Climate change is the result of an extractive, destructive and polluting production pattern created by large-scale mining, oil, coal and gas extraction operations and water dams intended to meet wasteful energy consumption needs. Moreover, industrial agriculture that encourages monoculture in vast land areas deepens climate change which marginalizes the great majority of people from decision-making and excludes them from the products of their work.

These activities concentrate and appropriate ground and surface water destroying ecosystems and disrupting the natural hydrologic cycle.

These problems created by industrialized countries and multinationals have been addressed with false market solutions such as with agrofuels, monoculture, tree plantations as carbon sinks, hydroelectric dams and nuclear energy under the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). In addition, there are “proposals” such as the mechanism of Reducing Emissions from the Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Such mechanisms aggravate the climate crisis and above all, are measures of territorial recolonization which deprives local communities of their rights to use and manage their water and territory.

1. To promote the transition from an extractive pattern to a pattern based on principles of solidarity, justice, dignity, respect for life, reciprocity and equity, recovering the Andean vision of water as energy, a living being, a source of life, a generous gift of the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth), which therefore cannot be anyone’s property.

2. To revoke licenses granted to transnational corporations and to especially halt mining, gas, oil, monoculture tree plantations and agro-industrial, land-intensive, cattle ranching corporations. All those activities are voracious water consumers that turn water into a commodity.

3. To urge governments to implement policies that preserve natural heritage, forests and biodiversity with an emphasis on water and especially policies that acknowledge the rights of Mother Earth and recognize water as a common good and human right.

4. To promote the recuperation of our ancestors’ practices in new, alternative and ancient technologies which are environmentally and socially fair and favor balance in human relationships toward meeting the needs for all people’s well-being. To foster organic agriculture and basic, environmentally-friendly sanitation and proper waste management.

5. To demand acknowledgment and respect of the rights of indigenous peoples, peasants and small agriculturalists to their territories as the main steward of water preservation and the sources that generate it. That is the only way to face and deal with the catastrophes of climate change.

6. To reject the false solutions to climate change and deal with the real needs of communities.

7. We demand of our governments attending the summit in Cochabamba, to withdraw from the World Water Forum as long as it promotes water privatization and is led by water multinationals.

As participants in the III International Water Fair gathered in Cochabamba from April 15-18, 2010, we express our solidarity with the water struggles of our peoples, saluting in particular the resistance of the Honduran people and their struggle for democracy. We reiterate that climate justice is not possible without water justice.