The Dominion - Copenhagen

The Roads We Travelled

Moira Peters — Wed, 18 May 2011 05:39:02 +0000

Building the Toronto People's Assembly

TORONTO—Copenhagen, December 15, 2010. The day before what CNN referred to as “the most hotly anticipated action of the summit,“ nearly 1,000 activists huddled together in a Danish squat that became the focal point of grassroots mobilization against the United Nations annual Coalition of the Parties (COP) Climate Change Conference.

Lisa, an American activist and veteran of 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, delivered a final pitch for the plan of action while maps were distributed, blocs were formed and participants felt the growing anticipation of being part of a plan to change the course of history.

“We will use the combined mass of our bodies to push through the police lines and then break through the fence,” she announced. “Once we are inside the UN grounds we will secure a safe space where delegates coming out from the conference can join us and together we will form a People’s Assembly.”

As much as has been said about the day of December 16—the “Reclaim Power” People’s Assembly in Copenhagen—the prior two weeks of frantic meetings, alliance building and constant striving to create an inclusive and horizontal process were critical in creating a new model for organizing that could be exported around the world. This action in Copenhagen was to inspire the Toronto People’s Assembly, a global gathering held in parallel to the 2010 G8/G20 summits.

Cochabamba, April 2010. Bolivia hosted the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Toronto activists in Cochabamba observed a conference that, while engaging the grassroots participation of 30,000 activists from across the globe, was largely organized from the top down. The Toronto People’s Assembly drew much inspiration from Cochabamba, which also acted as a guide for the Assembly to be critical of its own process.

The main development to come out of Cochabamba was a collective understanding that the best way to answer the international call for justice is to build your struggle locally. One of the lessons drawn from Bolivia was the need to put in place impactful structures to build and maintain a movement that is substantial, consistent and long-term. The call from Cochabamba was to build a worldwide climate justice movement.

Toronto, May/June 2010. The weeks in May immediately following Cochabamba and in June prior to the G20 were a crucial and transformative period for the social and climate justice communities. Ongoing talks and discussions evaluated which elements could be drawn from Cochabamba.

“The People’s Assembly is an extension of the dialogue, organization, and mobilization that took place in Cochabamba. It’s an instrument through which local activists can create new spaces, and generate new possibilities,” said organizer Raul Burbano, who is also active with Toronto’s Latin America Solidarity Network.

As June 2010 and the G20 grew closer, a call was put out through the Toronto Community Mobilization Network for a day of resistance for climate and environmental justice during the G8/G20. Responding to this call, a circle of unaligned climate justice and environmental organizers started meeting weekly in a park on Church Street. Two plans for action emerged. One was a rally that would become known as the Toxic Tour. The other was the People’s Assembly on Climate Justice (PACJ).

The G20 hit Toronto like a storm, and the collective response was quick and widespread, with a resounding call to establish new relationships that was not only heard, but also understood.

In the aftermath of the G20, the organizing community would suddenly find itself in a new, highly charged environment. After the Toronto People’s Assembly on June 23, 2010, and through July and August, the intensity of organizing would remain high, with action camps across the country and groups in Toronto together emphasizing the immediate need for movement building. There would be no doubt that a second PACJ would take place.

Maxim Winther, a participant in the June 2010 Assembly, said, “I don’t really know what the G20’s like because it’s behind two layers of fence and it’s costing billions of dollars and I’m not seeing any of that. All I see is police roaming the streets.“

Police from across the country turned the downtown Toronto hub into what the Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin would later call “a time period where martial law set in the city of Toronto, leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.”

Despite this atmosphere, the Toronto PACJ was vibrant and successful, and another People’s Assembly was organized on December 4, 2010—the Worldwide Day of Climate Action. While the first PACJ focused on defining the meaning of climate justice, the second focused on the collective work of building a stronger movement for climate justice in Toronto. For both Assemblies, the starting point for participants to generate ideas was a “framing question”—a direct import from the Reclaim Power Assembly in Copenhagen.

