Spanish Original
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala
Gathered in the “COP DiverGente - Environmental, Citizen and Autonomous Summit”, we record the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. António Guterres, on the occasion of the COP16: “Developing countries are being plundered. The digitized DNA of biodiversity underpins scientific discovery and economic growth. But developing countries are not benefiting equitably from these advances, despite harboring extraordinary wealth.”
COP 16 is a long way from resolving these imbalances. Despite the glowing speeches with the slogan “Peace with nature”, COP 16 corroborates that it is one more phase of the commodification of nature and of our cultural and biological diversity, against the exclusive sovereignty rights of our Peoples.
The statements of the Colombian Minister of Environment are revealing: “What we are proposing in substance,” she says, “is a new financial pact, so we invite the private sector to build hand in hand a sustainable model that puts the care of nature at the center and enhances the opportunities that arise from it; we hope that this portfolio will be an incentive for capital and progress for all sectors; above all, to mobilize regional development and global leadership”. And she adds: “We must translate this portfolio into three currencies: biodiversity, carbon and hard currency”, defining COP16 as a “Fair of economies” (El Tiempo, September 28, 2024).
We reiterate that COP 16 is the commodification of the biological and cultural diversity of our Peoples, we disagree with this Conference and declare that we are against biopiracy, as appropriation by transnational corporations of the financial benefits of the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources; input for pharmaceutical biotechnology, the agrochemical market, as well as biological weapons and pathogens against the struggles of the peoples, by the great powers of the global north. Colombia -second most biodiverse country on Earth- is a victim, like our “second order” countries, of the plundering of the information of its genetic resources, without any benefit for our Peoples, since the large corporations have already appropriated these resources and created DNA information banks with secret agendas.
Background. The action of our Divergent COP does not begin or end today. It has as background, among others, the most powerful environmental citizen mobilization existing in Colombia, which is the defence of water and the Santurbán Paramo, which joins the struggle for an autonomous water policy where the management of water sources by the communities is respected; the struggle against the sugar mafia in the geographical valley of the Cauca; the defence of the Colombian Massif and Colombian rivers such as the Magdalena, the Cauca and the Atrato; and the forests, such as the Amazon and the Biogeographic Chocó, in indissoluble union with their inhabitants, subjected to ethnocide and ecocide.
Within the most immediate background of this process, undoubtedly, the defence of Gorgona Island occupies a central place, to prevent the construction of military works of a Coast Guard Station, which transgress the mega biodiversity of this fragile ecosystem, included in the Green List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature; works that harm the right of exclusive sovereignty of the ancestral peoples (without prior and informed consultation), which could lead to an ecocide. On April 9, we achieved the defence of these collective rights before the Court of Bogotá, by means of a court order to suspend the questioned environmental license. We demand that the government, without further formalities, proceed to revoke it.
Rights animate our alternative action. From our perspective, we agree with other thoughts that there is an indissoluble union of human beings with nature. Nature is the source of the goods indispensable for life, which is why we are environmentalists. Can a civilization or a society, lacking in solidarity, that does not respect human life and its natural environment, make a pact of “peace with nature”? A civilization defined by hunger, misery and the destruction of nature!
The “exchange of the external debt for nature” (formulated in 1989 by the Economic Commission for Latin America, and the Caribbean ECLAC) is offered to our Peoples as environmental redemption. This is the main banner of the Colombian Government before the Global North, which is equivalent to saying: “he who pollutes pays and he who pays pollutes”. We affirm that what is essential are the indigenous, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, Roma (Gypsy) and peasant peoples, with their inalienable, individual, collective, territorial and self-determination rights. Consequently, we affirm that there is no solution without the peoples. It is they, the irreplaceable protagonists, who in the first place can defend nature and their own rights against colonialism and neocolonialism.
In the Amazon basin, strategic for the climatic balance of the Planet, the brutal offensive of the landowners and cattle ranchers, of the megaprojects of extractivist transnationals continues, with the deforestation and destruction of the jungle, to the detriment of the original Peoples. We agree in the defence of the cross-border unity of all Peoples, so that the exclusive popular sovereignty is internationalist.
