Message from President-Comandante Daniel at the International Forum "Re-encounter with Mother Earth".
April 23, 2021
Good afternoon, beloved sisters and brothers, today we are debating this crucial issue for the future of Humanity, which has to do with what has been identified as Climate Change. In other words, Climate Change is the issue determining our ability to open the way to the human species' probabilities of survival. We say probabilities, because we already know how this issue has been dealt with in various Global Summits.
We welcome the initiative of the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Luis Alberto Arce. And we salute the chance to participate in this Conclusion of the debates that you have had there, of those who have preceded us in speaking, our brother Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Founder and Leader of the Platform of France Unbowed, who has been one of the voices, among others, fighting this battle in defense of Humanity; Simon Stiell, Senator from Grenada; Vance Amory, Ambassador of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis; Carlos Jame, Minister of Tourism of St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Chet Greene, Minister of Trade for Antigua and Barbuda; our brother Bruno Rodriguez, of the sister Republic of Cuba. And we will also hear the words of our brother Nicolás Maduro Moros, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. And we mention also the representative of Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, from whom we have already heard.
Mother Earth, as we all know, the world community knows it and highlights it, but at stake too are the interests of the economic model established on the Planet throughout its development, such that some processes under way which were going in the right direction, precisely because they were going in the right direction, were attacked, attacked and blocked by global capitalism.
In the end, in the face of so much pressure, in the face of so many demands from Humanity, in the face of so much tragedy for all to see, then the well known Agreements of the developed world with the developing world were reached, and they gave rise to differences, discussions which today are being debated with great urgency.
Because the last Agreement, which was the Paris Agreement, was clear, and enunciated not by political forces, nor by governments, but affirmed, underwritten and demonstrated by science. Science clearly indicated the goals that need to be achieved so as to put a brake on the advance of global warming, and to achieve a slow and gradual recovery of the roots of Mother Earth.
The discussion was focused, we recall at the time of that Paris Summit, precisely on that point, and the ALBA countries at that time were clear that the goals agreed there were not correct. And not because we, the ALBA country Presidents, were scientists; but simply because we were guided by what the scientists, the science of the developed countries themselves, clearly showed, that it was necessary to set goals that would really make sure that the Agreement's objectives would be achieved.
And there was discussion about the goals, about warming, and the arguments from one side and the other. In the end, the goal was imposed, which we all know is an unattainable goal; the goal of two degrees celsius.
Under these circumstances, we said it is better not to sign, because we are signing something that science suggests, and life and reality suggest to us, that those goals will not be met, and that water will continue to become more and more scarce, forests will become more and more scarce, forest life, marine life will also become more and more scare. And above all, in the midst of all this, the natural phenomena, the rise in sea levels and, thus, the flooding by these waters of entire populations, mainly populations located in territories where they are already continuously affected by natural phenomena.
Here in the region we have highly vulnerable areas, all the Caribbean Zone, all the Caribbean Islands, and also the coasts of the Caribbean Sea, the coastline of the Caribbean Sea, are continuously affected, either by floods, hurricanes or cyclones. And we have then, not only material damage, not only the damage to Nature, but also the damage to the Human Species.
And it is urgent for us to denounce very much more, exert very much more pressure, at a global level, on those with power, those who ultimately decide how far the steps that can be taken or should be taken to address the problem of Climate Change and the impact of Climate Change can go.
We have talked about financial resources, billions of financial resources that do not flow where they should flow, such that their impact continues to be completely minimal. And the overall effect of this situation, where we have an Agreement, the Paris Agreement, which is an Agreement of governments which call themselves very serious and respectful, but which cling to an Agreement that doesn't render this fight viable, but is instead a death sentence.
Then, in the different forums that followed the Paris meeting, much has been said about the Green Fund, and much has been said about the mobilization of resources to finance Climate Change mitigation and adaptation projects in Developing Countries, which is crucial to enable Developing Countries to be protagonists in this fight to reach the goal of limiting emissions to 1.5 degrees, because now the goal is 1.5, it is no longer 2 degrees, but 1.5.
As we were saying, many projects have been presented, but the truth is that little progress is really being made with what is actually being implemented, and the effects of climate change, the effects of gases, the effects of the destruction of nature, are there for all of us to see.
We join these voices, these voices that disagree with the voices that rally to the call of the Developed Countries. They can take their time, they have the power and the strength to impose their time table and to impose their rules, and to withdraw from the Agreements when they so wish, when they consider they should.
To modify these Agreements, even once they were under way, from the Kyoto Agreements onwards, which were a starting point for a great world dialogue, but then there were setbacks, and then a new impulse at the Paris Summit, where there was a lot of good will from a fair number of countries. But the interests of Capital weighed more, the interests of the military industrial complex weighed more, because we well know how resources are much more readily allocated in Developed Country budgets: resources for war, resources to modernize atomic weapons even more, resources to invade, to attack Peoples who are fighting for their Sovereignty, who are fighting against Poverty.
That is to say, they use the resources that give them military power and the power of Capital to impose a tyrannical policy on the World and, instead of helping and contributing so that Developing Countries can count on more and better resources to address basic problems, like the problems of Hunger, Poverty, Extreme Poverty, Basic Services for the Population, what they in fact do is to punish them, torture them, violate the human rights of entire Peoples, as they do with the sister People of Cuba, with the sister People of Venezuela, as they do with Peoples they decide should be punished, that should be sanctioned, from which almost no one escapes, and of course Nicaragua is also a victim of these sanctions.
That is to say, there is no thoughtfulness, in the leadership of the Developed Countries, to deal with these issues in a truly intelligent and rational way. Because what they provoke is chaos, they aggravate Poverty, they aggravate the pain and the violation of human rights of the Peoples that they attack with sanctions and whom they also attack with military occupation, with bombardment. Because we have not yet reached the century where the bombs of the imperialist countries no longer explode on Developing Countries.
This is a battle, beloved sisters and brothers, we all know it, a battle that looks unequal owing to the power of those who have not truly taken seriously, nor do even now they take seriously, what their own countries' scientists say about Global Warming, about the destruction of the Planet.
No, they do not take it seriously! They even go so far as to say that these are false ideas, false hypotheses, that this is not true and therefore makes no sense. That is what they think deep down, and that is why they act in this way, causing enormous damage to the Planet. And above all, violating the human rights of all the Peoples of the Planet, wasting Natural Resources, destroying Natural Resources.
We are still in the battle, and we are fighting it with our declarations, we are fighting it with what we can do in our countries to try and recover a little of the Nature that has been plundered, that has been destroyed. But we know that we all have to take part in fighting the Great Battle, and we are sure that the time will come when the Peoples of the Developed Countries who have now made their voices heard against the policies that are destroying Life, destroying the Planet, they are condemning their governments' policies, those Peoples' voices united to our voices will manage to act in unison. What for? In order to change the future of the Planet, to the extent the Developed World Country leaders on Planet Earth can change their attitudes.
Thank you, beloved sisters and brothers.