Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

The ancient Greeks had realized that the Earth, Gaia, is a living organism. We are her fruits, developed during 13.7 billion years of evolution. However, during the past 200 years we have not known how to care for her and we have transformed her into merchandise, from which we try and gain the maximum profit.

The Earth today has lost 30% of its capacity for self regeneration. Only through human intervention will she be able to be recuperated. However there is nothing to indicate that the governors of the richest nations are aware of this, so much so that they sabotaged the Ecological Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Earth, which surely possesses some sort of intelligence, decided to express her cry of pain by means of the volcano in Iceland which exhales toxic smoke causing disruption in air traffic in Western Europe and cost US$1.7 billion in damage.

Reacting to the Copenhagen failure, the president of Bolivia Evo Morales organised the Peoples™ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth between 19 and 23 April in the town of Cochabamba. 2000 people were expected and 30,000 from 129 countries showed up! The town™s hotel system collapsed and many had to be accommodated in army barracks.

Bolivia is unique on the world™s scenario. With nine million inhabitants, it is the only plurinational, pluricultural and plurispiritual country ruled by an indigenous government. Aymaras and Quechuas have a special relationship of diversity and complementarity with nature. They look upon it as Pachamama, Mother Earth, and Father Cosmos.

Leaders of indigenous peoples and of social movements, environment specialists and political leaders, expressing the clamour of the peoples, concluded that life on the Planet has no salvation if this productivity-consumerist mentality which degrades nature were to prevail. It is useless to talk about climate change without systemic change. Capitalism is ontologically incompatible with ecological equilibrium.

Every discussion during the conference emphasised the importance of learning sumak kawsay (which means ”life in abundance in Quechua) from the original indigenous peoples. It is necessary to create ”other possible worlds where a person can live in perfect happiness in communion with oneself, with one™s brothers and sisters, with nature and with God not motivated by the myth of endless progress.

Today all forms of life on the Planet are threatened, including human life (2/3 of the world™s population survives below the poverty line) and the Earth itself. To prevent the coming of the Apocalypse demands that we question the myths of modernity such as the market, development, the uni-national State, all of which are based on instrumental notions.

The Cochabamba conference decided on the creation of an International Tribunal for Climate Justice which can penalize rogue governments and businesses responsible for the environmental catastrophe. There are ever growing numbers of environmental migrants in the world. It is therefore necessary to learn about and fight against the natural causes of global warming.

It is urgent that life, water and the forests be de-commercialised and that the rights of Mother Earth be respected, freeing her from the insatiable greed of the god of the Market and of State reasoning (as in the case of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu in Brazil).

First nations peoples were always seen by us pale faces as enemies of progress. However, it is our concept of development which opposes them, for it ignores the wisdom that ”makes do with merely what is necessary and never interferes with the reproduction of live species. We have much to learn from those who possess other paradigms, other forms of knowledge, who respect the diversity of cosmo visions, know how to integrate what is human with nature and who practise the ethic of solidarity.

Cochabamba has become the Ecological Capital of the World. I suggested to president Evo Morales that he replicate the conference, like the World Social Forum, but maintaining it in Bolivia, where a genuine, singular social and political process is unfolding in conditions that show alternatives to the present crisis in hegemonic civilization. The next conference has been scheduled for 2011.

It is a pity that the Brazilian government did not attach the necessary importance to the meeting, nor send any representative with the exception of Congressman Chico Alencar from the PSOL-RJ party who represented the Federal Chamber of Deputies.

*Frei Betto is a writer, together with Marcelo Barros he is the author of ”O amor fecunda o Universo “ ecologia e espiritualidade (Love Fertilises the Universe “ Ecology and Spirituality (Agir). http://www.freibetto.org