GLOBAL GREENS 2001 RESOLUTIONS

GLOBAL GREENS COORDINATION AND NETWORK

Submitted by: Global Greens Reference Group

Passed by acclamation, 16 April 2001

 

We, the Global Greens Reference Group of 2001, propose that –

1. The Green political parties of the world begin immediately to consider the creation, at Canberra, of a Global Green Coordination and a wider Global Green Network.

2. The purpose of the Global Green Coordination will be to foster and focus communications and actions among its members so that all Green political parties of the planet, on a continuing basis, will share knowledge of Green Party affairs and initiatives on issues of global concern.

3. The Global Green Coordination, primarily using email, be established and that it initially will be the Global Green Reference Group of 2001. The Global Green Coordination will consist of three representatives selected by each Federation.

4. All decisions of the Global Green Coordination and all postings to the Global Greens website must be unanimously agreed upon by the members of the Global Green Coordination. The work of the Global Green Coordination will be for the implementation of the agenda of the Global Greens Charter, Canberra 2001.

5. A primary purpose of the Global Green Coordination is to identify possible global actions to be proposed to the parties world-wide.

6. Another purpose of the Global Green Coordination is to give immediate attention to helping the Global Green Network facilitate comprehensive access to electronic communications by every Green Party and movement, in partnership with the relevant Federation.

7. The Global Green Network be composed of two to three representatives from Green parties and movements identified in partnership with the relevant Federation. The purpose of the Global Green Network is to develop healthy discussion, especially via electronic mechanisms. The Global Green Coordination may refer issues for discussion to the Global Greens Network.

8. The Global Greens agree to meet again no later than 2006.

 

CLIMATE CHANGE

Submitted by: Participants of the Rio+10 International Workshop, held in Canberra from April 12 – 13, 2001 representing Green movements from over 54 countries
Amended in response to discussion in Climate Change Plenary, 15 April 2001
Agreed unanimously, 16 April 2001

 

Taking serious note of the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirming the grave impacts of human induced climate change on the international community and environment (such as displacement of human populations due to sea level rise; threats to food and water security, human health and ecosystems; natural disasters, etc);

Acknowledging our duty to protect all living beings;

Recognising the greater vulnerability of developing (majority) nations who have contributed the least to global warming; in particular the small island states; and that the refusal to act now would represent a crime against present and future generations;

Recognising the need to change production and consumption patterns and the role of transnational corporations in impeding such changes;

Appalled that only a few nations have taken relevant steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions despite being aware that the impacts of their actions will be most severe on poor countries and indigenous peoples;

Noting that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is an important, if insufficient, first step in the direction of implementing the principle of sustainability in climate policy with the aim of reducing and reversing the general trend towards global warming;

Affirming that future climate negotiations should be based on the principles of equal rights of all human beings (in enriched and impoverished countries) to the Earth’s atmosphere, which is a global commons;

Concerned by the urgency with which the world must stop its dependence on fossil fuel energy, and the lack of sufficient pressure on nations to encourage sustainable renewable sources;

Recognising that strong economic and employment opportunities are offered by the renewable energy sector;

Strongly condemn the US administration for its decision, against scientific evidence and ignoring international agreements, to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, especially as the US is responsible for a fourth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions; thus shifting the burden of climate change onto the world’s poor majority;

Affirm the need for an international campaign to "Save the Climate to Save Humanity";

Call upon the Green Political Parties of the Globe, social and environment movements, and other forces of civil society, the UN Secretary-General and national governments to use their political influence:

 

1. To have the Kyoto Protocol come into force as soon as possible, and certainly by the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002.
2. To put pressure on their own governments to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which can become binding international law if at least 55 states ratify, and if the emissions of these states add up to at least 55 per cent of the emissions of Annex I countries.
3. To guarantee the underlying ecological integrity of the Protocol by overcoming the separation of the UNFCCC and the UN conventions on Desertification, Biodiversity, and Wetlands; and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
4. To work actively towards a global moratorium on the destruction of native forests and to develop strategies for the restoration of indigenous forests.
5. To ensure that climate negotiations explicitly recognise the equal right of all human beings to the earth’s atmosphere.
6. To ensure that climate negotiations reflect the urgency of moving from fossil fuel dependency and from the use of nuclear energy to sustainable renewable sources and put pressure on governments to implement policies to bring about this change.
7. To make sure that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) promotes the transfer of sustainable energy technologies from industrialised to developing countries.
8. To ensure that climate negotiations go beyond the first commitment period agreed to in Kyoto, and that additional long-range targets and timetables are developed.
9. To use whatever peaceful means, including boycott strategies, to put pressure on the US, other countries and corporations that block climate policies.
10. To demand that the EU and the international community continue with the international process of developing sustainable climate policy and make particular use of the Bonn climate change conference in July to advance this issue.
11. And supports a boycott of US-Oil Companies like Exxon, as long as the Bush Government refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

