[Scpg] Reflections on Cochabamba Part 4: Working Groups, the way they were...before the journey

[Barbara Wishingrad]

Reflections on Cochabamba Part 4: Working Groups, the way they were...before the 
journey
http://hopedance.org/blogs/reflections-on-cochabamba-part-4-working-groups-the-way-it-wasbefore-the-journey.html



I was excited about the possibility of working in  groups at the conference; in 
fact, that was one of my motivations for  going there. I loved the idea that it 
was a people’s conference and I  wondered how that might play out, how the 
promise of consensus would  become a reality.  I was intrigued by this quote 
from the official cmpcc website (cmpcc is the acronym in Spanish for the 
complete name of the People’s World Conference):“The People’s World Conference 
is truly striving to involve as many people as possible. The  core work of the 
Conference will be done in Working Groups. Each one  will start their work via 
email, building consensus and putting forward  proposals, which will be 
considered and enriched in the meetings in  person that will take place during 
the actual conference in  Cochabamba. The idea is to construct in Cochabamba in 
an inclusive and  participative way a grand “Peoples' Accord to save life and 
Mother  Earth.”

On the NAC website, in sharing with others about my upcoming journey, I had 
written, “Nurturing  Across Cultures is committed to listening to traditional 
cultures  worldwide, and applying knowledge and understanding that is relevant 
to  our own lives as caring members of the world community. This is the  purpose 
of our trip to South America in April; to stand shoulder to  shoulder with other 
peoples of the world, sharing our humanity with  them, and returning to our own 
culture with strategies and inspiration  to move cultural trends toward 
nurturing, cooperation, and responsible  action.  We are aligned with the 
Permaculture principles of care of the  earth, care of people, and fair share.”

Then, as I was preparing for my travels, I read  this quote on 350.org, which I 
also posted on the Nurturing Across  Cultures site in my info about the upcoming 
event.
“…In April, (Bolivia) will convene a major summit of progressive government 
leaders, social movement leaders,  activists, and civil society to map out 
points of consensus and a plan  for shifting the international debate on climate 
change towards an  outcome that is fair and ambitious.  …their collaborative 
approach  towards organizing this summit… reaches far beyond the 
anti-capitalist,  radical wing of the movement that you might expect.  They have 
been  working hard to reach out to a wide range of social movements and  civil 
society, get invitations to government leaders with positions  clearly different 
than their own, and map out an agenda that leads to  open and honest 
conversations about a positive way forward.  In a  post-Copenhagen world, their 
commitment and drive to building a broader  and more powerful movement in 2010 
is one of the most hopeful and  inspiring things …to get involved with right 
now.”

I had already wanted to get involved, in  fact, I was committed to go, and these 
posts confirmed that I had made  the right choice.  They gave me hope that the  
conference might move beyond the predetermined agenda of the event,  which 
showed up as topics for many of the working groups, for example:  structural 
causes of climate change, climate justice tribunal, climate  debt, and dangers 
of a carbon market.
 I  encouraged others to participate in the online working groups as I  
solicited funding for my actual trip south. I appreciated that cmpcc  encouraged 
online as well as physical participation to be more  inclusive, all over the 
globe.  I looked forward  to the day when the working groups dialog would begin. 
One had to choose  one working group in which to participate at the conference 
but could  sign up for up to five groups online.  I chose to interact with three 
groups pre-conference of the seventeen or so possibilities.  There were 
originally fewer groups and then a few more were added as the conference got 
closer.  I waited weeks without hearing anything from any of my groups and I 
sent them emails asking when the dialog would begin.  Finally  I got my first 
emails from the two online groups in the second week of  March, and didn’t get 
an email from the conference group until March 19.  By  then, I had a lot less 
time to read, reflect, and respond as I was so  busy preparing for my journey 
and taking care of what I needed to at  home.  I had wanted to participate fully 
in the  process from start to finish, but it was hard to find the time and focus  
I needed to do so in the final weeks before I left the US.

The groups I chose to be a part of were: Harmony with Nature (the group I would 
also participate in at the conference), Mother Earth Rights, and Shared Vision.  
I felt that I could contribute the most to the Harmony with Nature group since 
so many of the ideas and experiences I wanted to share had  come from 
Permaculture, a design system based on harmony with nature,  and other ways of 
mimicking and being with nature.  I  felt that I had intuitively lived in this 
way for many years and had  chosen this path over other more conventional paths 
before me.  And I was yet to learn about the concept of Living Well.