The main innovation introduced in Toronto was a round of break-out groups, allowing more space for the Assembly’s horizontal process both to generate ideas and also to orient itself for action by harnessing the intimacy and energy of small group work. Beginning with the December 2010 Assembly, Toronto activists took the working-group model that emerged from Cochabamba and re-framed it as a series of permanent action-oriented bodies known as People’s Councils. People’s Councils included Movement Building, Outreach & Education, Group Coordination, Building Alternatives Spaces, Mass Action & Political Pressure, and Personal Development.

Both assemblies generated more than 200 participants and more than 40 endorsements from community groups in Toronto.

“It was very participatory and very open,” said Alaynah Smith. The new activist who travelled to Toronto from Michigan said the People’s Assembly was “unlike the G8/G20 where we can’t see stuff...and its really kind of almost a mystery. But this was open to the public; anybody could come and we all had a voice equally.”

The Assembly is an open collective dialogue which organizers have termed “radical horizontality.” Within the Assembly, radical horizontality is a two-pronged process which allows participants, through two rounds of break-outs and intermittent plenaries, to first generate ideas, and then to develop and synthesize them with the goal of establishing mandates for the People’s Councils. Radical horizontality extends to everyday life, seeking to establish shared responsibility and accountability in the entire community, making local resistance and organizing sustainable.

From its beginning, the Assembly focused on being a point of convergence inclusive to a wide range of organizations: women’s groups, anti-poverty, food security and environmental and migrant justice organizations, cyclists, co-operatives, collectives, and so on. To transform communities, the Assembly posited closing the gap between activism and everyday life.

Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan socio-political theorist, explained how “in the new pattern of action...mobilization starts in the spaces of everyday life and survival, putting in [motion] an increasing number of social networks or, that is to say, societies in movement, self-articulated from within.” The People’s Councils were modeled on the hope of establishing this sort of organizing on a permanent basis, to make the leap from activism to organized communities.

The post-G20 realities of community organizing in Canada presented a challenge, and a new dynamic that calls for activists to develop, out of necessity, new methods of organizing. This requires ingenuity, responsibility, and a long-term willingness to sculpt a new grassroots paradigm.

Small beginnings and creative examples were observed in Canada during the months following the G20.

Action camps took place throughout the country during the summer of 2010, themed around climate justice, Indigenous solidarity, non-violent direct action and tar sands/pipeline resistance. Organizers built links between cities and strengthened regional networks. Simultaneous People’s Assemblies were organized in December 2010 across Canada; organizers in Montreal began to develop a climate justice co-op, and the climate justice community in Toronto established a permanent People’s Assembly. Climate justice organizers have used momentum from the G20 to create their own grassroots infrastructure, without waiting for existing infrastructure to get on board, or being dependent on external funding.

The People’s Assembly in Toronto rose on the tide of a paradigm shift towards popular assemblies as an alternative to the failure of international institutions and nation-states to address the urgent global threat presented by the climate crisis.

At the same time, a global climate justice movement has grown organically, shaped by horizontal structures, and differentiating itself from mainstream environmental voices through a deep anti-capitalist analysis.

The year 2010 presented the organizing community in Canada with two major opportunities to mobilize—one in Vancouver to oppose the Olympics and one in Toronto to resist the G20. Toronto organizers took this confluence of factors as an opportunity, and the People’s Assembly was one outcome.

By eschewing traditional hierarchies, the open and inclusive process of the Assembly is an invitation for communities and organizers to come together and build solidarity, share skills and coordinate efforts.

“The aim of the People’s Assembly in Toronto,” an organizer told The Dominion, “is for the climate justice community and its allies to utilize it as a vehicle or a space through which it can operate as a movement, a self-articulated space that will allow it to remain a movement.”

Kimia Ghomeshi, an organizer of the June Toronto People’s Assembly, told a Toronto Media Co-op reporter that the entire process was “highly participatory which we so rarely see in Canada...What will change things is the solutions being home-grown because then they’re relevant to the local context and people feel more ownership in creating that change rather than it being imposed on them.”

