Latest update: 29/11/2010 

- Bolivia - climate change - indigenous peoples - Mexico - mining - United Nations


Who owns the right to mother nature?

As annual UN climate change talks get underway in Cancun, ENVIRONMENT travels to Bolivia where water worries already have locals rapping their rage, and plans to protect forests are getting the thumbs down.

Bolivia was angry after the climate change talks in Copenhagen at the end of last year. Angry because it felt its voice was not heard and that richer nations were trying to dictate to it what it had to do to tackle climate change. Four months later it held the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Some 30,000 people gathered and set out concrete goals of Cancun.

Top of the list, mother nature's resources, notably water. Bolivia gets a quarter of its water from its glaciers but the source is melting quicker than scientists worst predictions with the Chacaltaya glacier fading entirely in 2009, almost ten years earlier than expected.  ENVIRONMENT meets with local hip hop artists who are holding impromptu concerts to rap about water worries and try and get people to pay attention to the problem.

Travelling south, ENVIRONMENT visits the village of Coro Coro where a copper mine is causing controversy. The 21 million dollar investment is not being welcomed by indigenous peoples in the region who say that the South Korean producers are stealing their land and polluting their water.

Finally to the forest where projects to protect the trees and get farmers to adopt them as crops that yield long term profits. The Bolivian government however if officially against putting a price on nature.

 

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