Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Barcelona: Activists Blockade International Climate Talks

This week (Monday 2 - Friday 6) the Barcelona International Climate Talks are happening, five days of formal negotiations in the lead up to the COP15 summit in Copenhagen this December. Since Saturday there have been a series of actions in the city streets and at the conference centre, uniting movements to force change during this tiny window of opportunity.


During the night of Monday 2nd November there was an anarchist attack on the offices of Konica-Minolta, a major business sponsor of the pre-Copenhagen talks.  http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/385006/index.php

Yesterday, Tuesday 3rd November, African delegations walked out of the climate talks in a protest against rich country inaction. Rich countries are currently refusing to make concrete emissions reduction commitments, claiming that it would be 'economically and politically difficult'.

This morning, more than forty activists blocked the entrances to the main halls of the conference centre where the talks are taking place. They shut and locked many of the main entrances, taped big X´s across shut doors, and put up stickers proclaiming the conference closed.

They read out statements and spoke about the reasons for their actions in Catalan, Spanish and English. Amongst other things, they spoke about the fact that Africa feel they have to boycott the talks due to lack of seriousness from the rich countries, the fact that people were there to speak on behalf of indigenous in Bagua, Peru who are defending their homeland which has been sold off by the Peruvian state along with 70 of the country's Amazonian rainforest areas, and about the communities in struggle around the planet, trying to defend their resources and communities against multinational climate injustice, including the Rossport community in North West Ireland.



JOIN THE MOBILISATION for COP15:
International grassroots:  http://www.climate-justice-action.org
(in Dutch:  http://www.climate-justice-action.org/?lang=nl)
European autonomous:  http://nevertrustacop.org
Mass direct action: Hit The Production:  http://htp.noblogs.org/
Mass direct action: Pushing for Climate Justice:  http://www.climate-justice-action.org/mobilization/reclaim-power-pushing-for-climate-justice/

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