Patagonia without dams

Last Friday, at Città dell’Utopia, Juan Pablo Orrego – international coordinator of the board for Patagonia protection – came to lay the basis for the Italian support to the Patagonia without dams campaign which opposes the construction of five dams right in the middle of Chilean Patagonia.

The project opposed is by the HydroAysén society that, through ENDESA in controlled by ENEL. The plan is to build five dams in the Baker and Pascua river basins and submerge 5910 hectares. The hydroelectric plants would be then matched by a row of electricity pylon to move electricity from the plants to the mining areas in the north, crossing Chile for over 2300 km.

On the one side there is the promise of energy independence reached thanks to clean source like hydroelectric one. On the other, the protection of one of the last pristine macro-areas of our planet.
The dams project seems to be unnecessary since Chile is witnessing a decreasing increment of energy request and it would be a false move in a country with such a great renewable energy potential. Not to mention the opportunity of building five dams in a highly seismic zone …

Another quite important point of the Patagonia without dams campaign concerns water rights. The HydroAysén project is based on water rights taken away from Chilean people during dictatorship and in the first years of the ’90 – basically, river are private property. This situation, even if legal, is ethically unsustainable.

With this campaign, the board for Patagonia protection aims to stop the plan and nationalize back the property of the rivers. To do so, the board asks Italian civil society for help since it can, quite directly through campaigning and ethic share investments, put pressure on ENEL to quit the project and keep Patagonia safe.

Various Italian organizations, among which SCI, are backing the campaign both through further campaigning and going deeply in the study of ENEL investment plans. In the meanwhile, a study of the project’s impact on environment is being undertaken and HydroAysén emissaries are playing havoc trying to get their hands on private land and upsetting local communities social dynamics.

Report from the Bonn1 Meeting
of the UN Climate negotiations process

Side Event on the role of Civil Society

The latest session of the climate negotiations just concluded late on Sunday night (11/04) after three days of negotiations focused on procedural issues. This meeting of the parties to the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) was the first to take place since the COP15 in Copenhagen. The main objective of this unusually short session was to consider how to move the negotiations forward from the confused situation that they were in.

SCI hosted a side event for the Youth constituency on the role of civil society with the objective of discussing the perspective of different stakeholders. Despite the rather awkward timing of the event (Saturday, 9pm!), a variety of participants spent ninety minutes discussing the importance of the participation of civil society in the UNFCCC process and the role of partnerships and cooperation between the different groups of stakeholders.

Christiana Figueres* from the Costa Rican government delegation accepted our invitation and brought highly valuable input to the discussion. We invited Ms. Figueres due to the fact that Costa Rica has been, in the past, very supportive of the role of civil society and youth at the climate negotiations. This is not to mention the position of her country as one of the very few true leaders in climate action. Christiana has played a role in the negotiations for about 15 years and thus was able to share with us her valuable insights on the place and role of civil society. After having described the role of young people in relation to the negotiating position of Costa Rica, she called on youth to become more active in the integral stage of the definition of the national negotiating positions.

Other participants at the event – representing different groups of stakeholders such as the trade unions, the local governments, the gender caucus, the secretariat of the UNFCCC and another governmental delegation supportive of youth participation (Switzerland) – shared their visions on the key added values of civil society participation. Increased legitimacy and transparency in the process and the possibility to remind negotiators of the true consequences of the lack of political leadership were mentioned several times among other elements such as the opportunity to build the capacity of tomorrow’s leaders and the fact that the presence of youth in particular “humanize” the negotiation process. The second part of the discussion addressed the question of the cooperation between the delegates representing different groups from the civil society at the negotiations. We agreed that, while cooperation is already taking place to a certain extent, there is a huge opportunity to increase this work and to benefit from a more diverse approach to our presence at the UNFCCC sessions and outside of the official negotiation process.

The side event concluded with a challenge launched by Ms. Figueres to the youth delegates: to work through the year in order to ensure that at least 50% of the governmental delegations include a youth representatives during the next Climate Conference in Cancun. Will we be able to rise to this challenge?

