If we calculated the emissions from all the political capital burnt trying to convince the world of the Copenhagen climate summit’s importance, we wouldn’t be surprised to find the result was only more global warming. The monumental failure of last December’s negotiations, however, sparked further resolve in many people’s minds. Bolivian President Evo Morales was quick to pick up on a growing sentiment that the solutions weren’t going to come from the increasingly exclusive UN process.
Ever since Morales announced the initiative at the end of Copenhagen, the ‘Peoples’ Climate Conference’ quickly became the anti-UN summit. This April over 35,000 people, predominantly representing indigenous peoples and other voices of the Global South, made the trek to Cochabamba in Bolivia. Over 140 countries were represented.
