made responsive to the particular needs of women

We as La Via Campesina, demand an end to the commodification of our Mother Earth reject the mechanisms of the carbon market. Furthermore, we reject the proposed inclusion of a work program on agriculture in the negotiations and reject all proposals of market mechanisms surrounding agriculture.

We as La Via Campesina and the people of the world have the real solutions to the climate crisis and we call on all governments to heed them before it is too late. At this assembly of the oppressed we declare to the people of the world that the solutions are in their hands. Through building social movements and mobilizing popular struggles for social change the world’s people will overcome the close alliance between governments and multinational corporations that is strangling the world. In Africa at the moment this alliance is perpetrating one of the biggest land grabs in history, which would mean more chemical-industrial farming, more poverty and exploitation, and more climate change. The only serious counter to this is the land occupations initiated by the landless themselves. From the perspective of food sovereignty, agrarian reform and climate justice, these land occupations deserve the fullest support.

Sustainable peasant’s agriculture and agroecology cool down the planet.

Food Sovereignty is the solution!

Peasant agriculture is not for sale!

Globalize the struggle, Globalize the hope!

Padkos: Food Sovereignty

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Monday 05 December 2011

http://churchland.org.za/padkos.php

Today is ‘International Food Sovereignty Day to Cool Down the Earth’

Today, La Via Campesina, the international network of movements of peasants, landless, rural workers, and small farmers, has called for an ‘International Food Sovereignty Day to Cool Down the Earth’ during the COP17 civil society mobilisations. In this serving of Padkos, CLP looks at the history, politics and content of food sovereignty.

Today we are compelled to ask: how is it possible to remain faithful to the struggles and spirit that animated food sovereignty? In the light of unfolding developments at COP 17, the question must not be avoided. In CLP’s view, the official COP 17 process represents an “(anti)politics that is dead and morbid” but we also insist that “much of ‘civil society’ praxis [alongside the official processes] is deeply embedded in the politics of the terrain of the state – it too, is dead and morbid”.

We conclude that: “If food sovereignty is our necessary future – and it is – it will be led and thought by those who suffer most under the current crisis and who think its resistance. … The struggle for popular sovereignty, as much over food as any other aspect of our collective life, will require ongoing rupture and rebellion from below – certainly against capital and the state at all levels. But that struggle is also against any of the ways in which the power of a few over the many denies human freedom, even when that’s in the manipulative ‘representation’ of people by organs of civil society or against the domination of ordinary people by unaccountable and power-hungry practices and individuals who emerge from time-to-time within social movements”.

Mahala: “Africa is Under-Polluted”

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http://www.mahala.co.za/reality/africa-is-under-polluted/

“Africa is Under-Polluted”

Benjamin Fogel

The International Conference Center (ICC) in Durban where the COP 17 talks are taking place is located between a Nedbank office block and a mall. A location that effectively symbolizes what ultimately stands in the way of genuine environmental action: state-protected big business and the gratifying wonders of consumerism.

People marched on the ICC this past Friday to protest reports that developed nations have basically written the event off and are refusing to commit to any serious cuts in emissions until at least 2020. Former Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, declared: “If this deal goes through, one third of the planet will be laid [to] waste.” He meant the Global South and Africa in particular. As Larry Summers, a former Obama-Clinton advisor, Harvard President and Wall Street stooge, once put it, “Africa is under-polluted!”

Some 1000 activists decided to storm the gates walling off the conference from the rest of Durban, taking the police entirely by surprise. The shock led to a potentially incendiary moment. There were enough protestors to initially overwhelm the skeleton police presence and they called in reinforcements from behind the walled-off COP 17 compound. Soon police vans and 30 cops in riot gear rocked up looking confused. They failed to stop people from the Rural Women’s Assembly from occupying the designated space for protest at Speaker’s Corner, but rallied fast and set up a perimeter between the entrance to COP 17 and the street. They tried to push the crowds back towards the street where they wouldn’t disturb the delegates. General Cele might be gone, but the legacy of his Michael Bay inspired policing tactics remains firmly embedded within the culture of South Africa’s finest.

On Saturday, it was soon apparent that the police had a late night planning session with the Durban municipality. They wouldn’t be caught off guard again. The designated protest route was changed repeatedly by the Municipality. It felt like a deliberate attempt to isolate “radical elements” and show them who is boss. Durban city authorities eventually attempted to block the march from taking place at all. The city had to be taken to court for the march to happen. They backed down at the last minute but insisted on an alternate route far removed from the ICC. The case is sure to have national significance – hopefully exposing the tendency to officially excuse mega-events, UN conferences and the World Cup, from the peoples’ constitutional right of freedom of assembly.

Thousands of protestors finally marched across Durban. A march besieged by a group of pro-Zuma ANC supporters dressed in green ‘COP17 volunteer’ shirts. I personally witnessed them throwing bottles and stones. They ripped up placards while openly acknowledged they were ANCYL members. Part of a local pro-Zuma, anti-Malema faction. They sung ‘Mshini wami’ and chanted slogans in support of COP 17. One of them shouted at the Rural Women Assembly, “How much Lobola for you bitch?”

But, what were pro-Zuma supporters doing harassing protestors on the International Day of Climate Action?