This article was produced by the Toronto Media Co-op for A People's Forecast: The Climate Justice Issue, our 2011 special issue. To read more articles as they are published, click here.For more news driven by readers and not advertisers, check out www.toronto.mediacoop.ca

People's Assembly Image

Toronto vs. Cochabamba

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:11:27 +0000

G20 to consolidate control over climate negotiations

MONTREAL—A small group of the wealthiest and largest carbon-polluting nations will use this summer’s G8 and G20 summits to advance an unjust global climate deal through unrepresentative, anti-democratic channels, say climate campaigners, Indigenous groups and representatives of nations in the global South.

According to documents released in February by the G20 Research Group—associated with the Munk Centre for International Studies—the European Union (EU) wants to “pursue a new deal on global warming through the G20, since the December 2009 Copenhagen conference of nearly 200 countries led to unwieldy negotiations that accomplished little.”

“This speaks to the inability of rich countries to recognize [their] climate debt, and speaks to their rejection of the UNFCCC process and a move to a much more undemocratic process,” said Andrea Harden, Climate and Energy Campaigner for the Council of Canadians.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established in 1992 and has met regularly since 1995 to create solutions to climate change. With 192 countries now party to the Convention, it is considered by many nations and civil society groups as the most democratic international forum for reaching an effective global climate treaty.

In Copenhagen, the “Circle of Commitment”—a group of wealthy nations, including the US and the UK—secretly circulated a document known as the Danish Text. It recommended consolidating climate negotiating power in wealthy nations, and placing control of climate financing under the purview of the World Bank. The result of the summit was the Copenhagen Accord, a US-backed, non-binding agreement that was similar in scope to the Danish Text. While supporting the UNFCCC as a forum for international negotiations, many nations and climate campaigners are reluctant to support the Accord.

“The Copenhagen Accord is a weak document that is not going to address the issue of climate change in any meaningful way,” said Harden. “The lack of any mandatory emissions targets means that whole countries will be facing dire consequences thanks to our government’s inaction.”

Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s chief envoy to the United Nations, told The Dominion such big power manoeuvring would undermine a just global response to climate change.

“Bolivia believes that on an issue that affects the whole of humanity, we cannot make decisions in small unrepresentative forums, whether it is a group of 20 nations or in secret dinners behind the UN facade as we saw in Copenhagen,” said Solon. “That is why we are calling for climate change to be brought back into the full UNFCCC process, and are supporting just, effective proposals put on the table by civil society organizations.”

While Canada and US politicians have refused to publicly acknowledge their policy shift, critics argue their statements about the UNFCCC processes indicate as much.

In the weeks after Copenhagen, head US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing stated “it is...impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail.”

Critics’ speculation that the Copenhagen Accord would be used to undermine the UNFCCC was confirmed in early April 2010 at the Bonn intersessional meeting. The United States announced that nations refusing to sign the Accord would be ineligible for financial aid to developing nations to mitigate climate change.

“The US is acting like a bully, strong-arming the most vulnerable countries to get them to sign onto an ineffective and unfair deal that will not move the world closer to a just climate agreement,” said Kate Horner of Friends of the Earth in a statement to the media.

“This is in their rights, but unfair and clearly an attempt to punish Bolivia,” said Solon. “What kind of negotiation is it where you lose money if you disagree?” He said Bolivia’s negotiating positions would not change because of such threats. “We are a country with dignity and sovereignty and will maintain our position.”

Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice denied rich countries would prefer to work outside the UNFCCC. When asked by The Dominion, he also pledged support for the Copenhagen Accord.

“Close to 90 per cent of the world’s emissions are now governed under the Copenhagen Accord,” Prentice said. “The [government’s] intent is to proceed through a multilateral process to turn that accord into a treaty. It may be discussed but the focus will be the multilateral process to turn this into a binding treaty, and that is not the role of the G8 or G20.”

For representatives of Indigenous communities, drowning island nations and nations of the global South, the Copenhagen Accord represents a step in the wrong direction.

“The Copenhagen Accord has no legal standing—it is a declaration of defeat by nations determined to avoid their responsibilities for climate change,” said Solon.

Canada has come under fire as a major destabilizing force in international climate politics, and recently lowered its emissions targets to meet those of the United States.

“Our economies are integrated to the point where it makes absolutely no sense to proceed without harmonizing and aligning a range of principles, policies, regulations and standards with respect to combating climate change,” said Tracy Lacroix-Wilson of Environment Canada.

