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Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change, April 20-24

As reported by Straight Goods, “More than 400 indigenous people and observers from 80 nations participated in the first ever global discussion on climate change (the UN-affiliated Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change from April 20-24) focusing on native communities.”
The article notes, “many indigenous peoples explicitly reject mainstream climate mitigation proposals like carbon offset programs and carbon trading, calling them ‘false solutions’ that have nothing to do with solving climate change crisis. Such programs continue to allow ever greater amounts of carbon to be emitted, said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, an NGO based in the US.”

Goldtooth says, “It’s privatisation of the air. We cannot reconcile this with our strong cosmovision (understanding of the world) and spirituality.”

The Anchorage Declaration coming out of the summit calls for a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling on indigenous lands and a phase-out of fossil fuels while respecting the rights of indigenous people to develop their resources.

The declaration was signed by indigenous representatives and Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, president of the United Nations General Assembly, and will be presented at the UN General Assembly and at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, which will take place December 7-18, 2009.

To read more about the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change, please go to http://www.indigenoussummit.com/servlet/content/home.html

The full Straight Goods article is at http://www.straightgoods.ca/2009/ViewFeature.cfm?Ref=277