Recognizing that the Kyoto Protocol does not offer a sustainable solution to climate change, civil society and social movements in Indonesia saw the need for the people to push forth their aspirations and demands during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings in Bali for consideration and inclusion in the upcoming post 2012 climate change road map.

Recognizing that the Kyoto Protocol does not offer a sustainable solution to climate change, civil society and social movements in Indonesia saw the need for the people to push forth their aspirations and demands during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings in Bali for consideration and inclusion in the upcoming post 2012 climate change road map.

This idea was proposed to the Asia Pacific Re-search Network which, during its annual conference on People’s Sovereignty on Natural Resources in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2007, recognized climate change as a pressing issue. Over 170 participants from the Asia Pacific region agreed to come up with resolutions for a stable climate, one of the demands of which calls for a People’s Protocol on Climate Change.

The People’s Protocol on Climate Change which has been adopted by the people during a series of workshops organized by IBON, AidWatch, INFID and ILPS Indonesia, articulates the values and principles that should guide international action and people’s struggles against climate change and the global ecological and socioeconomic destruction that it brings.

Statement of Values and Principles

The People’s Protocol on Climate Change rests on four key values: eco-centrism, social justice, sovereignty and responsibility.

Eco-centrism

The People’s Protocol recognizes that the pursuit for profit is at the core of global warming, structural poverty and exploitation. Nature is vital for the survival of all, and for sustained economic growth and sustainable human development. People must not be misled into thinking that market-led development is the way towards real progress. Instead, the needs of the people and the planet must be placed above those of global capital and the wholesale pursuit of private profits.

Social Justice

The climate change is not merely an environmental issue but a social justice issue rooted in the current capitalist-dominated global economy. Social justice means acknowledging the systemic roots of the crisis, the disproportionate responsibility of a narrow elite, the disproportionate vulnerability of the majority to the adverse effects, the grossly uneven capacity to confront and respond, and the legitimate aspirations to development of the people apart from the crisis.

Responsibility

Responsibility, expressed in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, requires a mechanism for globally-inclusive equity. Restorative justice requires distribution of responsibility according to historical per capita emissions. The United States and its corporations are the most energy-intensive nation and the greatest polluter in the world. In addition, a significant part of Southern emissions actually directly come from energy-intensive operations of northern TNCs in the south. Deforestation across Latin America, Asia and Africa is most of all due to northern TNC-driven commercial logging, plantation agriculture, mining activities and dam projects.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty means asserting the power of the people through their social movements and genuinely participatory structures as the foundation of the state response to the climate change issue. In addition, upholding people’s sovereignty over natural resources is integral to ensuring meaningful engagement with the climate crisis.

Statement of Goals and Purposes

The People’s Protocol on Climate Change calls for a people-oriented agricultural and industrial development and asserts for people’s sovereignty over natural resources. There must be community and national ownership based on people’s consensus and collective action over the natural resources and productive assets.

Restorative justice requires distribution of responsibility according to historical per capita emissions, not just on a by country basis but more significantly on a by polluter basis. The greatest burden of adjustment must be on the Northern countries and their TNCs (wherever these are located), as well as on Southern elites and even governments,  who have caused and benefited the most from the damage. This requires, at the very minimum, Northern commitments and concrete practice to drastically reduce overall energy use and increase energy efficiency, increase unconditional aid to directly address the climate crisis in the South and overhaul international trade and investment rules towards sustainable development and improvements in the standard of living in the South, including also an end to the real or effective transfer of Northern polluting industries to the South.

The role of “adaptation” funding for Southern countries is acknowledged as support to Southern countries in dealing with the climate change problem. However, the People’s Protocol also affirms that the far greater responsibility of the North in the current climate crisis means that it must bear a far greater proportion of the funding responsibility, decry the fiasco of the supposed global adaptation fund which was allotted only piddling funding, and criticize efforts such as by the World Bank (WB) to use adaptation funding to distract from the overriding need to address the roots of the climate change problem.  Adaptation funding must be over and above traditional allotments for overseas development assistance (ODA).

In the end, it must be emphasized that the climate change crisis is not simply about adaptation and mitigation, but principally changing the whole economic framework into a sustainable one. The concept of adaptation is not acceptance of climate change but mitigating and adjusting while implementing fundamental changes. All mechanisms for mitigating must be premised on the fundamental change for a sustainable economic framework.