Under the self-regulation measures of the Copenhagen Accord, the Conservative government has decided to harmonize its emissions targets with the United States at 17 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020.

When measured against the Kyoto Protocol’s 1990 base year, the Copenhagen Accord will only reduce emissions by three per cent. This is half of Canada’s legally binding targets under the Kyoto Implementation Act, and far below what climate scientists are calling for.

Critics point out that the Accord leaves 75 countries involved in the UNFCCC negotiations out of future climate plans, adding weight to speculations that Canada and other major polluting economies aim to undermine the UNFCCC.

“It is essentially the G20 that is holding back the international process to achieve a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate treaty,” said Kimia Ghomeshi, G8/20 Campaign Co-ordinator for the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. “It is these industrialized, wealthy countries that are historically responsible for causing climate change and therefore have the greatest responsibility to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

Gomeshi argues that without comprehensive, science-based targets enshrined in a global treaty, 76 nations “representing approximately 80 per cent of global emissions” will need to make cuts internally. Without enforcement measures, there are no forums for the most adversely affected nations to hold polluters accountable.

To address the Copenhagen Accord’s inadequacies, Bolivian Prime Minister Evo Morales convened the first World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in late April.

“The People’s Summit on Climate Change aimed to bring democracy and people back into decisions on climate change and our future,” said Solon.

The Council of Canadians was one of the organizations which sent civil society representatives to the Cochabamba conference. “We are excited to hear about and discuss some of the projects on the table, including the creation of a climate justice tribunal and an international referendum on a global climate treaty,” Harden told The Dominion. in the lead up to the summit.

Meanwhile, critics accuse wealthy nations of delaying innovative responses to climate change. At the G8 Foreign Minister’s meeting in Gatineau, Quebec in March, Japan’s was the only delegate to address the media on the subject of climate change.

“As we all know, the global community must address the issue of rising sea levels and rising temperatures. In order to address [climate change] there seems to be a consensus today,” said Kazuo Kodama, Japan’s Foreign Affairs press secretary. “We have to transform our society from a carbon intensive one to a low carbon society.”

According to documents obtained from the International Energy Agency (IEA), G8 and G20 leaders will likely table Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies as their main effort towards this transformation. The IEA’s 2009 CCS report to the G8 notes that “most of the major economies have announced ambitious plans (and associated funding) for large-scale CCS demonstration projects,” including a $3.5 billion investment from the Canadian government.

But a 2008 report released by Greenpeace called CCS technology a “false hope” solution that has yet to be effectively implemented by any large-scale coal-fired power plant or in the Canadian tar sands.

“Carbon Capture and Storage amounts to an expensive distraction from more meaningful actions addressing the climate crisis, like keeping fossil fuels in the ground, significant improvements in conservation and energy efficiency,” said Harden. “Even worse, emphasizing the proposed ‘potential’ of CCS masks the immediate impacts of ongoing expansion of destructive fossil fuel-based energy production, which the climate crisis demands we transition away from.”

The Toronto Community Mobilization’s G20 call-to-action included an invitation to Copenhagen to bring “climate justice” to the streets of Toronto.

“Following the collapse of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, [the G8/G20] will be discussing the global economy, development and climate change,” read the invitation. “These gatherings are about trying to fix capitalism, a system that cannot be fixed; about creating unsustainable market responses to ecological catastrophe that reinforce systems of oppression... The so-called leaders at these gatherings do not represent us.”

Organizers are looking to examples and proposals from the global South, such as those coming out of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

“We imagine the beginnings of a people’s accord, a summary of proposals led by groups who have worked many years on these issues, which can be implemented at local, regional, national and international levels,” said Bolivia’s Solon. “And it could provide a road map for saving people and our planet.”

Cameron Fenton is an intern at The Dominion and an anthropology student at Concordia University in Montreal.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Under water

Picking up the Copenhagen pieces

Collapse in Copenhagen

Moira Peters — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:17:02 +0000

Negotiations, uninvitations, and what the Accord really means

OTTAWA—Unless you’ve developed a habit of only reading government press releases, you’ve probably gotten the idea by now that Copenhagen was more like Flopenhagen.