Sebastien (sebastien@youthclimate.org)

*Christiana Figueres is one of the candidates to replace Yvo De Boer as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. We welcome the application for this position by qualified and committed leaders, such as Ms. Figueres, and wish her luck.

Cochabamba Caput Mundi

Starts today in Cochabamba – Bolivia – the World People's conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth convoked by Evo Morales after the failed meeting held last December in Copenhagen.

Over 90 governmental delegations coming from the five continents will be attending as well as about 15 thousand delegates. Among them, Nobel prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the journalist and researcher Naomi Klein, the French farmer Josè Bove, the president of the United Nation General Assembly Miguel D'Escoto … And for the closing day, presidents Morales, Chavez, Correa, and Lugo will join the conference too.

This world conference is a major moment of debate for the 170 countries represented, but not only for them: for the first time ever, social groups, the academic world and governments will gather together to analyse and elaborate solutions to the climate change issue. What is expected by these days of confrontation is a shared position to be upheld in Cancun at the upcoming COP16. Core issues faced will be approval of the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth rights, the proposal for a climate justice tribunal, a world referendum on climate change, and the request to recognize the climate debt of northern countries towards the world south.

Following the 17 working groups:
- Structural Causes
- Harmony with Nature
- Mother Earth Rights
- Referendum
- Climate Justice Tribunal
- Climate Migrants
- Indigenous Peoples
- Climate Debt
- Shared Vision
- Kyoto Protocol
- Adaptation
- Financing
- Technology Transfer
- Forests
- Dangers of Carbon Market
- Action Strategies
- Agricolture and Food Sovereignty

The event starts in quite an important date for Bolivia: 10 years since the war on water when Cochabamba people started a mass mobilization against water privatization managing to have back water as a common resource. Moreover, the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth will end on April, 22nd: right on the Earth date. There’s no better omen!

Follow the conference on http://pwccc.wordpress.com/

I am a canary, you are a canary, we all are canaries of eco-crises …

In 1995 Ismail Serageldin, vice-president of the World Bank made a statement about future wars. He said that as XX century wars has been fought for the control of oil, the XXI century ones will be fought for water.

After the GAIA seminar and after the march we took part, I couldn’t but think about the issue. I mean, the ring should bell in everybody’s mind every few hours for water is such a common sight in our life: still in a glass, running from the tap, boisterous in the toilet, tickling under the shower … water is just so present and so necessary.

According to Water Wars by Vandana Shiva, water conflicts have two sides. The first is the real war fought at regional or national level . Often – and reading the book you’ll find many cases – political violence stems from control of scarce water resources.

The second one is paradigmatic. On one front we find cultures valuing water as something sacred, something that must be preserved and duly shared, a human as well as an ecological need. On the other, we find the entrepreneurial culture of greed, privatization, and appropriation of common resources. And if we want to give a face to these two opposed worldviews we find a multitude of local communities willing to retain water as a common, vital resource fighting back to a global government trying impose elite rule through the WTO, the NAFTA, the World Bank, the FMI …

I guess we all know where to stand, but to have a clearer, more informed idea read the book or have a look at this interview by Vandana Shiva.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/vshiva3.html

Be wary of fairy tales …

Mostly with no straight connection, the topic of straw bale houses was repeatedly touched during the seminar. For

example, envisioning the perfect green work camp one of us had the image of a straw bale dorm. Then, it was not easy to explain that straw houses do exist and, notwithstanding the fairy tales bias of getting them down with a blow, they are actually safe, solid and very ecological.

In fact, many are the strengths of straw bale construction, a technique which is getting more and more widespread in the United States and in Great Britain. Made with a "waste" material such as straw, these houses have a very high energy efficiency in as much they keep an optimal heat insulation. According to www.strawbale.com, a straw bale wall is about three times as efficient as conventional framing: over thirty years, it means a 75% reduction of energy costs and connected natural resources.