 

FREE TRADE AREAS OF THE AMERICAS

Submitted by: Chile, Canada and representatives from United States of America, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazilo, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua.
As amended in response to Resolutions Workshop comments, Sunday 15 April
Agreed unanimously, 16 April 2001

 

In consideration that the agreement of the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) will be negotiated in a closed and undemocratic process next week in Quebec City, Canada; and

Noting that this agreement will further the social and environmental problems already caused by NAFTA and WTO, and revive some MAI issues, by disabling the implementation of policies of public interest by governments, and augmenting the control of corporations on supposedly democratic government decision-making.

It is resolved that the Global Greens

• support only continental integration processes which assure the alleviation of poverty, the consolidation of democracies and the implementation of sustainability, recognising that such integration needs to take place solely through a transparent and participatory process;
• encourage work by the peoples of the Americas to support only continental integration processes which fulfil these objectives.

 

POSITIVE GLOBALISATION, OIL COMPANIES AND PEOPLE’S DECISIONS

Submitted by: French language workshop, Rio+10 International Workshop, 12—13 April 2001; African delegates (Cameroun, Mali, Benin), Australia, Colombia, France, Italy
Proposed amendment submitted by India, Australia, not supported
Agreed, 16 April 2001

 

Global Greens, during their first world conference in Canberra, resolved to send a strong protest message to President Bush’s administration that rejection of the Kyoto treaty is not acceptable.

In order not to fall into the trap of eco-technocracy, the Global Greens decided to draw up the settings of a political utopia in the long term, and short-term achievable and observable objectives.

The Global Greens will

• enforce an International Green Tribunal to start addressing oil issues;
• enforce the setting up of a judicial institution to judge crimes against the environment with the same clout as for crimes against humanity;
• enforce the creation of a World Environmental Organisation to facilitate federation of the means of preserving the ecosystem and to point out the current political structural dysfunction in the UN institutions, OMS, UNESCO etc;
• act to make the WTO submit to the international laws of the United Nations;
• use the new awareness of the movement against global liberalisation to make alliances and propose possible campaigns at international level;
• make sure that technological innovations favouring sustainable development have their places on the production lines and in the commercial process;
• enforce the re-allocation of money from weaponry to social and environmental projects;
• actively fight against structural adjustment plans and make it a condition on any project or reduction of debt that a process to reduce poverty and restore the environment be implemented;

• enact the Tobin tax in the same spirit;
• work towards developing international, national and local structural mechanisms to hold multi-national corporations (MNCs) accountable and responsible for their destructive actions in most African and South Asian countries;
• ensure that all human and environmental rights abuses by MNCs and governments, both illegitimate and legitimate, are publicly displayed;
• work on a program of short, medium and long term actions on ‘humanity’s common heritages’ (water, earth, air, public amenities, woodlands and forests, non-renewable energy), whilst removing these resources from the commercial process.

In the short term, the Global Greens conference supports targeted strategic actions against multinational oil companies (such as Exxon-Mobil, Esso, Total-Elf). A common global campaign will make our organisation more visible for international public opinion. Thus we will show our will to simultaneously save the climate (in order to save life), save the economy from speculation and introduce equality between North and South. This campaign will focus on companies that are today creating most damage, democratically, socially and ecologically: the oil companies.

To make this campaign successful, the Global Greens call on all like-minded community organisations, all civil rights organisations such as those that started to mobilise in Seattle and Porto Alegre, any people aware of the need to respect the environment, social and human rights and democracy, to join the campaign, embodied by an international public tribunal against these companies (such as the so-called Russel’s tribunal) at the Johannesburg conference.

Abstention
Switzerland. Too many demands put into one resolution which have not been sufficiently elaborated.

 

THE NEXT GLOBAL GREENS CONFERENCE

Submitted by: African Federation
Agreed by acclamation, 16 April 2001

The African Federation now hereby propose an invitation to host the next Global Green Conference to be held no later than 2006.