[News] I Awakened Here When the Earth Was New
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Thu Aug 26 12:06:38 EDT 2021
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*I Awakened Here When the Earth Was New: The Thirty-Fourth Newsletter
(2021)*
Alisa Singer
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(USA), /Changing/, 2021. Source: IPCC.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research
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In late March 2021, 120 traditional owners from 40 different First
People’s groups spent five days at the National First People’s Gathering
on Climate Change in Cairns (Australia). Speaking on the impact of the
climate crisis on First People, Gavin Singleton from the Yirrganydji
traditional owners explained
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that ‘From changing weather patterns to shifts in natural ecosystems,
climate change is a clear and present threat to our people and our culture’.
Bianca McNeair of the Malgana traditional owners from Gatharagudu
(Australia) said
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that those who attended the gathering ‘are talking about how the birds’
movements across the country have changed, so that’s changing songlines
that they’ve been singing for thousands and thousands of years, and how
that’s impacting them as a community and culture. … We are very
resilient people’, McNeair said, ‘so it’s a challenge we were ready to
take on. But now we’re facing a situation that’s not predictable, it’s
not part of our natural environmental pattern’.
Arone Meeks
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(Australia), /The Gesture/, 2020.
The Yirrganydji traditional owners live on Australia’s coastline, which
faces the Great Barrier Coral Reef. That majestic reef faces extinction
from climate change: a period of consecutive years of coral bleaching
from 2014 to 2017 threatened to kill off the precious coral, during
which fluctuating temperatures caused coral to expel symbiotic algae
that are crucial to the nutritional health of the coral. Scientists
assembled by the United Nations found
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that 70% of the earth’s coral reefs are threatened, with 20% already
destroyed ‘with no hope for recovery’. Of the reefs that are threatened,
a quarter are under ‘imminent risk of collapse’ and another quarter are
at risk ‘due to long-term threats’. In November 2020, a UN report
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titled /Projections on Future Coral Bleaching/ suggested that unless
carbon emissions are controlled, the reefs will die and the species they
support will die out too. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
notes
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that ‘climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef
and coral reefs worldwide’. That is why the Yirrganydji traditional
owners created
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the Indigenous Land and Sea Rangers to care for the reef against all odds.
‘Most of our traditions, our customs, our language are from the sea’,
says
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Singleton, ‘so losing the reef would impact our identity. We were here
prior to the formation of the reef, and we still hold stories that have
been passed down through generations – of how the sea rose and flooded
the area, the “great flood”’. The Yirrganydji Rangers, Singleton points
out, ‘have their hearts and souls’ in the reef. But they are struggling
against all odds.
Pejac
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(Spain), /Stain/, 2011.
Not long after the National First People’s Gathering disbanded, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth
report. Based on the consensus of 234 scientists from over 60 countries,
the report notes
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that ‘multiple lines of evidence indicate the recent large-scale
climatic changes are unprecedented in a multi-millennial context, and
that they represent a millennial-scale commitment for the
slow-responding elements of the climate system, resulting in worldwide
loss of ice, increase in ocean heat content, sea level rise, and deep
ocean acidification’. If warming continues to reach 3 °C (by 2060) and
5.7 °C (by 2100), human extinction is certain. The report comes after a
string of extreme weather events: floods in China and Germany, fires
across the Mediterranean, and extreme temperatures across the world. A
study in the July issue of /Nature Climate Change/ found
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that ‘record-shattering extremes’ would be ‘nearly impossible in the
absence of warming’.
Importantly, the 6th IPCC report shows that ‘historical cumulative CO2
emissions determine to a large degree warming to date’, which means that
the Global North countries have already taken the planet to the
threshold of annihilation before countries of the Global South have been
able to attain basic needs such as universal electrification. For
instance, 54 countries on the African continent account
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for merely 2-3% of global carbon emissions; half of Africa’s 1.2 billion
people have no access
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to electricity, while many extreme climate events
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(droughts and cyclones in southern Africa, floods in the Horn of Africa,
desertification in the Sahel) are now taking place across the continent.