An often raised concern is fire. However, materials laboratories report that a plastered straw bale structure has proven to be exceptionally resistant to fire. In these tests, the flames took more than two hours to penetrate the plastered bale walls while conventional framing took only 30 minutes to one hour to burn: “due to their tight compaction, bales contain very little oxygen and thus resist combustion. It’s like trying to burn a phone book”.

Another surprise is that the straw won’t decompose. The reason behind this trick is that organic material needs both water and oxygen to decompose and the right building technique will keep water well out of the structure. To make sure of this, think that bale homes built in the1800’ still exist in Nebraska and Europe. Quoting again from www.strawbale.com, “straw bale homes have consistently withstood severe weather and wind in Wyoming as well as major earthquakes in California … Many architects and engineers consider straw bales to be the ideal “seismic-resistant” building material. In wind tests, bale structures see no movement in a sustained 75 mph gale and only 1/16 inch movement with 100 mph gusts”.

And what about pests? Pests are more of an imagined concern than a real threat. If straw bales are properly plastered there is no way for bugs and rodents to get in. And if pest were to find their way in, they would find it almost impossible to move in the densely packed bales. Amazingly, termites and other pests pose more of a problem to conventional construction than they do to straw bale structures.As you just read, straw bale houses are not just eco-friendly, energy efficient, sound proof, and solid. They are stunningly beautiful as well and they can have many different shapes. However, If you have never seen them, it's quite of an imagination stretching exercise!

Think Outside the Sink!

We were among the 200.000 marching against water privatization yesterday.

We joined the parade half way through and we could see the colourful flow slowly moving down via Cavour. Luckily, we jumped in right where a circus like sumba band was filling up the air with energy.
The march was attended by loads and loads of people because of the paramount importance of the issue: 7/10 of our body is water, we need it to live and water simply cannot be a good and it must remain a common resourced publicly managed. The issue was transverse and international as some of the participants of the seminar stretched: all over the world the trend to privatize common resources is getting stronger and stronger.

It was a pleasure to see such an amount of people manifesting their ideas in a strong, yet funny and amusing way. So … people up there in government ranks and management departments, we have a message for you: “we are watching you, we won’t allow you to make a profit out of our invaluable common resources!”

Just one day after is the World Water Day! Get to know about what was happening and to gather interesting materials on this topic visit the

UN Water web page. And there is a surprise present for this occasion: new episode of "The Story of Stuff" series: "The Story of Bottled Water" - watch it and make your commitment for this special day and further!

Meatout Day turned into Meatout Week

Already since 25 years, 20th March is celebrated as the Meatout Day. Event is widespreaded among 50 states of USA, as well as many other countries of Europe. It is also second to last day of the 2nd GAIA seminar taking place in Rome. During the event participants, divided into kitchen and cleaning teams, were responsible for preparing own meals. Real workcamp spirit! But the most interesting thing is that already for 6 days, 17 people of different cultural and dietary background, managed to prepare everyday meals without using even a piece of meat. We were baking own bread, pizza, pasta, tartas, cooking vegetables, preparing salads, tasting cheese from diffrenet corners of Europe and much more, so nobody complained for boring diet. And most of the ingredients came from food cooperatives or fair trade production.

It's definietely good practice example, that some of us will repeat during their workcamp experience.

To learn, why it is worth to know where your meat comes from and why it is worth to implement vegetarian diet in your everyday life, you can start from watching The Meatrix animation.

Market day

Today we woke up with sun shining. It’s a perfect Saturday morning and the idea of browsing the market could not fit better with our mood :) It might even be that the sun is shining so bright to celebrate farmer’s market third birthday.

Every third Saturday of the month, a group of local farmers and producers gather for the Mercato Contadino Terra organized by Città dell’Utopia and by terraTERRA group. terraTERRA’s aim is to implement a short cycle agriculture: the only one which can guarantee fresh, genuine products while protecting biodiversity the patrimony of varieties. terraTERRA stands also for food sovereignty because the earth is not a supermarket, food is not a good.

