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CLIMATE
CHANGE: Latin American Women Want Modified
Trade Rules
By Daniela Estrada*
COPENHAGEN (IPS) - "We don't need to change
the climate, we need to change trade," said
Brazilian activist Marta Lago at Klimaforum,
the civil society meeting held in parallel
with the climate change summit in the Danish
capital.
Lago and Norma Maldonado from Guatemala, who
belong to the International Gender and Trade
Network (IGTN), criticised the free trade
treaties signed by Latin American countries
with the United States and the European
Union in a panel Tuesday.
They said free trade agreements accentuate
poverty and the loss of biodiversity, as a
result of megaprojects for the extraction of
natural resources which use water
intensively, spew out pollution, and
exacerbate the effects of climate change.
Examples are mining projects, construction
of large hydroelectric dams, and plantations
of monoculture crops and genetically
modified (GM) organisms.
Free trade deals include strict regulation
of intellectual property rights for patented
GM seeds, which harms small farmers,
creating food insecurity in poor communities
that already suffer from harvest variability
because of global warming.
"Where there is biodiversity, where there is
wealth, where there is culture, that's where
corporate interests flock," Maldonado,
deputy head of Ecumenical Services for
Christian Development in Central America (SEFCA),
an organisation working with women and young
people for community development and
political effectiveness, told TerraViva.
SEFCA's work covers a wide range of issues,
focusing on the recovery of traditional
farming practices, the carving out of local
markets for products, the improvement of the
diets of people in rural communities and the
provision of training for international
trade negotiations.
"The trade treaties give (foreign countries)
a legal claim to plunder our natural
resources. We cannot separate the trade
treaties from their everyday effects: the
privatisation of water; the loss of land;
the mining companies that use 250,000
gallons of water a minute for free, while
polluting our rivers," she said.
"Guatemala was the birthplace of many food
crops, and yet its people are
undernourished. Children are dying of
hunger. How can we have a country that
produces food, but all of it for export, to
sell to the great international markets?"
she demanded.
In her view, the EU "gives with one hand,"
through development aid, "and takes away
with the other," by means of its trade
treaties.
In Guatemala, SEFCA works with Q'eqchi'
indigenous communities that are recovering
degraded coffee plantations.
Women bear the brunt of climate change
effects, Lago and Maldonado said, as the
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
stated in its latest report.
SEFCA is making a documentary to raise
awareness on the water crisis, which
includes footage, screened at Klimaforum,
showing rural women who spend four hours a
day fetching water from streams around their
communities.
According to Maldonado, "the problem of
water has been, and will continue to be," a
women's issue, "for cultural reasons,"
because they are the ones who do most of the
cooking, bathing of children and washing of
clothes in their homes.
"Lack of access to water adds to women's
burden," already a heavy one, she said.
"Women take four hours to fetch two gallons
of water at a time, and then we want them to
further their education and participate in
community affairs. What time do they have
for this?" she asked.
How much do Guatemalan women supported by
SEFCA know about climate change? According
to Maldonado, they are unaware of factors
like greenhouse gas emissions and other
scientific aspects. "Actually, I don't
understand them very well myself, yet," she
admitted. "What we are very well aware of is
that there are constant landslides and
floods, while we women can't even swim, that
the weather is getting hotter all the time,
that the rhythm of the crops is altered -
sometimes the coffee is ripe in January and
previously it was in October - and the
cycles and agricultural calendars are upset,
and we don't have enough water," said the
activist.
"We may not know what a carbon sink is, but
we do know that our land is being taken from
us," said Maldonado, who said she has been
threatened and intimidated for her
opposition to free trade agreements in
Guatemala.
"A wave of repression swept the country when
the first free trade treaty between
Guatemala and the United States was signed.
Since then there has been systematic
persecution of the leadership and raids on
organisations (opposed to the trade
accords). They searched my house, injured
two colleagues, took our computers: we are
on their blacklist," she complained.
Maldonado is in Copenhagen, but she said she
"expects nothing" from the Dec. 7-18 15th
Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the
United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, attended by delegates from
192 countries and 3,500 journalists. She
says she is putting her faith in the
alliances that emerge from Klimaforum, where
the keynote is scepticism of the current
development model.
This huge alternative meeting is being held
in a multi-purpose centre in the Danish
capital that includes a conference centre
and is 15 minutes by train from the Bella
Centre, the venue for COP 15.
The Klimaforum programme lists 150 panels
and talks, 50 exhibitions and 30 artistic
events, including documentaries, theatre and
music, which will continue until Dec. 18.
* This story appears in the IPS TerraViva
online daily published for the COP 15 at
Copenhagen.
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