Climate Justice Assembly Declaration

Bélém, Brazil, 1 February 2009

CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!

No to neoliberal illusions, yes to people's solutions!

For centuries, productivism and industrial capitalism have been destroying
our cultures, exploiting our labour and poisoning our environment.

Now, with the climate crisis, the Earth is saying "enough", "ya basta"!

Once again, the people who created the problem are telling us that they
also have the solutions: carbon trading, so-called "clean coal", more
nuclear power, agrofuels, even a "green new deal". But these are not real
solutions, they are neoliberal illusions. It is time to move beyond these
illusions.

Real solutions to the climate crisis are being built by those who have
always protected the Earth and by those who fight every day to defend
their environment and living conditions. We need to globalise these
solutions.

For us, the struggles for climate justice and social justice are one and
the same. It is the struggle for territories, land, forests and water, for
agrarian and urban reform, food and energy sovereignty, for women’s and
worker’s rights. It is the fight for equality and justice for indigenous
peoples, for peoples of the global South, for the redistribution of wealth
and for the recognition of the historical ecological debt owed by the
North.

Against the disembodied, market-driven interests of the global elite and
the dominant development model based on never-ending growth and
consumption, the climate justice movement will reclaim the commons, and
put social and economic realities at the heart of our struggle against
climate change.

We call on everyone – workers, farmers, fisherfolk, students, youth,
women, indigenous peoples, and all concerned humans from the South and the
North – to join in this common struggle to build the real solutions to the
climate crisis for the future of our planet, our societies, and our
cultures. All together, we are building a movement for climate justice.

We support the mobilizations against the G20 summit and on the global
crisis from 28 march to 4 April, and the 17 April 2009 mobilisation of La
Via Campesina.

We support the call for an International Day of Action in Defense of
Mother Earth and Indigenous Rights on 12 October 2009.

We call for mobilisations and diverse forms of actions everywhere, in the
lead up to, during and beyond the UN climate talks in Copenhagen,
especially on the Global Day of Action on 12 December 2009.

In all of our work, we will expose the false solutions, raise the voices
of the South, defend human rights, and strengthen our solidarity in the
fight for climate justice. If we make the right choices, we can build a
better world for everyone.