Global Climate Change Conference Coming to Bolivia in April

Here is my nightmare, and it should be the nightmare of everyone of my generation.

It's two decades from now and my life is approaching an end. The realities of global climate change are no longer debated. They are clear, enormous, and worsening with great speed. Draught and rising seas are converting millions into climate refugees. Whole regions lack basic access to water and others are battered by increasingly erratic weather patterns, from deadly hurricanes to chilling blizzards.

And it is now too late to take the actions we could have taken to prevent the much worse conditions that are now coming. My seven-years old daughter will be a young adult, and along with the rest of her global generation she will be looking at a lifetime marked by a planet in deepening disarray. Nothing she and they can do at that point will prevent it. We will have failed them all, and their children even more so, because when there was still time, we denied and dawdled.

In Copenhagen last December we learned that the governments of the world are unable to reach a binding agreement to address this crisis. Blame it on whatever you care to – nationalism, corporate influence, blindness, extremism, resistance to compromise, grandstanding, or anything else. The point here is that we can't count on those with the authority to act to do so and we don't have time to wait and hope they change their minds.

That is why I welcome the fact that, in the aftermath of the failure in Copenhagen, many of the organizations that were left on the outside of that process will gather themselves here in Cochabamba next month (April 19-22), in a new global meeting on climate change initiated by President Morales. The meeting bears the official title: The First World Conference of the People on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

The Criticism

Let’s begin with the criticism that will be aimed at this meeting, much of it certainly valid.

From one perspective the meeting will be labeled as a gathering of the left – an assortment of environmentalists, capitalism-haters, indigenous peoples, so-called socialists, and others who will only marginalize themselves more by engaging in a process so disengaged from the places where actual policy decisions and agreements are made. True enough. The Cochabamba conference is not a forum that will take any action that binds anyone to any concrete change of the system. The only agreements that it can reach will be about clearer goals for the climate change movement and clearer strategies for how to go after those goals. But those are both not only good things, they are essential things and worth the effort to aim for.

From yet another perspective, the meeting will be looked at as just one more gathering of the professional NGO crowd, leaving behind little more than a massive new carbon footprint to fly people in and out of Bolivia and never really addressing the fundamental change in consciousness required to save the planet. Some of those with this view will actively criticize the event, others will just ignore it entirely. But however valid the criticisms might be, we still have to find a unified way forward. Self-righteous memories of being more pure will be of little value to our children a generation hence. To be clear, there are some real charges to be discussed about how some leading environmental groups have intertwined corporate financing into their genetic code, about the role of compromise, and real conversations about equity and power. I hope those conversations also happen in Cochabamba next month.

Lastly, more than a few Bolivian eyes have rolled upwards at the new image of Evo Morales as an environmental crusader and "spiritual protector of la Pachamama." Morales has never, until Copenhagen, made the environment a centerpiece of his political agenda. And if one looks to extraction issues in particular (oil and gas, iron, silver, lithium) the Morales government has clearly made getting the wealth out of the ground the real priority and protecting the environment as secondary at best. On this score Bolivia, an impoverished nation, falls into the same trap impoverished people do when faced with an Income vs. Earth tradeoff. Income wins. It's the same reason people clear-cut land here in Tiquipaya. You can't eat trees.

There will certainly be some Bolivian environmental groups who will seek to use the conference to confront the Bolivian government with these contradictions between word and action. They should. But all that said, it is still a valuable thing that Morales has done, to use his clout on the global stage to convene this meeting. Climate change is an issue larger than Bolivia and larger than Morales and the meeting in April remains a critical opportunity to not be lost.

It is also appropriate that Bolivia host such a meeting, given that it is already one of the planet's first serious victims of climate change, with its glaciers melting fast (see the Democracy Center's video report here.)

How the Meeting will be Organized

The Bolivian government's invitation to the meeting is open. Anyone can register and attend. Most of the participants, however, are expected to come from NGOs and social movements in Bolivia, South America, and other regions of the world. Official estimates began at 15,000 foreigners were coming, then shrunk to 10,000, and now seem to have settled at 5,000 (though it could easily be less). What governments will be formally represented besides Bolivia's remains unclear, thought no one expects it to attract any real engagement by the world's wealthier nations, whose actions on the climate issue are so critical.

