Dozens of Peruvian civil society groups have come together, forming the Peru COP20 Group, to demand that their government addresses environmental issues at home, before hosting this years UN climate change conference, known as COP20.
With that goal in mind, they organized a march to the Environment Ministry joining other demonstrations around the world as part of the People’s Climate March day of action on 20 September.
“What we ask for are actions and not words. Over here, a diverse group of organizations, people, and independent citizens have come together” in order to challenge the government’s current attitude explained one of the demonstration organizers, Sebastian Milla from the Youth Committee for the People’s Summit.
Other representatives from the group demanded, at a press conference, that the government addresses issues of long term water supplies, the deforestation of the Peruvian Amazon by logging and the drug trade and securing the rich biodiversity of the country.
One of the group’s spokesman Miguel Saravia argues that “what is evident is that the temperature is rising and that means ecosystems that were able to provide certain foods before cannot do it today; or it is affecting, for example, the level of forestation.”
Saravia believes the main problem of Peru is its “enormous dependency on natural resources.” He argues that the solution is to change the development structure that makes the country dependent on their extraction and to instead put an emphasis on the environment.
For Saravia, Peruvian cuisine is also at stake due to climate change. For over a decade Peruvian cuisine has boomed becoming a source of pride, wealth and tourism. He argues, that “nowadays we adore our cuisine, for example, but it would not be possible if we didn’t have such agrobiodiversity.” He explained that this “agrobiodiversity is fundamentally due to family agriculture and if our policies are not favoring family agriculture we are going to end up without this biodiversity.”
The COP20 will be taking place in early December in Lima. This coalition of Peruvian organizations will be mobilizing to make sure their voices are heard, to hold the government accountable, and so that discussions take place on the issues they see as urgent for Peru.