26 APRIL 2010

We, the representatives of the Governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Member States of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America  Peoples Trade Treaty (ALBA  PTT), in the Caracas Bicentennial Manifesto, signed on April 19, 2010, welcomed the initiative of the President of the Pluri-national State of Bolivia, Evo Morales, to call the First People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, on April 19-22, 2010.

There, over 30,000 people, representatives of social and environmental organizations and indigenous groups, met and organized the Peoples World Movement for Mother Earth. We, the Governments of ALBA,  PTT, make these voices our own, and express our expectations with regard to the agreement resulting from these negotiations that we expect to be successfully completed at the 16th Session of the Conference of the Parties, in Cancún, Mexico, in the shape of a fair, balanced and legally binding agreement, which complements and strengthens the regulations in force composed of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.

SHARED VISION

Our Mother Earth is injured and the future of humanity is endangered as a result of climate change caused by a predatory
capitalist system.

Today, we face the ultimate crisis of a development model based on submissiveness and destruction of human beings and nature
sped up by the industrial revolution.

The capitalist system has imposed upon us the logic of endless competition, progress and growth. Such production and consumption system seeks unlimited profit; detaches human beings from nature; establishes a logic of domination and turns everything into a commodity water, land, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, peoples  rights, death and life.

Under capitalism, Mother Earth is just the source of raw materials and human beings are just means of production and consumers.

Should global warming increase by more than 2º C, there is a 50% chance the damages caused to our Mother Earth will be totally irreversible. Therefore, a future commitment based on an increase of 2° C is unacceptable.

Humanity is at the crossroads to continue on the way of capitalism, predation and death, or take the way of harmony with nature and respect for life.

We have proposed the peoples of the world the recovery, revalorization and strengthening of knowledge, wisdom and ancestral practices of the indigenous peoples, reasserted in the experience and proposal of Living Well, acknowledging Mother Earth as a living being, with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship.

The shared vision should ensure compliance with Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which provides for the need to achieve, ?stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

Our future vision, based on the principle of historical and common but differentiated responsibilities, requires developed countries to commit themselves to concrete quantified reduction targets of their emissions to get greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere back to 300 ppm, thus limiting the increase of the global mean temperature to well below 1.5° C, ideally stabilizing it at 1° C.

In emphasizing the urgent need to achieve this vision, developed countries should undertake ambitious emissions reductions targets in order to attain short-term objectives, keeping our vision in favor of a balanced climate system on Earth, in accordance with the ultimate objective of the Convention.

The  shared vision  for the Long-Term Cooperation Action in limate change negotiations, should not be limited to defining limits to the increase of temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Rather, it should include, in a comprehensive and balanced manner, a set of financial and
technological measures, adaptation, capacity building, production and consumption patterns, and other essential subjects, such as the acknowledgement of the rights of Mother Earth, to restore harmony with nature. Developed countries, the main responsible of climate change, assuming their historical and present responsibilities, should bear the adaptation debt related to the impacts of climate change on developing countries and supply the means to prevent, minimize and respond to the damages arising from their excessive emissions.

LINKAGE BETWEEN THE LONG-TERM SHARED VISION AND THE KYOTO PROTOCOL

The upcoming Conference on Climate Change to be held at the end of 2010 in Mexico should approve the amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, for the second commitment period beginning in 2013, whereby developed countries should embark upon significant domestic reductions of at least 50% against the baseline year of 1990.

Therefore, there is the need to set first, a global target for all developed countries, and then apportion an individual quota for each of them, ensuring comparability of efforts between them, thus keeping the Kyoto Protocol system for emissions reduction.

The prior definition of such commitments under the Kyoto Protocol is essential, as a starting point, to establish a long-term shared vision.

ADAPTATION

The peoples of ALBA ? PTT reiterate the priority importance that should be given to adaptation in the future negotiations and the need to delve into the vulnerability issue as well.

Our proposal entails the inclusion of a definition of environmental vulnerability as the ability of a environmental, social and economic system to cope with an impact or risk, taking into consideration
environmental integrity and how it is affected by anthropogenic and natural threats.

We reject the notion of adaptation to climate change understood as our acquiescence to the impacts caused by the historical emissions from developed countries.

The impacts and their cost on developing countries, as well as the specific needs of any impacts, should be assessed and valued. Also, the technological and financial support of developed countries should be recorded and monitored.

As to the latter, development and dissemination of measures, methodologies and tools, including economic diversification, to increase resilience and reduce environmental, social and economic impacts should be specifically promoted.

