Tony Gonzales: Mexico City is next climate change step

By Tony Gonzales
AIM West
COPENHAGEN -- As I am making preparations to head for home to the Bay Area, I am sending you this final Declaration that came from the KlimaforumO9 in Copenhagen, from the large group of NGOs attending the UNFCCC separate from the Government representatives meeting at the Bella Center. Please post the document.
I must say that I am not pleased at all with the final outcome of the text, particularly where Indigenous peoples were inserted deep in page 6, beginning with "Our Demands."
Although I did attempt to work as close I could with the declaration team to include Indigenous Peoples somewhere after the Preamble and to insert the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples -- both to secure the rights of all Indigenous Peoples, and to gain the NGO's support for it to function as a stop gap to the continued and future destruction of Mother Earth that contributes toward the unregulated emissions and increasing temperatures -- evidently it was to no avail.
What we need is our own document and for it to stand on its own. For this to occur we will need the support from our brothers and sisters, friends, allies and supporters to join with the American Indian Movement International Conference to be held in San Francisco, California during the week of November 22-26, 2010. This should be just prior to the next COP-16 in Mexico City, November 29th until December 10, 2010.
Hopefully we will develop a more strategy plan that will effectuate the necessary systems change that will assert the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and take that to Mexico City to be adopted both by all NGO's, and Governments into their final document. I will elaborate further on this project/plan when I return to San Francisco later during this week. All is not lost, we are still hopeful, and coming into our element! Until then, to all my relations.
Tony Gonzales
AIM-WEST Director
eltonyg@earthlink.net
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2009/12/peoples-declaration-from-copenhagen.html
or
http://www.klimaforum09.org/IMG/pdf/A_People_s_Declaration_from_Klimaforum09_-_ultimate_version.pdf