The following Declaration was prepared by a committee elected for this
purpose at the Paris Ecosocialist Conference of 2007 (Ian Angus, Joel
Kovel, Michael Löwy), with the help of Danielle Follett. It will be
distributed at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, in January 2009.

To add your name to the list of signatories who support the analysis and
political perspectives set forth in this statement, email your name and
country of residence to ecosocialism@...
<mailto:ecosocialism@...?subject=Add%20my%20Signature%20to%20Belem%20Decla\
ration>,

<mailto:ecosocialism@...?subject=Add%20my%20Signature%20to%20Belem%20Decla\
ration>

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The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration

"The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change,
and the disease is the capitalist development model."
-- Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, September 2007

Humanity's choice

Humanity today faces a stark choice: ecosocialism or barbarism.

We need no more proof of the barbarity of capitalism, the parasitical
system that exploits humanity and nature alike. Its sole motor is the
imperative toward profit and thus the need for constant growth. It
wastefully creates unnecessary products, squandering the environment's
limited resources and returning to it only toxins and pollutants. Under
capitalism, the only measure of success is how much more is sold every
day, every week, every year - involving the creation of vast quantities
of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature,
commodities that cannot be produced without spreading disease,
destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing
ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil like sewers for the
disposal of industrial waste.

Capitalism's need for growth exists on every level, from the individual
enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of
corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever
greater access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets.
Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our
lifetimes these assaults on the earth have accelerated. Quantitative
change is giving way to qualitative transformation, bringing the world
to a tipping point, to the edge of disaster. A growing body of
scientific research has identified many ways in which small temperature
increases could trigger irreversible, runaway effects - such as rapid
melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of methane buried in
permafrost and beneath the ocean - that would make catastrophic climate
change inevitable.

Left unchecked, global warming will have devastating effects on human,
animal and plant life. Crop yields will drop drastically, leading to
famine on a broad scale. Hundreds of millions of people will be
displaced by droughts in some areas and by rising ocean levels in
others. Chaotic, unpredictable weather will become the norm. Air, water
and soil will be poisoned. Epidemics of malaria, cholera and even
deadlier diseases will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of
every society.

The impact of the ecological crisis is felt most severely by those whose
lives have already been ravaged by imperialism in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, and indigenous peoples everywhere are especially
vulnerable. Environmental destruction and climate change constitute an
act of aggression by the rich against the poor.

Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase
profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into
the system's DNA and cannot be reformed away. Profit-oriented production
only considers a short-term horizon in its investment decisions, and
cannot take into account the long-term health and stability of the
environment. Infinite economic expansion is incompatible with finite and
fragile ecosystems, but the capitalist economic system cannot tolerate
limits on growth; its constant need to expand will subvert any limits
that might be imposed in the name of "sustainable development." Thus the
inherently unstable capitalist system cannot regulate its own activity,
much less overcome the crises caused by its chaotic and parasitical
growth, because to do so would require setting limits upon accumulation
- an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die!

If capitalism remains the dominant social order, the best we can expect
is unbearable climate conditions, an intensification of social crises
and the spread of the most barbaric forms of class rule, as the
imperialist powers fight among themselves and with the global south for
continued control of the world's diminishing resources.

At worst, human life may not survive.

Continue reading at http://links.org.au/node/803



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