The Adaptation Fund should be enhanced as an exclusive fund to face climate change and as an integral part of a financial mechanism managed and led by our States in a sovereign, transparent and equitable manner.

The Adaptation Fund should also manage a facility to remedy the damages caused by any impacts, including lost profit, compensation for extreme and gradual climate events, and any additional costs which may arise if our planet exceeds the ecological thresholds. Likewise, those impacts that are curbing the right to Living Well, in the context of our legitimate right to sustainable development, should be considered.

The chapter on Adaptation to Climate Change should state that the priority resource allocation should be made in a balanced, equitable manner, bearing in mind the criteria set forth in the
document entitled Strategic Priorities, Policies and Guidelines of the Adaptation Fund, adopted by the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, particularly considering, among others:

1. Levels of vulnerability;
2. Level of urgency and risks arising from delayed resource allocation;
3. Adaptative capacity to adapt to the adverse effects of climate chang

FORESTS

The definition of forests including plantations, as proposed by some countries during the negotiations is unacceptable. Monocultures are not forests. Therefore, we require for the purposes of negotiations, a definition where native forests, the jungle and the diversity of the ecosystems on Earth are
recognized.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples should be fully acknowledged, implemented and added to the negotiating texts on climate change. A good strategy and action to prevent deforestation and degradation and protect native forests and the jungle is to recognize the individual rights, enshrined in several national laws and regulations, of indigenous peoples and nations, where most natural forests and jungles are located.

Polluting countries must directly transfer financial and technological resources to pay for restoration and conservation of forests and jungles, in favor of indigenous peoples and ancestral original social structures. This shall be a direct compensation, additional to the funding sources committed by by developed countries in this regard, outside of the carbon market.

CLIMATE MIGRANTS

Developed countries should assume their responsibility towards climate migrants, admitting them to their territories and acknowledging their fundamental rights through international agreements stating the definition of climate migrant so that all States should abide by their provisions and protect this population.

FINANCING

Developed countries should provide a new, public sourced annual financing, additional to the Official Development Assistance. The financial support to fight climate change in developing countries, should be as significant as the amounts that developed countries devote to war and defense budgets.

Since the current mechanism has proven to be ineffective, at the Mexico Conference, a new financial mechanism, operating under the authority of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change should be established. The mechanism should be accountable to said Conference, with a substantial representation of developing countries to enforce the financing commitments of the Annex 1 countries.

Financing should be direct, from public funds, and it should not be conditioned to additional benefits for developed countries. Neither States sovereignty nor self-determination of communities and
most affected groups should be disturbed by means of other mechanisms. Such mechanisms, if any, should be voluntary and regulated in accordance with the principles of the Convention and
international law.

TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFER

Enforceability of the undertakings of developed countries at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with regard to technology transfer and development is a must. Hence,
setting clear guidelines and creating a multilateral, multitask mechanism for the participatory control, management and continued evaluation of the technological exchange by developed countries, and also of the support for development of in-house technologies in developing countries, are essential.

These technologies should be useful, clean and socially suitable. The establishment of a fund for funding and inventory of appropriate technologies, free from intellectual property rights,
particularly patents, is also essential. Rather than private monopolies, they should come in the public domain, of ready access and low cost.

FINAL REMARKS

The future of all humankind is endangered and we cannot accept that a small number of developed countries intend to define an international regime, without the participation of the rest of the
world, as they unsuccessfully tried to do at the 15th Session of the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen.

In the advent of this new stage of the negotiations on climate change, the Governments of the ALBA PTT Member States reject any attempt at violation of the Charter of the United Nations
and we call into question the practice of a selective diplomacy implemented by the Presidency of COP 15. These practices seriously endanger the basic rules of multilateral system.

We uphold our constructive commitment to a negotiation process based on transparency, inclusiveness, legitimacy and democracy; to recover confidence among any and all the Parties to the Convention, and reach in Cancún an agreement that will enable to urgently and effectively address climate change and its devastating effects.

All of the foregoing are submitted to the Secretariat of the Convention to be considered in future works, in accordance with paragraph 5 of the Conclusions on organization and methods of
work in 2010 adopted by the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long- Term Cooperative Action (AWG LCA) on April 11, 2010, at the end of its ninth session and, further, the Secretariat is requested to release and disseminate this formal submission.

The Government of the Pluri-national State of Bolivia; the Government of the Republic of Cuba; the Government of the Republic of Ecuador; the Government of the Republic of Nicaragua; and the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

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