After negotiations spilled a day over the planned two weeks, countries failed to reach any sort of final deal and the proclaimed Copenhagen Accord failed to reach consensus, winding up as a reference document.

What went wrong?

The proffered reasons are nearly as abundant as the puns on Copenhagen (Brokenhagen, Nopenhagen, Jokenhagen—you get the idea).

In the weeks leading up to it, there was no shortage of chatter over the importance of Copenhagen’s Climate Conference, formally the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the end, over 46,000 delegates would show up to the meeting, including over a hundred Heads of State.

The first cracks in a deal came during the first week of the talks, as countries from the G77-plus-China group (actually made up of over one hundred "developing" countries) forced some of the negotiations to stop until their concerns were heard. Then, the much-reported “Danish Text” was leaked to journalists and civil society members, spurring outrage from developing countries that documents were being written in secret by select countries.

The conference also saw unprecedented attendance from civil society, which comprised 24,000 of the total 46,000 participants. This number only included accredited participants permitted inside Bella Center, the negotiations venue. A number of simultaneous fora were organized, the biggest being the Klimaforum, co-ordinated by Danish civil society and open to everyone. At Klimaforum, several thousand individuals and representatives of interest groups from the world over participated in dozens of workshops and discussions, finalizing a People's Declaration that focused solely on climate solutions.

On Saturday, December 12, mid-way through the talks, an estimated 100,000 people took to the streets of Copenhagen. Carrying banners proclaiming, “There is no Planet B,” “Climate Justice Now!” and “Tar Sands Oil is Blood Oil,” Indigenous Peoples from around the world led the march.

Despite the non-violence of the event, 1,000 arbitrary, “preventative” arrests were made. Only about five marchers would eventually be charged, but the bitter smell of the security state was already in the air. Human rights organizations denounced the police’s “kettling” of protesters as illegal and the tactic continued throughout the week.

The UNFCCC Secretariat failed to adequately forecast the inability of 46,000 people to fit into a space with a capacity of 15,000. This meant that only 7,000 civilians were able to get into Bella Center on the second Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference.

During the final days of the conference, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of accredited participants would wait outside the doors of Bella Center for seven or eight hours. Many had travelled from tropical countries and found the freezing temperatures unbearable, compounding their existing frustrations about having to line up for an event they expected to attend. Some would be unable to get into the building at all.

In a sudden and surprising move, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, convened a meeting Wednesday night to announce that for Thursday and Friday, only 300 of the 24,000 members of accredited civil society would be allowed to participate in the formal negotiations. Environmental organizations, Indigenous groups and farmers were distraught that one per cent of their representatives would be allowed into one of the most important meetings ever held.

The Secretariat seemed to be reacting to a number of protests and specific incidents inside Bella Center. Some have speculated that it was simply an attempt to stifle public involvement. Regardless of its intention, this was the effect.

Thousands of stakeholders in climate justice who had come from around the world were now left to follow the negotiations from TVs and the internet in other parts of Copenhagen. In the eyes of many delegates, negotiations already in a state of free-fall were now doomed. No longer would they have an opportunity to hold negotiators accountable face-to-face, provide them with suggestions and feedback, communicate the proceedings to others, or even give the talks the legitimacy of public involvement.

The prime security concern on Thursday and Friday was the number of Presidents, Prime Ministers and Princes who arrived, joining ministers for the so-called High Level Segment. They gave flowery and sometimes impassioned speeches, as negotiations continued behind closed doors, and protests and vigils continued outside.

****

Over the last two years, countries have been negotiating on a process known as the Bali Roadmap. The Copenhagen meeting was meant to finalize these proceedings. Many agreements had been worked along specific negotiations tracks, which included themes such as adaptation (to change climate conditions by infrastructure and building renovations, increase the flood plain, reforestation/revegetation, population relocation, higher dykes), technology transfer (of clean development technology or adaptation technology—green energy, and carbon capture and storage respectively—from countries that have it to countries that don't), and finance (or control of the capital invested by polluters to offset their emissions, via mechanisms such as the carbon market).