The market is located just below the Casale Garibaldi, headquarter of Italian SCI branch. The stalls are full of luscious organic vegetables and seasonal fruits. Cheese, wines and bread are there to be tasted and toiletries like homemade soaps and toothpaste poke out every now and then. But it’s not all about food, there are craft items as well like colourful hats and cotton little bags. People of all ages chit chats and looks around enjoying a little walk in the sun.

The market is not just a place to purchase local organic food but is a way to inform people about critical consume and the importance of common resources. The focus of today Città dell’Utopia stand is to inform people of this afternoon march against the privatization on water: access to water is a basic need and it must remain a public asset.

And stop. March is time is getting closer and … we didn’t finish our shopping yet! ;)

Surprise surprise

“Surprise evening”, so was written in the timetable and up until yesterday I wondered and I - not too subtly – enquired. The mystery was suddenly revealed to me when, during the hectic preparation, Milosz started to rave about gardening tools, plants and so on… “is it guerrilla gardening tonight?”

After reaching a no man’s suburban place in Rome we started planning and planting a flower-bed.

There were about forty of us. The heap of tools disappeared in no time and feet were in stepping on the ground. There was a strange bee-hive energy among all of us because motivation was up and kicking. The idea behind guerrilla gardening is to act against neglect of public spaces and reclaim it to public use.

In Rome, as in many other cities I guess, there are plenty of unused or abandoned areas that could easily be transformed by our own small actions. Planting a seed could be a way to change our surroundings and give a clear message that we do value green areas in our grey cities. It is even a way to stretch the idea that the city is ours and we want to take a good care of it, care that often is lacking in municipality policies.

Just arrived we set up for our dinner, a kind of strange picnic in between two roads and a roundabout. An then: we “digged”, we giggled, we sowed, we “singed”, we racked, we “runned”, we planted and, in the end, we just did it!

Neighbourhood was curious and people started coming down to see what was going on. They were pretty happy to see us around and started asking questions. One even brought us a plant! Cars were slowing down to have a peek and they showed their support in a variety of ways. In the end, we spent a good time in an unusual way (it really was a surprise), we joined local people improving their city and, as usual, “deeds no words”!

Some links go dig deeper:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening

and

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

We are doing stufffff.....

After yestrday session about SCI's history and mission, participants of the Seminar got very much into the motto of the organization - „Deeds and words”. The morning of the 3rd day of the seminar started with a visit of some activists from the „Happy De-growth” movement from the Rome group. We could hear from the first hand how does the Italian de-growth functions, what are the activities of the group and, most improtant, reasons standing behind those actions.

De-growt movement philosophy is not new. The most important propositions are:

1.We buy much more than we need. A lot of the things we need, we can do on ourslves, exchange with others or even get as a present from the others.

2.If we need to buy less, we need less money and as a consequence, we can work less! As a consequence, people will have more time to devote to their families, cpommunities, hobbies, art and culture.

3.De-growt doesn't mean going back to ancient times. It is about using what we have, but in sustainable way. Instead of growth, people should put more attention to developement. It means focusing on quality, instead of quantity.

So the propositions are actually finctioning in different periods of history. But nowadays for sure they are worth reminding!

The theorethical introduction was followed by presentations about composting and community gardening. Straight from the seminar room we went outside, to check how all that works in practice.

The group was divided into Bread Lab (daling with bread and pasta making), Compost Lab (preparation of the terrain for compost nets wich will be put up tomorrow) and Community Garden group, learning how to set up a garden, that in the cities is usually hidden under the concrete.

At the end of the session, almost everybody had to cut the pastry for the noodles, so that we can eat lunch before the sunset.

But you can be sure, that the handmade gnocchi and freshly baked bread was absolutely best lunch most of us ever had!

It started... with an action!

