The Guardian (UK) today published a piece headlined “Friends of the Earth Among Activists Barred from Copenhagen Conference Center: Security intensifies ahead of mass action to invade summit as 115 world leaders arrive for high-level talks.”
ANNE PETERMAN
Peterman is executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project, based in Vermont. She said: “The domination by corporations, the refusal of the rich countries of the world to take responsibility for the problems they have created and the emphasis on profit-oriented false solutions, have led to a total disenchantment with the process.”
The group with others issued a statement deploring the arrests of accredited participants: “UN COP critics silenced with police action as talks enter final days.” See climatevoices.wordpress.com
SIMONE LOVERA
Based in Paraguay, Lovera is co-founder of the Global Forest Coalition. She said today: “At this point the process [in Copenhagen] has become ridiculously corrupt; many groups have been barred from the meetings. In the streets, police are beating up totally peaceful people.”
NICOLA BULLARD
Bullard, senior associate with the group Focus on the Global South, said that the process is Copenhagen is not achieving “climate justice. … By climate justice we mean that corporate globalization must be stopped and governments must begin just transitions into a low carbon economy. This means food and energy sovereignty, localization of production and consumption and full recognition of indigenous peoples and local community rights.”
LIDY NACPIL
International coordinator of Jubilee South, Nacpil is based in the Philippines. She said: “We should see the problem of climate change as a debt that is owed by the rich countries to the rest of the world, to the developing nations especially. … [It’s] clearly the responsibility of rich countries, of corporations, for creating the problem, for taking up the atmospheric space more than what they are entitled to, so that the rest of the world, the developing world especially, is deprived of that space and now have to deal with the impacts of the problem that they [the rich countries] created.” Nacpil was interviewed on Democracy Now, which is broadcasting from Copenhagen, earlier this week.
Nacpil and other analysts and activists from around the world are reachable via Hallie Boas, hallie@globaljusticeecology.org, and Orin Langelle, orinl@globaljusticeecology.org, who are with the Global Justice Ecology Project. Profiles of those available for interviews are posted at New Voices on Climate Change.
The Guardian (UK) last week broke a story about an apparent behind-the-scenes agreement that would further empower rich countries: “Copenhagen Climate Summit in Disarray after ‘Danish Text’ Leak: Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