For those considering coming to Cochabamba for the meeting, here is a preview of how the conference will be organized.

1. Workshops and Events Organized by Participants: This is likely to be the real soul of the conference, with more than 30 of these two-hour sessions are already registered and new ones being added until the deadline for submission on March 15th. These sessions will range from ethereal ("Conversations with Mother Earth") to hard-edged ("Compromising and Caving In: The Nemesis of Climate Change Justice").

2. Working Groups: The conference will also include an ongoing thread of 17 working groups organized around specific issues. These include (among others): the structural roots of climate change, indigenous peoples, and plans for a global referendum on climate change issues.

3. Mass Gatherings: While much of the conference will take place in smaller groups, there will also be a few events that will seek to assemble all the participants together, culminating in an event in the Cochabamba soccer stadium on the evening of April 22.

Additional information about the meeting can be found (in English) here.

What the Democracy Center Will be Doing at the Conference

The April meeting on climate change is taking place, almost literally, on the Democracy Center's doorstep. And we plan to be deeply involved in it. Here are a few of the things we'll be doing:

1. Taking Strategic Action Against the Corporations Damaging the Earth's Climate

If we look behind both the damage being done to the Earth's climate and at the inability of governments to take aggressive action, it is obvious that some of the most onerous actors are multinational corporations that have put profit above the planet. The Democracy Center and other groups will be putting together a workshop to look at how we can take the most strategic action possible to stop dangerous corporate actions.

2. Global Trade Courts: A Threat to the Planet's Health

One of the most important tools that corporations use to undermine government protections of the environment is the system of global trade courts, such as the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes at the World Bank, where Bechtel filed its $50 million case against Bolivia following the Cochabamba Water Revolt. In another workshop the Democracy Center and its allies will help people understand more about the tribunal system and offer a chance to engage in the debate over how the system needs to be changed. This builds on our work with the Network for Justice in Global Investment.

3. Bolivia and its Lithium: Will Electric Cars Lift a Nation out of Poverty?

The Democracy Center is just wrapping up work on an extensive study of Bolivia's plans to develop its vast lithium reserves, a study which has included multiple visits to the region and interviews all of the key actors involved. We'll be releasing our report during the climate change meeting, and announcing it and posting it on-line as well.

4. Reporting from the Conference

If you are interested in the conference but can't come, have no fears. The Democracy Center team is preparing to offer our readers a wide range of coverage from the meeting, including many of the voices and ideas you might not otherwise hear.

Stay tuned here to the Blog for additional information and analysis about the climate change conference as the date approaches. And if you are headed this way, let us know, by sending us an email here.

The U.S./Bolivia Drug Show

The beginning of March in Bolivia. Some things just come around as predictable as the seasons.

The hills of Cochabamba have turned a lush green from the late summer rains. I can walk safely down the street again without fear of the water balloons of Carnival coming down upon my targeted gringo head. And the governments of Bolivia and the U.S. are launching broadsides against one another over the coca leaf. Predictability in all its various forms.

For years here, when the nation was governed by men the U.S. government liked, March 1st was known as "certification day." This is the date when, each year, the U.S. State Department releases its annual report card on the drug-fighting efforts of the rest of the world, the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report to the Congress (INCSR).

The report comes in at a hefty 900 pages and runs through the U.S. version of how 139 different nations are or are not battling substances ranging from marijuana to the poppy flower.

Norwegians readers will be relieved to learn that illicit drug production in that country "remained insignificant in 2009." But Canadians may be dismayed to learn that their country, "remains a significant source" for marijuana entering the U.S. market. Or perhaps they will be unmoved. Who truly understands the Canadian soul?

Nevertheless, the State Department's report card on Bolivia goes well beyond whatever warnings it has to offer about Sweden, Latvia, and the Maldives. For the second year in a row, the U.S. has made a formal finding that its distant neighbor to the south has “failed demonstrably to adhere to its obligations under international counternarcotics conventions." Now in Bolivia March 1st into "de-certification day."