They were often imperfect agreements, but they reflected the voices of all countries, and were forged through a consensus process. In the eyes of most developing countries, they were meant to expand upon the binding Kyoto Protocol.

Indigenous people had been following the negotiations, often concerned for their very survival. Indigenous rights had become a battleground in the talks, with years of work securing minimal references to and rights for Indigenous Peoples, despite the efforts of many colonial countries to keep such pesky restrictions out of formal considerations.

****

The United States ensured everyone was awake Friday morning as Obama delivered a speech reminiscent of Bush’s “You’re either with us or against us” rhetoric to a plenary hall of world leaders. He then assembled leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa (known as the BASIC Group) to hash out an agreement among some of the world’s biggest polluters in secret.

After hours of wrangling among the BASIC Group, these talks expanded to include 26 countries already selected by the Prime Minister of Denmark, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, and a new document emerged: the so-called Copenhagen Accord. That it was negotiated in secret, behind doors closed to most countries, was seen by many as an obvious attempt to circumvent the democratic and multilateral nature of the talks up to that point.

While some in the media and NGO community managed to score leaked drafts of the Accord, many government delegates from Southern countries didn’t even see the “agreement.” Such was the absurd situation where the few remaining civil participants found themselves making photocopies of and explaining the document to delegates, in all its shortcomings.

Rasmussen convened countries around 1:00am Saturday, after Obama had already given a press conference to announce a done deal and hopped on a plane back to Washington. A number of countries rebelled in the final negotiating session of the conference after the three-page Accord was dropped like a bomb into the plenary room.

The Prime Minister tried to present the document and give delegates an hour to think it over, but countries were immediately furious. More than 14 hours later, it became clear there was no consensus on the Copenhagen Accord, with the largest resistance coming from developing and small island states. Finally, delegates agreed to “take note” of the Accord, leaving off negotiations until next year’s meeting in Mexico.

The blame game began immediately, with the US and European countries pointing fingers at China and other developing countries for holding back negotiations.

As Martin Kohr of the Third World Network made clear in a letter to The Guardian, “The unwise attempt by the Danish presidency to impose a non-legitimate meeting to override the legitimate multilateral process was the reason why Copenhagen will be considered a disaster.” International climate negotiations have taken on an air of exclusivity and distrust usually reserved for World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.

****

The Accord itself seeks to collect non-legally binding pledges from developed countries. Even though it pushes for a global warming limit of two degrees Celcius, the UN’s own leaked research shows it would likely cause at least three degrees' warming.

One of the centrepieces of the Accord is the pledge that developed countries will “mobilize” $100 billion by 2020 for developing countries' adaptation and mitigation, though it acknowledges this could come from private and “alternative” sources, letting states off the hook, and limiting the direction of these resources to developing countries that sign the Accord, and not necessarily those that need it most.

However, the document can’t be simply dismissed as a collection of hot air about climate change. The risk remains that the Copenhagen Accord may be used to circumvent the UN process, which, while flawed, is the only truly democratic, transparent and fully multilateral process in the works.

According to Reede Stockton of Global Exchange, “The Copenhagen Accord really isn't a whole lot more than an aspirational G20 agreement. Given the method by which the agreement was reached, it really constitutes a cynical conversion of a UN process that gives significant weight to the voices of relatively powerless countries into one that completely disempowers them.”

Soon after the snow had settled on the Copenhagen Accord, the US was already pushing for a more limited role of the UN in further climate talks, and more decisions to be made by the world’s top polluters. Bolivia’s ambassador reacted swiftly, stating “The US admission that it wants to exclude the vast majority of the planet from decisions about climate change is deeply offensive, when the climate crisis will fall first on those who are most vulnerable.”

These are not idle threats. The G8 and G20 are coming to Canada in June, and climate change will be one of the biggest issues on the table. This means that Canada, as convener of the talks, could push for stronger climate action. This will not happen. More likely, efforts will be made to undermine the United Nations and block the path of progress toward climate justice, and Harper will try to drive the issue off the table altogether.

****

The little good news to report out of Copenhagen comes from the empowerment and connections formed among the hundreds of groups and thousands of people who participated in the talks, and their renewed commitment to pushing for climate justice at home.

