ized by the Butterflies—a kids’ union that offers schooling and a credit
union—paraded with papier-mâché puppets that depicted the United
States eating the world.
If the mood was sometimes festive, the purpose was deadly seri-
ous. The Summit adapted a declaration, dated October 28, 2002, and
delivered to the United Nations meeting at the close of the rally, that
declared climate change to be “a matter of life and death for most com-
munities in India.” The impact of global warming, it said, is “dispro-
portionately felt by the poor, women, youth, coastal peoples, indige-
nous peoples, fisherfolk, dalits [sub-caste ‘untouchables,’ of whom
there are 240 million in India], farmers and the elderly.”
The protesters announced their opposition to “market-based
mechanisms and technological ‘fixes’” that “only exacerbate the prob-
lem,” and blamed “unsustainable production and consumption habits”
that “exist primarily in the North, but also among elites within the
South.”
Climate change is far from an abstract concept for many Indians.
In “Fishing in Troubled Waters,” an article published by the online
Corpwatch.com, Lalitha Sridhar describes how India’s fishing com-
munities—well represented at the Summit—are especially hard-hit by
global warming.
In Tamil Nadu, India’s densely populated southernmost state on
the Indian Ocean, fishermen whose ancestors fished these waters for
millennia are suddenly idle. “I hate my life,” says Shekhar, a 40-year-
old fisherman. “It is not like my grandfather’s time. Nothing is the
same anymore—even the fish are gone.”
According to a study by Dr. Herman Cesar of the Free University
in the Netherlands, surface water temperatures in the Indian Ocean
were often 7 to more than 10° F above normal during a 5-month study
period in 1998. During the same period, which coincided with the El
Niño southern oscillation (and exacerbated by global warming), fishing
catches dropped significantly. “Fishmeal production fell by 10 million
tons—about 10 percent of the global fish catch—and entire species
such as horse mackeral, mackeral and hake were acutely scarce,”
Sridhar reports.
Dr. Cesar adds that coral bleaching, which has begun to affect even
84 Jim Motavalli