By David Dudenhoefer, Today correspondent

Story Published: May 3, 2010

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia – Native activists from around the world gathered in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia April 19 – 22 to discuss threats to the global environment and ways to confront them at the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

The impact of the conference, which drew an estimated 35,000 people from more than 120 countries, remains to be seen, but participants say it was a diverse and democratic gathering that produced some important initiatives for the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Mexico in early December. Those initiatives include proposals for the creation of an International Tribunal for Climate Justice and a draft Universal Declaration of Mother Earth’s Rights, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

The conference was the brainchild of Bolivian President Evo Morales, Aymara, who was critical of the weak agreement reached at the U.N. Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen last December. The landlocked, South American nation of Bolivia is responsible for a tiny fraction of global carbon emissions, yet is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate changes caused by those emissions.

Andean glaciers that provide water for many Bolivian communities are shrinking due to the warming climate, which has resulted in water shortages and crop failures in Bolivia’s highlands and has led Aymara and Quechua Indians to abandon their villages. Many of those climate refugees end up in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, where about 30 percent of drinking water comes from glacier runoff. Yet that city’s poorest neighborhoods, such as the sprawling El Alto, have only sporadic water service during the dry season.

Morales has demanded that industrialized nations pay reparations for the damage their carbon emissions cause in countries such as Bolivia. He explained that he organized the Chochabamba conference because the leaders of the industrialized nations failed to fulfill their obligation to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen.

“The major threats discussed at the conference are very clearly represented in the Andes. Bolivia is really facing a crisis,” noted Jose Barreiro, Taino. Barreiro, who serves as assistant director for research at the National Museum of the American Indian, attended the World Peoples’ Conference with activists Milo Yellow Hair, Oglala Sioux, and Tom Cook, Mohawk.

“Cochabamba is a beautiful place. We had a surreal experience. We always wanted to see an indigenous government and president address indigenous issues throughout North, South and Latin America,” Yellow Hair said.

The three attended a lunch on the last day of the conference – Earth Day – at the invitation of President Morales. The informal affair included music and joyous dancing.

In speeches and press conferences during the event, Morales criticized everything from the reluctance of industrialized countries to cut their carbon emissions to the impacts of factory farming. He called for a revitalization of indigenous traditions to help save the planet and said the principal cause of environmental destruction is capitalism.

“As people who inhabit and who respect this Mother Earth, we have the ethical and moral right to say that the central enemy of Mother Earth is capitalism,” Morales said.

The Bolivian conference was small compared to Copenhagen, where approximately 450,000 delegates and activists gathered, but participant Marlon Santi, a Shuar Indian and president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) said he found the Cochabamba gathering much more democratic than the U.N. conference in Copenhagen. “This conference was more diverse, there was more participation by social organizations from around the world and especially by indigenous peoples.”

About 40 governments sent representatives to Chochabamba and three other heads of state joined Morales on the conference’s last day – presidents Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega, of Nicaragua and Rafael Correa, of Ecuador – all of whom are members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, which Chavez created with Fidel Castro to counter U.S. influence in Latin America.

Santi, whose organization represents more than a dozen indigenous peoples and nearly one-quarter of Ecuador’s population, observed that while capitalism is clearly a problem, the socialist government of Correa has also taken steps that threaten the environment and Native communities.

“I believe that socialism and capitalism are the same. I think that the hope for the world lies in the indigenous cosmovision (worldview), which is based on respect for Mother Earth. It doesn’t have a political or ideological agenda, nor does it obey economic interests, rather it is based on reciprocity and on respecting Mother Earth, on respecting nature and human beings as part of nature,” he said.

Santi hopes the conference will help to spread this view and communicate Native peoples’ perspective to the world’s leaders and non-indigenous citizens. “I think that concerns about climate change and the rights of Mother Earth are shared by the entire world.”

Morales called upon indigenous activists to attend the next U.N. climate conference in Cancun, Mexico in order to pressure the leaders of industrialized nations to take significant steps to combat climate change.

“It is more important to respect the rights of Mother Earth than human rights, because if the predatory actions and irrational industrialization provoke the destruction of the planet, there won’t be any human beings left.”

© 1998 - 2010 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved  To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.indiancountry.com