I chose Mother Earth Rights because the idea fascinated me and I wanted to see 
how it would evolve.  It felt like an idea whose time has come, to me. I first 
heard of the concept at the Bioneers conference http://www.bioneers.org in Marin 
County, CA last October.  I  saw Mari Margil of the Community Environmental 
Legal Defense Fund speak  and attended a workshop about the Democracy School 
movement.  At  Bioneers Mari spoke of her part in drafting Rights of Nature 
language  for the constitution of Ecuador as well as ordinances for 
municipalities  in the US that changed the wording and intent of the law to give 
Mother  Earth rights.  It was mind blowing and exciting to realize what she was 
talking about.  The  way it was explained to me that made sense was 
this—whenever a new  group or entity gets rights, there is resistance because it 
is such a  paradigm shift, it is almost inconceivable to imagine, to the  
mainstream, and sometime to the fringes as well.. Before slaves got  rights, the 
culture at the time couldn’t imagine them being thought of  as human, as beings 
that deserved rights.  The same scenario unfolded when women got rights.  So 
that’s why we might feel so odd when we hear talk about ecosystems, or nature, 
or Mother Earth, having rights.  The concept doesn’t make sense in our 
paradigm.  In  our present legal system, damages to ecosystems can be looked at 
only  in terms of how that damage would be harmful to a human being; the  
ecosystem has no rights on its own, only as related to human beings.  So  if a 
river or mountain, for example, is damaged by the actions of an  individual or 
corporation, it is only legally significant if it affects a  person, for 
example, their health, adjourning property, or livelihood.  For  example, as I 
understand it, indigenous tribes in North America have  sued for loss of fishing 
rights when rivers have been dammed or diverted  for irrigation, but they have 
not been able to sue to protect the  fishes’ lives apart from said fish being a 
commodity or income or food  source for human beings.  I also understand that  
in the Global South, and where people truly live in harmony with nature,  away 
from and apart from the legal structures of western civilization, Mother Earth 
Rights are accepted intrinsically and it is part of the paradigm that Mother 
Earth as a legal and living being.

I chose to be a part of the Shared Vision group because that was one of my main 
intentions and hope in attending  the conference, to be able to create a shared 
vision with the other  participants.  I wanted to be part of that process.  As  
I read posts from others in the Shared Vision group, I sometimes  despaired 
because their vision seemed so far away from mine, and many of  the posts were 
hostile and belligerent toward the US and others in the  Global North, not only 
the governments but also the citizens.  I  actually worried that as a US 
citizen, I might be in danger at the  conference due to the hostile feelings 
expressed by a number of people  in their posts in this group.  I recognize that  
even though I had, over the course of my lifetime, lived with less of a  carbon 
footprint than probably 90% of those in the US, I could be seen  as a 
perpetuator of the US model of living, and to some extent, that is  true.  After 
all, I had taken five planes to get to the conference.  I presently own a car, a 
computer, washing machine, dryer, and refrigerator.  It’s  true that I didn’t 
own any of these items for most of my adult life and  I practiced voluntary 
simplicity, choosing a different path from the  majority.  But although I am a 
second generation  American whose ancestors did not participate in the 
colonization and  imperialism that has affected so much of the so-called 
developing world,  as much as I have tried to even out the playing field by my 
own choices  and lifestyle, and as much as I have rejected some of the privilege  
norteamericanas are born into, I have, both consciously and  unconsciously, 
reaped benefits of our system.
One of the Shared Vision posts in this group called for complete elimination of 
all automobile and air travel.  I mentioned this to my then 22 year old son one 
day, and he said, “Well, that’ll never happen. What else have you got?”  I loved 
his clear, to the point, realistic response, and I actually agreed with him.  If 
that’s what it takes, it’ll never happen.  So what else have we got?


I had some ideas that I had wanted to share at the conference.  I  wanted to 
share what I thought were feasible ideas for shifting climate  change that 
originated in the Global North. I wanted to show people at  the conference that 
there were those of us in the north who are  committed to proposing and 
following through with solutions for climate  change.  I wanted to share ideas 
that could make a  real difference in climate change without dealing with what 
were  referred to as structural causes, or some of the more controversial  
topics (at least to me) suggested in the conference pre-program.  Two  of the 
ideas I had wanted to share were the Fossil Free by ’33  initiative through the 
Community Environmental Council in Santa Barbara,  and the 2030 Challenge issued 
by Architecture 2030

The Community Environmental Council has some  concrete steps for the region to 
take to become Fossil Free by ’33. From  their website: “CEC’s mission is to 
make today’s generation the last to  rely on gasoline for fueling its cars, and 
coal- and  natural-gas-created electricity for heating and lighting its 
buildings.  The two biggest energy-using sectors in our region are buildings, 
which  account for about 37 percent of our energy needs, and transportation,  
which accounts for about 48 percent. In our energy plan for Santa  Barbara 
County – A New Energy Direction – CEC focuses on solutions in  which there are 
available, cost-effective technologies, and where we  have the potential for 
local influence.”  