Punch and Counter Punch

Here, in a nutshell, is what the U.S. has to say about Bolivia and the war on drugs (page 149):

Bolivia is the world’s third largest producer of cocaine. In 2009, although the government met its minimum bilateral requirement to eradicate 5,000 hectares of coca, these efforts have not kept pace with rising coca cultivation and cocaine production. In other words, in the U.S. view Bolivia's anti-coca efforts are the equivalent of tossing out five bags of trash while filling up seven more. Or as the assistant secretary of state put it in Washington on Monday, "Bolivia has a continuing trend of a step up per year in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 percent that’s taken place over the course of the last several years."

Now to be sure, the government of Bolivia has a different view of events, which basically comes to this:

The government of Bolivia has a clear declared policy of " coca yes, cocaine zero." Despite the fact that Bolivia lacks a whole host of resources important to fighting the illegal drug trade – including soldiers, vehicles, and planes with radar – the country has still made substantial progress. In the past four years during the Morales presidency it has seized more than 91 tons of illegal drugs, up from 49 tons seized in the four years just prior to Morales becoming President. A Bolivian government spokesman branded the U.S. report, "a lie" and declared that its neighbor to the distant north has no right to "certify or decertify" any other country's anti-drug efforts.

So goes the annual U.S. vs. Bolivia coca debate. And I am willing to bet you two unhindered water balloon shots at my gringo head during next year's carnival that a few days afterwards that debate will remain exactly the same, and the year after that, and the year after that. Both sides have their view and both sides have numbers and statistics they can call up to support that view.

Some Simple Facts

Over the course of living here for a dozen years I have had a chance to talk to a lot of smart people sitting on all sides of the coca issue – Bolivian officials, U.S. officials, women in jail on drug charges, scientific experts, researchers, lawyers, judges, and reporters, among others. Here are a few things that everyone who really knows this issue knows and is wiling to say in private:

1. The coca leaf is not cocaine. It becomes cocaine only after an elaborate chemical process that leeches out the cocaine alkaloid that was also once the secret additive to Coca Cola, in addition to being the essential ingredient for the popular white powder that shares its name.

2. Not all coca grown in Bolivia is destined to be chewed, made into tea, or used for some other traditional purpose. Some of it, a lot of it, is aimed at the cocaine market, especially the coca grown in the Chapare. And here in Cochabamba on the outskirts of the city the green hillsides are becoming increasingly populated with new-tech processing labs to start the chemical metamorphosis involved.

3. The reason that the U.S. "War on Drugs" here is so suspected and loathed is because for decades it was not really a war on drugs but an all-out assault on human rights. Set aside the issue of eradication and its impact on coca farmers (many of them, thought not all, living in extreme poverty). Let's talk about the fact that Bolivian prosecutors on the U.S. payroll put thousands of innocent people in jail each year just to keep the U.S. Embassy and State Department stocked with happy arrest stats to show off to their superiors in Washington and help them build careers.

4. It is silly and ridiculous to maintain the current UN (and U.S. backed) prohibition against the exportation of non-narcotic products such as coca tea. You have to be quite the fool to believe that someone is going to start tearing apart those little paper tea bags to convert the miniscule amounts of coca leaf crumbs inside into cocaine powder. But it is equally silly to believe that the export of products like coca tea is going to suck up all the coca headed for the drug market. It won't.

5. Bolivian coca is not a U.S. problem. Cocaine that comes from Bolivian coca is not primarily headed for the U.S. (it can thank Colombia, a country that the U.S. does certify, for serving the U.S. market). Cocaine with Bolivian roots is headed for Brazil, Argentina and Europe. If there are countries beyond Bolivia's borders that have an interest in what happens here and ought to be working with the Bolivian government on the problem, it is those governments not the U.S., and each is in a far better political position to actually do so.

6. If the U.S. is genuinely serious about its drug problem then it should stop a decades-old show called the War on Drugs, and adopt a series of public policies that nearly every serious analyst knows is the most effective course, including: free drug treatment for those addicted the moment they ask for it (because that's when it has a shot at working); treating addiction as a disease instead of a criminal offense; and sucking billions of dollars out of the hands of criminal syndicates and into the coffers of public treasuries by legalizing marijuana, regulating it, and taxing it.

These are the facts that stand waiting behind the curtain while the U.S. vs. Bolivia show keeps rolling out in endless reruns on stage. It's run from here looks long, I am sad to say. The facts above will continue to remain out of the bilateral discourse and out of the policy equation.

