President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro reaffirmed on Friday the Venezuelan Government’s commitment to the protection of Mother Earth, and advocated for the construction of a new model of society based on the rights of nature and the peoples to safeguard the planet and change the capitalist system, which has been the main cause of climate change and the destruction of the ecosystem.
In his statement at the High-Level Segment of Reencuentro con la Pachamama, an event held in La Paz, Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Venezuelan president stressed the importance of nature and the preservation of planet Earth, and proposed the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) as a fundamental force at the United Nations to foster a world ecological, social movement at the forthcoming Climate Change Conference, to be held in Scotland.
“We also support the need that the ALBA Political Council take on to the fullest extent the proposals of this Reencuentro con la Pachamama,” he said in his statement via video conference, and highlighted that they need to propose “a roadmap to take a great mobilization of social, ecological organizations to Scotland in November 2021,” in addition to presenting the agenda approved at this meeting.
The Venezuela president was optimistic that the struggle of progressive peoples and governments will enable to find answers in the face of a world environmental problem Commander Fidel Castro had already warned about in 1992, when he said that the carbon emissions of great powers were poisoning the planet and jeopardizing human life.
In this regard, President Maduro recognized that “Bolivia has played a fundamental leading role in the battle against the savage capitalist system that has caused climate change,” and pointed out that “one of the main impacts of the recovery of democracy and the Bolivian Constitution, through the vote of the people, has been that Bolivia has resumed its world leadership to fight in the defense of the Pachamama.”
The Venezuelan president supported the statements delivered by his counterparts in the region to resume and demand the fulfillment of the commitments endorsed, to give rise to a global pressure movement to enable a change of the world’s model, to demand actions enabling the peoples to access new technologies, financing and the construction of a true green economy.
“Green, very green, both in the inside and on the outside. It’s what we call in Venezuela Ecosocialism. From Venezuela, we raise the flags of Ecosocialism, as great defenders of the Pachamama. Looking at your faces, you brave people, we say: There is hope for a better world, and we are moved by that hope,” said the President Maduro.
Furthermore, he said that with Biden assuming power in the United States, the climate change issue has been reintroduced in the global agenda.
“This is an opportunity the world’s revolutionary forces, social and ecological movements must seize to boost actions to rebalance nature,” said Maduro, who urged the peoples from the South to “find equality and justice to access new technologies for a deep reindustrialization process.”
Likewise, Maduro said that “we cannot let financing for new technologies be hoarded like vaccines, hoarded by a few ones who have turned them into a merchandise to sell them three times more expensive in the secondary market. The same is happening, or could happen, with new technologies.”
In his statement, the Venezuelan president highlighted that “there is hope for a better world. Capitalism has terribly damaged the nature’s balance. Struggles result in responses, and we are sure that with Bolivia’s leadership, we are going to achieve the consolidation of new proposals.”
“Reencuentro con la Pachamama,” an event held on Earth Day on April 22-23, gathered leaders from the region and the world to address issues such as the promotion of a Law on the Defense of Mother Earth and a Law against Ecocide and on the Protection of Mother Earth.