What I like best about this, besides the numbers,  ands the focus on local 
action, is that CEC acknowledges that “We…need  to take a creative approach that 
keeps in mind those things that we have  control over”.  I  personally tend to 
think in terms of idealistic solutions that may be  difficult to implement, 
which probably waste time and energy in the long  run, and accomplish less, 
because people just aren’t ready for them.  So  I was encouraged by a solution 
proposed by an environmental group in  the US that makes such bold changes in 
our energy use yet is couched in  terms so it can be embraced by an 
environmentally conscious mainstream.  The initiative is very detailed and 
proposes many ways of effecting  change. Here are more details about the CEC 
plan:
  http://www.cecsb.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=122&Itemid=163

Architecture 2030, a non-profit, non-partisan and  independent organization 
based in New   Mexico, was established in 2002  in response to the 
global-warming crisis by architect Edward Mazria. I  quote, “2030’s mission is 
to rapidly transform the US and global  Building Sector from the major 
contributor of greenhouse gas emissions  to a central part of the solution to 
the global-warming crisis. Their  goal is straightforward: to achieve a dramatic 
reduction in the  global-warming-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the 
Building  Sector by changing the way buildings and developments are planned,  
designed and constructed”.


I saw Ed Mazria speak at UCSB in 2009.  He was articulate, engaging, 
professional, and passionate about his work and ideas. His presentation was 
backed by easy-to-follow statistics and data.  I felt possibility in the air as 
he spoke.  Like  Fossil Free ‘33, this appeared to me to be a radical solution 
that  could get real results, couched in terms that the mainstream could  
embrace, if stretched just a little.
Architecture 2030 is a solution that is based in  industrialized countries where 
there is sufficient money and  infrastructure to carry out the targets.  
Implementing  such strategies could be one way that industrialized countries can 
take  responsibility for their part in creating the current climate  
catastrophe.  Implementation guidelines can be found here:
http://www.architecture2030.org/2030_challenge/guidelines.html 


Armed with hope, passion, and solutions to share from my part of the world, I 
was ready to journey south.  I  started to get lots of emails from the working 
groups in the last days I  was in the US and the dozen days I was in Venezuela 
and Ecuador before I  actually got into a working group session in Bolivia.  I  
was unable to download or read most of the documents I received during  that 
time, so I was not up to speed about the general overviews or the  nature of 
proposals in ‘my’ groups by the time I arrived at the  conference setting in 
Tiquipaya.  But two days  before I was to travel to Bolivia, in an internet café 
in Sanare,   Venezuela, I received an email that said that the working groups 
would  congregate at 8:30 AM on Monday, April 19, not on Tuesday April 20 as  
originally announced.  My inner time clock speeded up and I geared up for 
arriving for these meetings I had waited for with such anticipation.

A  Permaculture designer, water harvesting advocate, and longtime  environmental 
steward, Barbara Wishingrad, attended the Peoples’ World  Conference on Climate 
Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 19-22, 2010,  along with 35, 000 other 
people. She also traveled with a delegation  from SOA Watch to Venezuela to 
visit clinics, schools, cooperatives,and  other social programs under the Hugo 
Chavez government. Barbara has  worked as an herbalist, homebirth midwife, 
street artist, interpreter,  and with special needs babies, among other things; 
she is currently  organizing a Water Harvesting Co-op in the Santa Barbara 
area.   Barbara  has lived and worked among indigenous artisans and midwives and 
has  made sharing indigenous wisdom an important part of her life work.  She  is 
founder and President of Nurturing Across Cultures, formerly The  Rebozo Way 
Project:http://www.nurturingacrosscultures.org 



This article is copyrighted by a Creative Commons 
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You may copy,  
distribute, transmit and adapt this work and other essays in the  Reflections on 
Cochabamba series by this author under the following  conditions:
  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
 

 "Be aware of the influence humans have on the health and 
viability of life on earth. Call attention to what fosters or 
harms earth's exquisite beauty, balances and 
interdependencies. Guided by Spirit, work to translate 
this understanding into ways of living that reflect our 
responsibility to one another, to the greater community 
of life, and to future generations."


~ Orange County Friends Meeting 
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
Santa Ana, California



      
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