According to Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network, “The main good thing to come out of Copenhagen was the massive solidarity, which came out in the movements formed against the tar sands, with Indigenous Peoples leading many actions, and the convergence of people-power to confront the co-ordinated corporate efforts.”

“Massive solidarity” included almost daily actions by Canadian youth, environmental and Indigenous groups targeting Canada’s shameful behaviour in the negotiations, especially taking the tar sands to task. Canada’s maneuvres earned it the Colossal Fossil non-award, given to the country most responsible for disrupting negotiations.

Canada was roundly criticized for coming to Copenhagen with nothing to offer, and for being unwilling to co-operate with other nations accepting more ambitious targets. Canada was also one of the few nations which opposed protection of Indigenous rights. Ben Wikler, climate campaigner for Avaaz, noted, “This government thinks there’s a choice between environment and economy, and for them, tar sands beats climate every time.”

Maryam Adrangi, a Canadian Youth Delegate from Vancouver, sees the beginning of a Canadian movement for climate justice.

“Canada’s role was definitely disappointing at the talks, but there was also lots of anger and energy to build a movement at home with real representation of the voices not [previously] being heard, the people whose lives and cultures are actually threatened. There’s a serious need for activism, because our so-called leaders haven’t been listening or leading.”

This follows the six climate justice sit-ins by young people across Canada, occupying the offices of federal ministers and MPs, and the Power Shift Conference, which saw nearly 1,000 youth converge on Ottawa for a four-day conference focused on climate activism. Recent campaigns against the tar sands have also picked up and plans are under way around climate camps and actions at the G8/G20 meeting in Toronto in June.

If the climate talks fail this year in Mexico, or if some countries get in the way of progress, the UN process could be sidelined. This could lead to non-binding, weak and unjust agreements signed between select groups of countries, or the collapse of talks completely, as has already befallen the WTO talks.

Without a determined grassroots movement in Canada, our government will continue to be a barrier to progress, misrepresenting Canadians. Our country will be responsible for untold suffering around the world. There is little time to build this movement, for Canadians to make a last stand for climate justice.

Ben Powless is a student at Carleton University in Ottawa, and works as a climate justice campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network in Ottawa.

Copenhagen Evo Morales

Copenhagen Tar Sands Block

Copenhagen Indigenous Block

Copenhagen Reclaim Power

Fairytale Squat Faces Political Squalor

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:40:13 +0000

Denmark's Christiania prepares to take on the state

The remote areas of Christiania's 85 acres are still dotted with the alternative housing of innovative young families. photo: Shaughn McArthur

There is little heating in the sparsely furnished ex-barracks. The ashtrays need emptying, the tables need customers, and the walls are desperate for a fresh coat of paint, but 22-year-old, Montreal-born Nicco doesn't seem to mind.

It's the end of a day's work at the Infocafé. The Canadian-Dane-Christianite is pouring leftover coffee down the sink. He has spent most of his adult life living and working in the "Free State of Christiania."

Christiania was stablished in Copenhagen 35 years ago when a group of hippies breached fences around disused military barracks, and its land has since been collectively owned and administered. The community began in 1971 as a self–governing safe haven for artists and intellectuals who wanted to live simply, affordably, and by their own rules. Young families moved in, built homes, and declared cars, hard drugs and violence banned within Christiania's borders.

Today, much of the idealism that founded Denmark's famous fairytale squat has faded, and what remains is under threat.

Still a place to escape capitalism yet remain close to its best amenities, the "inner-city," or commercial area, of Christiania is now populated with drunkards, pushers, and outlaws. Gathered around trash-barrel fires and on the verandas of bars, drinking, smoking and dealing their wares, they make the unsuspecting visitor feel unwelcome, to say the least.

Nevertheless, Christiania retains a certain level of social cohesion. The community runs its own kindergartens, waste management program, successful businesses and a radio show, but citizens must turn to the city for benefits such as higher education and healthcare. When a vacancy arises in the community, the Citizens' Council decides by consensus on the next Christianite from the long waiting list.

photo: Shaughn McArthur

At least, they did.

