- They warn about rural community’s vulnerability and the impacts on agriculture and food.
Servindi, 25 June 2014.- The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo, CLOC), affiliated to the international movement Via Campesina, is preparing to mobilize for the Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Alternative Summit to be held in December in Lima, Peru.
As one of the host organizations of the COP INCA (indigenous and campesinos) to be held from 9 to 12 December this year, the CLOC - Via Campesina will contribute to the debates on the capitalist model and the multiple threats of global climate change in the Andean region.
“The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP20) will be a great opportunity to make visible the struggles of indigenous peoples and peasants in the Andean region” CLOC-Via Campesina stated in a recent press realese.
On early May, a first meeting of Peruvian organizations hosting the Climate Change Alternative Summit of Indigenous Peoples was held. The National Agrarian Confederation (CNA), the Peasant Confederation of Peru (CCP) and the National Federation of Peasant, Artisans, Indigenous and Native Women of Peru (FEMUCARINAP), participated in the meeting.
The three organizations are members of the Unity Pact of Indigenous Organizations, which articulates national indigenous organizations in the country. They are also co-organizing the planned Global March in Defense of Mother Earth at the Alternative Summit.
The meeting was attended by Diego Stack, from CLOC-Via Campesina Secretary, and Marcelo Durão from Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST).
In addition, from 23 to 25 May, CLOC Policy Coordination of the Andean Region met in Bolivia to collectively build an agenda for advocacy towards the COP 20.
Urban centered view skews impacts of climate change in rural areas
The CLOC-Via Campesina noted that there is a tendency to relate climate change to urban populations suffering extreme heat or cold wheather, but little attention is paid to the impacts in rural areas inhabited by indigenous and peasant populations.
To make things worse, some official sources avoid making visible the ravages of climate change on food and agriculture.
In April, the United Nations World Food Programme's (WFP) reported on the high vulnerability of the Andean countries to climate change and the impacts that will cause in the production of food.
According to the "Atlas of food security, disasters and climate change" published by WFP, the Andean countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru face serious threats to their food security due to natural disasters.
The low-income communities are precisely those that have limited capacity to respond to the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters such as droughts, floods, storms, severe frosts and the melting of glaciers.
According to the WFP report, some 190 districts have "serious vulnerability" and 673 "high vulnerability" to climate change in Peru, a situation that will result in an increase of the population in need of food assistance.
In Bolivia, 148 municipalities are in "serious vulnerability" and 32 "high vulnerability", while in Ecuador 389 parishes (municipalities) suffer "serious vulnerability" and 586 "high vulnerability" to climate change.
The paradox of climate change
CLOC-Via Campesina stressed that it seems paradoxical that the Andean peasant peoples, who have contributed least to global warming, are facing the worst effects of climate change.
Indigenous and ancient Andean peasant peoples sustainable practices do not harm Mother Earth and have maintained food production within its capacity for regeneration and replacement, far from current agribusiness model and transnational corporations.
The CLOC-Via Campesina demands that the industrialized countries, which are causing today´s multiple crises, must assumed its climate debt.
According to CLOC-Via Campesina, “the true structural cause of the global crisis is the capitalist system that compromises the present and future reproduction of our Mother Earth”.
"As the crisis deepens, corporations continue to advance over the rights of peoples, democracy and nature, kidnapping the common goods for the benefit of the financial system", concludes CLOC-Via Campesina statement.
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Traducción de Luis Claps para IWGIA y Servindi.
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