Throughout the continent, ‘oil has correlated with imperial subjugation, local authoritarianism and flagrant human rights abuses’. Citing examples of the devastating consequences a growing global hunger for energy has had for communities and ecosytems in oil-bearing regions, Oilwatch Africa calls for the world to start weaning itself from its ‘addiction to oil’ by ‘investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects.’
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For the first time since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted 60 years ago, the UN General Assembly is finally poised to recognize the Human Right to Water and Sanitation. By the end of July, the General Assembly will consider an historic resolution brought to the UN member states by the Bolivian government. For many years, the water justice movement has been calling for UN leadership at the highest levels on this critical issue — without success until now.
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An analysis of the Peoples’ Agreement that emerged from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held from 20 to 22 April in Cochabamba (Bolivia) may lead us to think that the gender issue was not present at that Conference. Although in general terms it may be true that a gender perspective was not substantially incorporated into the conclusions of the working groups, gender language can be found in some of the texts.
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With the Cochabamba Conference, held after the Copenhagen UN climate conference and organised eight months before the next Conference of the Parties (COP) in Mexico, the Bolivians have created a vital opportunity at all levels: at the level of social and political movement, at the governmental level, and most importantly, in the public sphere and in the imaginations of peoples everywhere.
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