And a year from now I will once again breath a sigh of relief as February leaves us and March begins. The hills will once more be green and the water balloons, like the truth about the War on Drugs, will have been laid to rest for another year.

A Preview of Coming Attractions

Readers:

I am back from my work in humid Bangkok and back to a welcome downpour of rain in Cochabamba. We haven’t forgotten you and the Democracy Center team is madly at work on a host of projects coming up shortly on the Blog. Here’s a preview:

Elections Once More!

Next April Bolivians head back to the polls yet again, this time to elect Mayors and Governors across the country. What’s at stake? Who is running? What are the issues?

Four Former Presidents on Trial

Last week the Bolivian government announced that it wants to step up prosecution efforts against four recent Bolivian Presidents. We’ll look into one of these cases with some facts that may surprise you.

The Cochabamba Climate Change Summit

In April thousands of climate change activists from around the world will descend on Cochabamba for a global climate change meeting called by President Evo Morales. In a series of Blog posts we’ll look at plans for the conference, the issues to be discussed, and efforts by Bolivian environmental groups to draw attention to the serious, unattended environmental issues right here at home.

Entel vs. Bolivia

The European telecommunications giant that until recently was the owner of the Bolivian communications firm Entel, is changing its strategy in its legal attack on Bolivia over the government’s re-nationalization of the company. We’ll have an analysis of what’s behind the case.

In addition to that the Democracy Center is wrapping up work on a major paper on lithium in Bolivia, based on extensive fieldwork across the country over the past two months.

So stay tuned!

Blog from Bangkok

I'm on the loose. I'm away. I'm out. I'm on the lamb, Manfred-style but without a warrant chasing me. But please don't tell anyone my location. Top secret.

On the one hand, farther away from Bolivia I could not be. My daughter and I examined the globe together before I left three weeks ago, one of those older globes where Germany is still two countries and the Soviet Union just one. Thailand is on the other end of the world, south to north, west to east. To get farther away you have to go to the moon. Imagine those frequent flier miles!

But in the back streets away from the high rises where the humble live in narrow alleys there is another Bangkok that feels like another Bolivia with different faces and hotter weather, and cats instead of dogs.

The Beatles are Back

I got taken to lunch one day, at a fancy hotel named for a US political scandal that was also the site for the training workshop I did here. My host was a 20-something sales representative for the hotel who considered lunching with people who hold workshops in his hotel as part of his job. I'd do it too if I were him – free food in exchange for potentially boring conversation. But I did my best for him.

Young men here aiming for a certain professional niche have a particular wardrobe look, identical almost, that can only really be captured this way – The Beatles in about 1964. This isn't the John, Paul, George and Ringo of later years with beards down to their chests and guru shirts bought in India. No the look here is tidy little black suits that look two sizes too small, with giant black leather shoes jutting out from narrow pants. Even the haircut bears a resemblance. I am going to come back in four years and see if Thailand's young professional class all looks like the hairy version of John in bed with Yoko. That would be cool.

So what is it like to be young and aspiring in East Asia at the dawn of the new decade? That seemed to me to be a worthy conversation over pad thai, green curry and sticky buns. If Naruebet, my focus group of one, is any true measure, one thing is optimism. He thinks his region's future is bright – growth, opportunity, excitement. I'm not sure his counterparts headed out of university in the U.S. feel that way these days. There, even after a brief stint of overstated Obama-era optimism, the mood seems more like, anxiety, concern and "crap, what bad timing."

Ok, let's talk China. Not just with him but also with others I have spoken with there is an assumption here that won’t make folks back in the USA too happy. The era of the USA empire is over, declining fast. It is all going to be about China now. That's what people here think. When I was in my 20s big name authors and my graduate school professors along the Charles used to say the same thing about Japan, and that didn't exactly work out. But China's formidable accumulation of economic and political power is likely to be stickier than sticky buns. For 10 points who can name the country from which the US government has borrowed close to a trillion dollars to finance our recent wars and bank bailouts?

"There are Chinese all over the world in high positions opening up economic opportunities for China," my young McCartneyesque lunch partner told me. What kind of empire would China be? "Pushy," he says. Well, I don’t suppose it will be more pushy than the U.S.

