PRESS RELEASE OF THE AFRICAN ATTAC NETWORK ON COPENHAGEN COUNCIL

Another world, social, united and ecological, is possible

Africans still bear in mind the recent floods that have led to the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in several countries of the continent this year. This kind of natural disaster is becoming more and more frequent in Africa which was not the case in the past. Forecasts are not reassuring: climatologists predict virtual climatic catastrophes due to global warming.

It is now widely acknowledged within the international scientific community that an increase of two degrees Celsius in the average temperature on the globe surface would directly result in Africa, our continent, in: a 127% increase of the flood death toll, a shortage of water affecting 600 million people, famines that would affect 55 million people, an increase of 17% of malaria-infected people and of 16% for diarrheic diseases cases. On the continent, agriculture and cattle breeding will also suffer severe losses, estimated to reach 133 billions USD. Confronted with these coming disasters, the African Governments need, today more than ever, to firmly commit in denouncing the responsibility of the current capitalist economic system which is responsible for this drama, rather than to keep claiming for humanitarian aid, and so to fuel the world imagination with the image of a permanently begging Africa .

After three centuries of the reign of capitalism over the world and about as much of colonial rule in Africa, time is up for drawing an assessment of this period. This economic system has been imposing its individualistic model of behaviour, marginalizing the collective schemes of our ancestral societies, exploiting the peoples and plundering the natural and mining resources of the continent, denying the populations their social rights and vandalizing their natural environment, without any logic but the accumulation of profits by and for a dominant social minority in the North as on the continent. And as ever the Poor of the continent will continue to suffer the dramatic outcomes of this climatic crisis . They are the most exposed to pollution, floods and other consequences of the climate change, while lacking the means to adapt to the new climatic context.

Faced with this uncertain future, the capitalist oligarchy dominating the world is willing to divert the attention of citizens growingly aware of the pending disaster by trying to persuade them that technology and climate commodification could contribute to fight against the global warming. We are consequently offered to trade excessive greenhouse gases emissions from industries in the North for reforestation in the South, to build more electric cars or produce more biofuel, to intensify the nuclear energy development, to increase the ecological taxes on a world level, etc. ie. a whole set of measures to perpetuate the economic logic of growth and destruction of natural and mining resources in the South to the benefit of the Rich.

We frankly reject these solutions and call to the African peoples not to trust those hoaxes fostered by the media, controlled by the leaders of this system. Our future does not lay in a technology servicing the benefits but in a new organisation of the social relations in our countries and between the North and the South.

More than ever, we have to fight for our lives, as well as those of the future generations, from the climate change by defending our forests, our water supplies, our food, and for energy sovereignty for all. More than ever, we have to fight in solidarity with the pygmy peoples of Central Africa and the nomadic peoples of the desert, who have always lived in symbiosis with Nature, and who are decimated by the fierce capitalist exploitation of the natural and mining resources in our forests and deserts. We have to fight for the eventual acknowledgement of the historic ecological debt owed to us by the countries of the North after 300 years of slavery, colonization, plunder and murder of the enlightened African leaders which could have driven the African continent to total emancipation and to the conservation of its wealth.

We call onto the employees, farmers, fishermen, the youth, and students, peoples of Africa in all their constituents to mobilize against the logic of the market that is imposing upon us the neoliberal capitalism based on consumerism and unlimited growth and to ask that the social issues and climate justice be at the heart of the debates of the current Climate Council taking place in Copenhagen.

We support the actions and the mobilizations of the social movements present in Copenhagen and we stand by the global mobilization of December 12^th for social justice and climate rescue.

Together, let us save our nurturing mother Earth.

Another world now!!!

ATTAC Bénin,

ATTAC Burkina Faso ,

ATTAC Centrafrique

APASH/ATTAC Congo Brazzaville ,

ATTAC Côte d’Ivoire,

ATTAC Gabon,

CERIDA/ATTAC Guinée,

ATTAC Maroc,

ATTAC Togo,

RAID/ATTAC Tunisie