Indonesian Civil Society Forum Calls for Climate Justice

Awicaks

Climate change is inevitable. In many parts of Indonesia, ordinary people bear witness and are frequently and directly exposed to changing weather patterns and extreme weather occurrence. Climate change is unequivocal evidence of the bankruptcy of the global development model, which fails to secure the safety, welfare and quality of life of the world's citizens and ignores the people's capacity to maintain sustainable ecological services.

The high levels of greenhouse gases emitted by industrialised countries is due to aggressive economic growth pursued so that individuals can continue to overconsume (often in the mistaken belief that high levels of consumption equal high levels of welfare). The industrialised countries' ecological footprint is highly visible and vividly portrayed in southern developing countries.

It is very unlikely that the developing South will be able to copy northern countries' excessive consumption rate. Without wholehearted and committed political will focused on transforming the development model 'blue print', currently forced upon us by many donors and multilateral financial institutions, it is also highly unlikely that the majority of the world's population will ever experience anything other than the survival mode of life.

The current global development model promotes extreme disparity between the rich minority and the poor majority. A wide variety of social-ecological crises, experienced by the majority of people in the South and grassroots in other parts of the world, go hand in hand with ongoing environmental degradation, social disintegration and loss of access to the sources of life and livelihoods. Famine, malnourished children and the worst impacts of human-induced ecological disaster are prevalent in daily life in the developing South. At the same time our governments are busy exporting to meet northern consumption needs and paying back debts, with just the trash left behind to feed the citizens.

We believe that reducing emissions drastically in order to address climate change is insufficient: it will not permanently reverse the ongoing and recurrent crisis of global inequality and injustice. Therefore we demand that:

1. Those who have benefited from the fruits of aggressive economic growth must now shoulder the responsibility of solving the climate crisis and preventing environmental catastrophes.
2. Mitigation must be based on collective international agreement, seriously taking into account the safety of the people, their right to a good quality of life and their ability to maintain ecological services.
3. All mitigation measures must address citizens' concerns, deal with rehabilitation and recovery of local social and ecological integrity, and fully respect human rights as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples' Rights and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
4. Women's perspectives should be fully taken into account in all mitigation and adaptation policies, including in relation to the different impacts that problems relating to water, energy, health, agriculture, biodiversity, transportation, migration, natural disaster and climate change have on women and men.
5. The cancellation of past odious debts is a precondition for formulating any financial modalities that relate to the resolution of the climate crisis and related environmental catastrophes.
6. Technological solutions including transgenic technologies, nuclear power, bio/agrofuels, CCS/CCT (Carbon Capture and Storage/Clean Coal Technology) can only bring new disasters for the people and threaten the sustainability of the environment. The promotion of these technologies must be stopped.
7. The use of land and natural endowments must contribute to local social welfare and economies, using technologies that do not decrease the environmental carrying capacity and reproduction capability of the land and its natural endowments.
8. The commitment and political will of those southern countries that possess forest and hydrocarbon endowments to retain their carbon must be balanced by an equally ambitious commitment from northern countries to reduce their emissions, as called for in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This must be reflected in a political and economic transformation in production and consumption, that moves away from heavy reliance on raw materials and energy from the South.

(taken from Indonesia's CSO Forum on Climate Justice's Position Paper).

Read more... Sphere: Related Content