Food and nutritional security and sovereignty must be framed within the policies for the dignified survival of humanity, focusing its plans, programs and activities on the continuous improvement of the conditions of existence within the right to a dignified life, plans based on the right of the Peoples to define their own agrarian, production, distribution and consumption policies; with the capacity to self-supply, autonomously and adequately to their communities; the activities, in the peasant and ethnic Peoples' grassroots, must promote the permanent formation and training, linked and directed to the development of the solidarity economy, fundamental basis for the construction of popular power. Our option in rural and agrarian development is the peasant and ethnic peoples' way. Their own economies promote food sovereignty and security in our countries.
The national and international context. In the context of the new technological and energetic revolution of capitalism, in the face of the decline of fossil fuels, imperialist and geopolitical powers are jostling for zones of influence and the natural resources of the planet. One of the causes of the deployment of large military forces in the world and in America is the control of “natural resources” and their sources, under neocolonial relations of extractivism; which, with the participation of the local ruling classes, leads to the destruction of nature and social injustices that harm the rights of the Peoples. In the energy transition, big capital does not abandon its brutal methods of accumulation and reproduction. It is not the purpose of capitalism to “save the Planet”, nor to cease its predatory condition of human beings and nature.
The seas are the fundamental means, in more than 90%, of communication, of commercial and military relations in the world; therefore the inter-oceanic routes and channels, actual or potential, have a privileged place in the “maritime” and military strategy of the USA. In the “Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor” -which includes the Ecuadorian archipelago of the Galapagos Islands, Malpelo and Gorgona of Colombia, Coiba of Panama, Coco of Costa Rica-, the US Southern Command promotes a regional project with extension to the Caribbean Sea (over the isthmic region of the Continent); which, in Gorgona, as everywhere, violates the territorial rights of the ancestral Peoples, their exclusive sovereignty and leads to ecocide.
Our alignment and solidarity is with all Peoples, as today with the Palestinian People subjected to genocide. Some plausible diplomatic actions are not enough, such as the rupture of relations with the government of Israel for the genocide of the Palestinian People; nor are speeches and declarations for peace. Coherence is indispensable and Colombia must leave NATO, the subordination to the Southern Command, renounce the Combined Maritime Force that under US command operates today in the Middle East and exclude any possibility of military agreement with the world geopolitical powers.
In the face of the worrying lurks of the ultra-right aimed at destabilizing and executing a fascist plan, we are on the side of the governmental alternative represented by the Historical Pact, without abandoning our critical approaches, especially in matters of environmental policies. We essentially defend the popular mandate expressed at the ballot box and demand coherence.
Immediate objectives. Our immediate objective is to articulate a citizens' alliance, autonomous from the government and its institutions. We demand that governments fulfil their social obligations and effectively guarantee the rights of civil society. Our action seeks to articulate existing organized environmental and social expressions, to strengthen the defence of human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and peasants, and the rights of nature. We seek to build a process to join wills and citizen powers, to reach consensus on objectives and to agree on mobilization initiatives around proposals that arise from debate and consensus, amid creative dissent. We propose today to strengthen a process of mobilization, debate and action. With a perspective of struggle against economic models predatory of nature and human beings. A cultural effort must be prioritized toward children and youth, to overcome the dominant paradigms that have led us to crisis and war. Our struggle is for life and for rights!
This Manifesto has as its initial bases the “Call” and the “Preliminary Declaration” of this Divergent Environmentalist, Citizen and Autonomous COP. It gathers contributions from previous forums and from this event held in Cali, on October 26 and 27, 2024, with a representative group of environmental and social leaders.
Convening Organizations: Indepaz; Poder Negro; Foundations: Biodiversidad, Pangea, Multipropaz, and Huella de Agua; EkoInc; Fraternales y Revolucionarias; Corporación Compromiso; Movimiento Cívico Conciencia Ciudadana, Comité para la Defensa del Agua y el Páramo de Santurbán, Instituto para la Igualdad de Oportunidades, with an attendance of 120 environmental and social leaders gathered at the Institución Educativa Multipropósitos.
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