Call for mobilization towards the Lima Peoples’ Summit

In Lima change the system, not the climate!

Lima, Peru –  December 9 – 12, 2014

Social movements and organizations, trade unions, peasants, indigenous peoples’ communities, women and environmentalist organizations, gathered in Lima, Peru, on the 12h and 13th of August, invited by the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), to support the organization of the Peoples’ Summit that will take place in parallel to the COP 20 of the UNFCCC, from 9 to 12 December 2014. We commit to work together and mobilize ourselves in this process. In this sense, we emphasize the call to participate in the demonstration organized by the Peoples’ Summit on December 10 in Lima.

The climate crisis that affects the planet is a consequence of the capitalist system, its extractive model of production and consumption. This is a model that destroys nature, privileges the interests of transnational corporations, and tramples the rights of peoples.

The climate crisis shows the exhaustion of this system. Confronted with its structural crisis, capital now seeks new ways out that allow its continuity, in order to produce greater concentration of wealth and power, guaranteeing profits for corporations and ruling classes.

As an expression of this strategy of capital, in recent years, processes of privatization, commodification and financialization of nature, expressed in the principles of the green economy, have been intensified. These offer only false solutions to the climate crisis, such as: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects, GMOs, agro fuels, geo-engineering, mega hydroelectric projects, nuclear power plants, fracking, climate-smart agriculture, among others.

We also believe that the model of domination and oppression, sustained by financial debt, impacts the life and the rights of our peoples. Payment of external and domestic debt consumes the already limited resources for social investment – resources that could better be used to deal with the consequences of climate change. Under the pressure of debt, the neoliberal model of capitalist modernization, extractivist and privatizer of everything, persists and is further expanded, with a strong impact as well on political and legal systems.

Moreover, transnational corporations have developed a web of agreements that allow them to ensure their privileges and wealth, while violating human and nature rights and making the sustainability of life impossible. We reject the architecture of impunity driven by large companies and multilateral agencies, in complicity with many governments and expressed in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), and all those that threaten the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples. We denounce and demand a stop to the processes of persecution and even assassination of social activists ordered by corporations in Latin America and around the world. We demand an end to the repression and criminalization of social protests by numerous governments.

We reject and resist the false solutions to the crisis and propose alternatives for Buen Vivir, the sustainability of life, in defense of the commons and of Mother Earth. In this spirit, as part of the solution to the climate crisis we lift up indigenous ways of living and their ‘cosmovision’ in absolute harmony with nature. The climate crisis has affected Latin America through extreme events, landslides, the melting of the glaciers, floods, droughts, among other forms. In Peru, where the Peoples’ Summit will take place, as in many other parts of our region and the rest of the world, the survival of indigenous peoples, natives and peasants is seriously threatened.

We, organizations and social movements, propose real solutions to the climate crisis, based on principles of environmental and social justice, and particularly on climate justice. We support territorial self-determination and self-government and food sovereignty. We also support a global change of the energy matrix that leads to an end to the use of fossil fuels and gives way to energy sovereignty (renewable, decentralized, and community-controlled energies), and solidarity and feminist economies. We fight for an equal relationship between men and women.

Furthermore, the defense of the commons involves the guaranteeing of human rights and the rights of nature.

System change must involve a just transition, to be built with workers and peoples. A just transition implies expanding the concept of work, the recognition of women’s work and a balance between production and reproduction, so that the latter is not an exclusive burden for women in their daily lives. This transition also involves the freedom to organize and the right of collective association, as well as the establishment of a broad social security and social protection system, understood as a human right, as well as public policies that ensure decent work.

With regard to the UN negotiations on climate change, we demand a legally binding, democratic and participatory agreement, based on the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. The global temperature should not increase more than 1.5 degrees. Let us mobilize to support these demands!

We continue in the direction proposed by the Peoples’ Agreement of Cochabamba (April 2010), the Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit Rio + 20 (June 2012) and the declaration of the Social PreCOP on Margarita Island (July 2014). We call on all organizations and social movements around the world to join forces and continue this process of building collective and unified actions. In this regard, we see the Peoples’ Summit in Lima as a key moment of mobilization in 2014. Additionally, there are other significant events that can help strengthen our networking: the international meeting of social organizations towards the COP 21 this month in Paris; the demonstrations in New York around the Climate Summit and the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, both in September; the global days of action for decent work conditions organized by trade union confederations in October; the Social PreCOP on Climate Change in November on Margarita Island, among other opportunities of convergence and mobilization.

The organizations and social movements and international networks, present here, reaffirm the commitment to support the organization of the Peoples’ Summit in Peru. We constitute ourselves as an international support group, to be joined by other international groups, and regional and national entities.

Lima, August 13, 2014.

Signed initially by: Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), World March of Women, Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC), Jubilee South/ Americas (JS/A), La Vía Campesina, Belem Letter Group, General Workers’ Confederation of Perú (CGTP), Transnational Institute (TNI)