Buddha vs. Jesus

Okay, let's talk about the Buddha. This is one of my strongest memories from my last visit to Thailand, to up north in Chiang Mai seven years back.

Those temples. Now I don't mean to disparage Christianity of Christians, but let's just make a comparison on the surface. You walk into a Christian church and there are hard wooden pews, a place of worship designed to make you physically uncomfortable. And Catholics, by the way, don't make things better by adding all the rituals of standing up and sitting down, a particular torment for bored children. And the fellow up on the cross looks none too comfortable either. In the U.S. he looks like he is basically asleep in a really awkward pose. In Latin America Jesus on the cross is all blood and gore – the "suffering Christ" to match the suffering of the poor, my theologian friends might say.

But the Buddhist temples. No hard wooden pews, only open space and faded red carpet. No priests in uncomfortable collars or ministers in uncomfortable shoes, monks in loose-fitting orange robes and bare feet. Not only do they let visitors to the temple take off their shoes as they enter (Can you imagine an Episcopalian doing such a thing!?), it's required.

And the Buddha. He's not being tortured on a wooden cross. He isn't hanging uncomfortably. He is happy as can be in bright gold twenty feet high in what looks like a comfortable pose with his legs crossed. In a contest between a deity who supposedly died for our sins (before we were born and committed any, a confusing notion) and another who just wants us to relax, breath and here silence, Christianity has tough competition in the world. And also, from what I can tell, Buddhists don't go door to door either, trying to convince people. It reminds me of something I saw painted on a wall in Cochabamba. "Si Dios existe, porque tanta propaganda?" If God exists, why so much advertising?

Okay, moving on.

The King

Here, when people speak of the King, they speak neither of Elvis, Larry or a chess piece. They speak of Thai's beloved 82-year-old monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej (pronounced Bhumibol Adulyadej). And believe me when I say, this guy's photo is everywhere. You would be hard pressed to pass a block without seeing his image posted somewhere. Massive portraits stories high are placed of the King everywhere. There are more of them and they are bigger even than those of Evo back in Bolivia (placed there by Evo mostly). And in most, he has a camera around his neck, old style, film not digital. He is Thailand's Kodachrome King.

The last time I visited Thailand I actually had time to go to a movie and learned the tradition of every movie beginning with a standing tribute to the King. I and the other five other foreigners that day who ditched their responsibilities to see the 2pm matinee of Liar Liar with Jim Carrey were required to stand up at the start for the full duration of a strange 5-minute film homage to the King that mostly included footage of him wandering around in nature with a camera around his neck.

Tourist World

Bangkok is a magnet for young foreigners, most especially from freezing Europe and nearby Australia and New Zealand, who seem attracted like flies and candy to the rituals of mass quantities of beer intake, cheap guest house rooms and cheaper foot messages, and riding about in Tuc-Tuc motorcycle taxis that give one the optimal opportunity to breath in the city's fumes of car pollution.

Whole strange industries have developed around these young tourists. Two favorites of mine include the opportunity to put your feet in a large tank of nibbling fish (I did not try this but perhaps Bolivia could do the same with piranha from the lowlands) and a quite creative collection of tourist-oriented t-shirts. These designs include the popular image of a smiling bride and frowning groom over the title, "Game Over," and another featuring a large tree asking a man, "Please hug me," and the man replying, "no." It might be a statement about global warming, I am unsure.

A whole street, Khoa San Road, is closed off to car traffic and dedicated to such tourism. Here you can by, among other things, a full collection of excellently produced false identifications, ranging from passports of various countries to a false California driver's license. I have only wandered this street twice looking for appropriate souvenirs to bring home, but I am pondering getting an Argentine passport in the name of Dr. Alfred E. Newman, should the need ever arise to have one.

The Food

Okay, we save the best for last. This part is important. Remember it. In Thailand almost all food is Thai food. Really! Do you what they call Thai food in Thailand? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner! I tortured my wife with that joke at least a half dozen times before I left home.

Curry in the morning!
Noodles at night!
Tom Ka Gai soup in the middle!

If I find bagels here as well I might never leave.

And so I say to all of you – sawatdee and see you back in Bolivia soon.