Summary
In 2010, Bolivian President Evo Morales called the first Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in response to a lack of a binding agreement on the issues of climate change. Afterward, Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations addressed the UN Secretary General, reporting on 17 proposals developed by various organizations and the peoples’ conference. To address climate change, the proposal (and the Bolivian Ambassador’s letter) advocated various principles: harmony and balance between everybody and with everything; complementarity, solidarity and fairness; collective well-being and satisfaction of everybody’s basic needs, in harmony with Mother Earth; respect for the rights of Mother Earth and for human rights; recognition of human beings for what they are and not what they have; elimination of all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism; and peace between peoples and with Mother Earth.”