On January 1, 2006, an amendment to the Christiania Act ended the 'collective right to use' agreement that had allowed the urban commune to exist on the fringes of the free market.

"It's all a dream in my eyes," says Nicco. The self-proclaimed cynic speaks grimly of the impending changes facing Denmark's social experiment.

"They want to make it into a rich people's paradise," he says.

Since the politically conservative Liberal Party--an accepted contradiction of terms in Danish politics -- formed a majority coalition in 2001 with the Conservative Party, Christianites have been fighting to preserve their alternative lifestyle.

"Christiania for them is a symbol of hippie socialism. They just don't like it," says Ole Lykke, 59, a Christianite for 26 years. The editor of Christiania's newspaper, he is part of the coalition negotiating with the state.

Beginning with the crackdown on its multi-million dollar open-air hash market in 2004, Christiania now faces real-estate development and urbanization of the state-owned land it occupies. 'Normalization' is the term the government uses.

"'Normalizing' means shutting us down," Nicco says.

Authorities insist that's not the case.

"We don't want to interfere in the life they want to live in Christiania. They just have to live by the same rules," says Peter Christensen, a Liberal Party spokesperson. "We have said to every man and woman there now that we guarantee them a place to live in Christiania"

Championing a unique consensus democracy, property has always been owned collectively in Christiania. Now, more than three decades later and with a housing crisis skyrocketing prices in the capital, that's all changing.

Last December, residents and business operators in Christiania were required to register the properties they occupy in order for it to be leased back to them individually by the state.

"Now, legally, there's no such thing as collective ownership," says Lykke.

This summer the Palace and Properties Agency will submit a plan to build private housing for up to 400 residents, restore and convert historical military buildings into state-owned social housing, and restore a sixteenth-century rampart along Christiania's waterfront.

On March 16, the Christiania advocacy group to which Lykke belongs will take the Agency to court. "I'm for compromise," says Lykke.

photo: Shaughn McArthur

One compromise both sides of this debate seem to accept is being developed in dialogue with the City of Copenhagen. It is a plan whereby individual residents and business operators in Christiania could maintain a sort of collective ownership by renting their properties from a fund. The fund then leases the land from the state on their behalf.

"Christiania should be a place where all Danes have access to live, without being exempt from the normal laws of the country," said Peter Fangel, team manager in the Planning and Architecture department of the City of Copenhagen.

"Things are going to change," he admits, but "it is important to preserve whatever is worth preserving out there."

Leaving Christiania, a sign over the gate reads like a prediction: "You are now entering the EU."

Shaughn McArthur visits Denmark's Christiania at a time when the struggling, self-governing community is preparing to take on the state.

Denmark's 'social experiment' will likely end

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:35:56 +0000

A group representing Denmark's social experiment, the Free State of Christiania, is taking the state to court March 16 in a last-ditch attempt to resist urbanization. The introduction of condos in this unique Copenhagen community founded by squatters in 1971 will mean an almost-certain end to its self-governing status.

"I'm not confident we'll win," says Ole Lykke, 59, a Christianite for 26 years, "but I am confident the state doesn't have the backing not to make a compromise."

On Jan. 1, 2006, an amendment to the government's Christiania Act ended the collective right-to-use agreement that for 35 years allowed this outlaw commune to occupy state-owned land on the fringes of the free market.

"The old act exempted a whole range of legislation; the new act means normal legislation comes back into effect," explains Kristin Alstad-Mathiasen, project manager of the Christiania Plan at the Danish Palaces and Properties Agency.

This summer the agency will submit its plan to build private housing for up to 400 residents, convert buildings already there, and restore a historical rampart along Christiania's waterfront.

Lykke says the plan not only puts a price tag on the lifestyles of 850 Christianites, but also threatens an important national icon.

"We have to preserve the values that Christiania represents," says Mette Dahl-Jensen, director of public relations at Wonderful Copenhagen, the city's tourism board.

But Liberal Party spokesperson Peter Christensen emphasizes even Christiania must abide by Danish law.

"I don't believe there will be a compromise: no court will find that the land suddenly belongs to Christianites," he says.