They even admitted to being sent to disrupt the march by local ANC branches. Over 400 marshals failed to intervene. The police actively isolated the Democratic Left Front (DLF) from joining the rest of the protest. ANCYL cadres then physically attacked several of the DLF contingent. Ayanda Kota, part of the DLF group, told me later: “What we experienced yesterday was another example of the fascism for sale of the ANCYL and the treachery of the COSATU leadership.” He suggested COSATU was behind suppressing non-alligned, poor, militant and radical voices all over the country. At a subsequent press conference, the DLF and Desmond Desai from the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, both noted that these ANCYL “Green Bombers” were on the Durban City payroll, representing both the UN and the Zuma regime’s desire for a seamless global media event.

We thought, while marching, that the ANC “agent provocateurs” were part of the broader protest action, at first. Then we noticed they were singing songs calling for Juju’s head! Allegedly some 200 of these Green Bombers were paid R180 to disrupt the protest. They also seem to have been prompted to target DLF supporters and grassroots organizations supporting the “1 million climate jobs campaign”. This section of the march was deliberately separated with the help of marshals supplied by COSATU. The march itself was comprised largely of NGOs and COSATU members. Harassment of protestors while police stood back went on for over 4 hours suggesting co-ordination and complicity between the police and the ANC crowd. A complicity recorded repeatedly in political violence around Durban.

Universally loathed, Durban City Manager, Mike Sutcliffe, is a man not known for his tolerance of dissenting voices. Rehad Desai reports that Sutcliffe wanted to restrict the march to a manageable 100 people. Failing that, he tried to keep the march out of the CBD. Only after being confronted by protest lawyers representing civil society, was the march allowed.

The DLF has initiated a criminal case against the individuals responsible for the violence towards the protestors as well as a civil case against the city of Durban, the mayor and city manager in particular. Sutcliffe and the Municipality have developed a reputation over the years for criminalizing politics outside of the official ruling channels. The result is a disturbing conflation between the local ANC and the state.

Abahlali baseMjondolo, an independent grassroots organisation, has been on the receiving end of state violence in Durban for years. Its members are often attacked. Infamously, in 2009, the Kennedy Road pogrom took place. Hundreds of Abahlali members were illegally expelled from the informal settlement leading to several violent deaths. The Durban municipality tried to control awareness of the assault by charging the victims. The case was thrown out of court earlier this year.

On the face of it, it seems that a UN Conference that amounts to a superficial stage-managed show of grappling with imminent environmental collapse without really committing anyone to anything, is happening in a city run by a municipality that pays thugs to attack legitimate protest.

How apt.

M&G: Dissonance in Durban

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http://mg.co.za/article/2011-12-03-dissonance-in-durban

Dissonance in Durban

Faranaaz Parker

A colourful mass of protestors marched through the streets of Durban on Saturday morning, creating a spectacle that was worlds apart from the solemn climate change negotiations under way in the city this week.

They demanded that the voices of ordinary people be heard in the negotiations. Some protestors called for climate justice while others chanted “Panzi COP17 that does not represent the people, panzi!”

Cosatu Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi addressed the group, which marched to the Durban International Convention Centre where the negotiations are being held, saying “We demand that they hear us and we demand action.”

“The polluters are here to filibuster and waste time while Africa is burning,” said Vavi. He said multinationals were polluting the environment and people were suffering in the name of job creation while big companies earned billions for stakeholders.

Some 15 000 delegates have arrived in Durban to attend the conference, providing a huge boost to tourism in KwaZulu-Natal. But Vavi reminded the protestors that COP17 was “not about tourism”. “This must be about saving our world from the polluters who continue to act recklessly,” he said.

In the rain

COP President Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary Christiana Figueres came out into the rain to meet the protestors and accepted their memorandum.

Nkoana-Mashabane assured the protestors that the COP summit would be run in a transparent and inclusive manner and that it would focus on problem-solving and “not become just another gathering”.

The women graciously accepted the memorandum but some in the crowd heckled Figueres, calling her a “liar” who needed to do more.

The march brought together a host of civil society organisations from around the world. There were organised environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, a host of green-clad Durban city volunteers, rural women’s groups in sunhats, and indigenous people in feathered headdresses. There were also representatives from the Landless People’s Movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, and the Haiti-based Papaye Peasant Movement.

Halfway through the march, members of faith-based organisations and a group of singing, bell-ringing Hare Krishna adherents joined the march.

Clown, dreadlocks and more

There were also protestors who decided to lie down in the street and roll along, as well as topless women, juggling clowns and others on unicycles, people with giant puppets, and an articulated octopus float wearing an ‘Uncle Sam’ hat. Young dreadlocked women in flowing clothing stood on street corners blowing bubbles.

Riot police, backed up by Nyalas and water cannons, were on standby during the march and police seemed to be taking no chances after members of the Rural Women’s Assembly and the Democratic Left Front engaged in a stand off with police outside the ICC on Friday.

There was little in the way of violence at the march on Saturday, although supporters from political groups got into a scuffle about who should be allowed to march at the front of the procession. It was decided that Cosatu should march in the front and centre, to separate supporters of the ANC from those of the DLF.