Sunny Monday welcomed the participants of the „European Youth taking the lead of environmental challenges: cre-active reflections for future concrete innov-actions” seminar in Rome! 17 participants form different corners of Europe joined together to learn, discus, share ideas, experiences. But most importnat – TO TAKE ACTION! And the first day already provided us with great opportunity to engage in deeds, not words (only).

Italy is facing major social issue currently. Italy's parliament approved legislation allowing private management of water services . The new law obliges authorities to lower their shareholding in municipal utilities with water businesses. Opposition leaders have expressed concerns that allowing private management of water services, even if the network remains in pubic hands, could lead to an increase in tariffs. And the activists form Citta dell'Utopia in Rome are definietely agains the idea of making water the object of business as usual tactics. Monday 22nd, March is the World Water Day. Before it happens, on Saturday a mobilisation for public water is going to happen in the streets of Rome and other major cities of Italy.

But our small seminar group managed to make a contribution fo the action already. On the first evening, instead of usual drink and regular chit-chat, we decided to join SCI Italy's activists in their late evening action. Together we were prepering signs, saying „Water is not a commodity. NO for prvate water” and giving details of the venue of the Saturday demonstration. Later in the evening we divided into groups and put the signs next to public drinking watr fountains in the neighbourhood of Citta dell'Utopia. We managed pretty well, and one of the groups was even hidding from the police!

Learn more and thake your stand!

You gotta fight for your right to...

...safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose and the right to be heard

Do you recognize these four rights? The right to safety, information, choice and to be heard are the official consumer rights, since 27 years annually celebrated on a World Consumer Rights Day on 15^th of March. They are your rights, because 'Consumers by definition, include us all', as John F. Kennedy, the founder of WCRD day once said, 'They are the largest economic group, affecting and affected by almost every public and private economic decision. Yet they are the only important group... whose views are often not heard'.

The Bill of Consumer Rights was recognized, legitimated and acknowledged by all members of United Nations. As Guidelines for Consumer Protection it was even expanded to the list of eight rights:

• to satisfaction of basic needs,
• to safety (of the products to consumers life),
• to be informed (honest labeling),
• to choose,
• to be heard (in the process of developing the products and well as governmental policies),
• to redress (to receive satisfactory settlement for unsatisfactory services),
• to consumer education (being aware of basic consumer rights and responsibilities and how to act on them),
• and the right to healthy environment (understood in terms of sustainable development).

Even though internationally acknowledged, consumer rights are being ignored and violated both by governments and producers and retailers. It sometimes seems that unofficially it was made much shorter into the list of right to watch commercials and the right to buy, buy, buy.

On this symbolic day, 2^nd Gaia seminar is starting in Rome! Twenty activists from Italy, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Macedonia, Croatia and Georgia will be learning and working on new ideas for making change in the world around us!

In your activities celebrating WCRD you can focus on many different things, like food safety, consumer education, responsible shopping and more. During the Gaia event we will touch those topics, as well as we will work on how to implement them in practice during our projects. To learn more, follow the creatclimate4peace blog and remember to leave your comments!

Permaculture as a sustainable choice

Were you ever wandering, how the world of the future could look like? Apart from science-fiction books, movies, comix, you can also take a look at permaculture. The name means PERMAnent agriCULTURE and in practice it stands for a way of designing human surrounding (housing and food production) in the way that would mimic nature's ecosystems. The idea is one of the methids of adaptation to climate change phenomenons, but first of all the aim is to bring people closer to the nature.

Participants of the „Youth facing global challenges” seminar got a great opportunity to learn even more details thanks to the guest lecturer, Bruno from Croatia. He not only told us about permaculture and eco-villiges, but is himslef a co-funder of one.

The lecture and the discussion evolved around the topic of greening the desert programes, houses made of waste, modern design, that would mimic organic tissue. All that caused thrilling inspiration for many of the listeners. It was followed by specific examples of eco village communities, with detailed presentation of the eco-farm in Vukomeric, which our lecturer came from.

