LIMA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Rights experts and civil society groups issued an open letter on Wednesday to ministers attending U.N. climate talks in Lima, urging governments to enshrine “human rights for all” in the new global climate deal due to be agreed at the end of 2015.
At the same time, thousands of Peruvians and indigenous people from the Andean and Amazon regions marched shoulder to shoulder with climate activists from around the world on the traffic-choked streets of Lima.
They called for urgent action to tackle climate change and the environmental problems affecting communities dependent on natural resources for their survival.
Danitza, whose Quechua name Pilpintu means butterfly, from Peru’s south-central Andean region of Ayacucho, said people must take care of the earth, not least for the benefit of their children. “For the next generations, we should look after our water, the earth, our food,” she said, carrying her baby dressed in traditional clothes.
Many at the march, around 15,000-strong according to organisers, shouted and waved banners demanding clean water, 100 percent renewable energy, and protection of their rights threatened by extractive mining and major development projects, such as hydro-electric dams.
More than 200 groups working on environment, development and human rights that signed a letter to ministers, together with 76 rights experts, warned that “climate change and certain actions being taken to address climate change interfere with the enjoyment of human rights protected under international law”.
Maria Jose Veramandi, senior attorney with the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), pointed to the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as “just one example of where things can go wrong”.
Projects carried out as part of the CDM, a carbon trading mechanism that supports clean energy projects, have been accused of a variety of human rights violations since the mechanism started work, she said.
She cited the construction of the Santa Rita dam in Guatemala, saying it had led to violence and repression against indigenous communities, including the death of two children.
The executive board of the Clean Development Mechanism
has since agreed on new guidelines to try to ensure local people have more say in CDM projects.
THIRSTY MINES
Out on the streets of Lima, civil servant Celso Sempertegui held one edge of a 100 metre-long green silk banner sporting messages and pictures in opposition to Newmont Mining Corp’s proposed $5 billion Conga mine in Peru’s gold-rich Cajamarca region – which is now on hold – as well as a planned Chadin hydropower plant.
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