Released on World Environment Day (5 June) and produced with the
International Week of Anti-Imperialist Struggle
<https://leftword.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b4e73c364b&e=d206d0a40d>,
our Red Alert no. 11
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further explains the scientific and political dynamics of the climate
crisis, the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, and what can
be done to turn the tides.
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré
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(Ivory Coast), /Le serment du Jeu de Paume/, 2010.
Governments will gather in October for the 15th Conference of the
Parties (COP15
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in Kunming (China) to discuss progress on the Convention on Biological
Diversity (ratified
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in 1993) and in November for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of
the Parties (COP26
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in Glasgow (UK) to discuss climate change. Attention is on COP26, where
the powerful Global North will once more push for ‘net zero’ carbon
dioxide emissions and thereby reject deep cuts to their own emissions
while insisting that the Global South forgo social development.
Meanwhile, there will be less attention paid to COP15, where the agenda
will include cutting pesticide use by two-thirds, halving food waste,
and eliminating the discharge of plastic waste. In 2019, an
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services report
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showed that pollution and resource extraction had threatened one million
animal and plant species with extinction.
The link between the assault on biological diversity and climate change
is clear: the opening of wetlands alone has released historic stores of
carbon to the atmosphere. Deep emission cuts and better stewardship of
resources are necessary.
Amin Roshan
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(Iran), /Wandering/, 2019.
Strikingly, just as the IPCC released its report, US President Joe
Biden’s administration asked
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the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to boost output of oil
production. This makes a mockery of the Biden pledge
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to cut 50% of US greenhouse emissions by 2030.
A recent paper
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in /Nature/ shows that the passage of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on
Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer banned the use of
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), whose gradual elimination from aerosol
sprays, refrigerants, and Styrofoam packaging prevented ozone depletion.
The Montreal Protocol is significant because – despite industry lobbying
– it was universally ratified. That treaty provides hope that sufficient
pressure from key countries, pushed by social and political movements,
could result in stringent regulations against pollution and carbon abuse
as well as meaningful cultural change.
Simone Thomson
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(Australia), /Awakening/, 2019.
Places associated with global negotiations to save the planet include
cities such as Kyoto (1997), Copenhagen (2009), and Paris (2015). First
amongst these should be Cochabamba (Bolivia), where the government of
Evo Morales Ayma held the World People’s Conference on Climate Change
and the Rights of Mother Earth in April 2010. Over 30,000 people from
more than 100 countries came to this landmark conference, which adopted
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the Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth. Several points were
discussed, including the demand for:
1. The states of the Global North to cut emissions by at least 50%;
2. Developing countries to be given substantial assistance to adapt to
the effects of climate change and to transition away from fossil fuels;
3. Indigenous rights to be protected;
4. International borders to be opened to climate refugees;
5. An international court to be set up to prosecute climate crimes;
6. People’s rights to water to be recognised, and that people have the
right not to be exposed to excessive pollution.
‘We are confronted with two paths’, former President Morales said
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the path of ‘/pachamama/ (Mother Earth) or the path of the
multinationals. If we don’t take the former, the masters of death will
win. If we don’t fight, we will be guilty of destroying the planet’.
Gavin Singleton and Bianca McNeair would certainly agree.
So would the Yorta Yorta poet and educator Hyllus Noel Maris
(1933-1986), whose ‘Spiritual Song of the Aborigine’ (1978) awakens hope
and lays the soundtrack for those who march to save the planet:
/I am a child of the Dreamtime People//
//Part of this land, like the gnarled gumtree//
//I am the river, softly singing//
//Chanting our songs on my way to the sea//
//My spirit is the dust-devils//
//Mirages, that dance on the plain//
//I’m the snow, the wind, and the falling rain//
//I’m part of the rocks and the red desert earth//
//Red as the blood that flows in my veins//
//I am eagle, crow and snake that glides//
//Through the rainforest that clings to the mountainside//
//I awakened here when the earth was new/.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
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