Is that one of possible ways for the developement of GAIA... you will learn in upcoming posts.

SAVE BAIKAL

Best part of SCI seminars is when you can apply the knowledge from the sessions. WWF Workshop during Youth Facing Global Challenges for Sustainable and Peaceful Future was about campaigning and especially which methods they used during Earth Hour campaign. After we came with own ideas for real problem happening in Russia – campaign against reopening of pulp and paper mill on the shores of the Siberian lake Baikal. It is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world and contains a total of roughly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water. Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, the body of water is also known as the "Pearl of Siberia". Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Baykalsk Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM) was constructed in 1966, directly on the shore line, bleaching paper with chlorine and discharging waste into Baikal.

Support the campaign and SPREAD THE WORD!!!

Phenomenon called Climate Refugees

Who is a climate refugee? It is a person displaced by climatically induced environmental disasters. Such disasters result from incremental and rapid ecological change, resulting in increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, fires, mass flooding and tornadoes. But, even though it sounds quit logical, can we really say Climate Refugee?

According to the UN Convention on Refugees: a refugee is “(...) any person who (...) owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”

Therefore, technically someone changing habitat due to environmental degradation does not fall into this category since they are not persecuted directly by anyone. There is also a fact that most of the people that are forced to migrate, never leave their home country, and thereby also do not qualify to be a “refugee” according to the UNHCR definition. Of the ones that do leave their countries, most stay in neighboring countries.

Speaking about neighboring countries, we need to mention story about Tuvalu Islands. Just to give you an example how it functions in a reality.

The Pacific Ocean is home to 22 Island States with a total of 7 million inhabitants, one of the culturally most diverse regions in the world. What is really interesting, these Pacific Islanders emit approximately 0,06% of the world's greenhouse gases, at the same time they are three times more at risk to climate change than countries in the developing world. The highest point on the Tuvalu Islands is only 4.5 meter above the sea level. Yes. And it is the home of 11000 people. By 2050, Tuvalu is expected to become uninhabitable. The islanders risk becoming stateless not only the physical island, but all the institutions of a modern state –parliament, police, law course, state education, health care and other welfare institutions – may disappear. This means that their cultural heritage might be lost, and migration or relocation to other states may be the only realistic option; the complete extinction of a state without there being any successor state.

And here we come to the point about neighboring countries. Facing the fact that the islands will disappear due to the rising sea level, local politicians have been trying to make arrangements with their neighbor countries Australia and New Zealand to accept them as climate refugees. And what happened? Well… Australia has said no. How come? Easily. They don't want to create any special arrangements with single countries. This is particularly ironic since Australia is one of the countries in the world with the highest CO2 emissions per capita, and thereby a main contributor to global warming. What about New Zealand? New Zealand has proposed an immigration scheme, allowing 75 immigrants per year. However, these immigrants must comply with a range of prerequisites such as being between 18-45 years old, speak English, and having a concrete job offer in New Zealand once they arrive. Sounds difficult? Considering the location and level of access to resources, it is practically impossible. And even if it was, there is still a fact that the elderly and the poor, the most vulnerable, will have trouble being accepted as refugees. In other words, they are left on their own.

Obviously, mitigation achieving the rights to a new country is not the principal goal of the Tuvaluans. In the worlds of their Governor-General, known as “The Tuvalu Statement”; “Taking us as environmental refugees, is not what Tuvalu is after in the long run. We want the islands of Tuvalu and our nation to remain permanently and not be submerged as a result of greed and uncontrolled consumption of industrialized countries. We want our children to grow up the way we grew up in our own islands and in our own culture.

The U.N. currently states that more refugees are now displaced by environmental disasters than by war, more than 25 million climate refugees (ecologically induced migrants), and experts have projected that number will double within the next five years to over 50 million. Several organizations like the IPCC, Red Cross and The Christian Monitor estimate between 150 million and 1 billion climate refugees will be displaced within the next four decades, yet not one single international law gives asylum or even a helping hand to environmental refugees.