Global Greens Congress completion

The Congress is over. In the morning session we voted through (at a pace that would have created overheating in a Green Party Conference in England) the following:

A 21 Point Plan for the 21st century: a 30 page document covering
Economics
CO2 reduction
Water management
Food crisis
Biodiversity
UN MillenniumDevelopment
Global partnership for development including Tobin tax
Fair Trade
Socially and ecologically inspired science and technology
Increasing price of raw materials
Women’s rights
Strengthening democracy
Developing a World Environment Organisation
Reinforce the UNHRC, International Court of Justice, ban death penalty and an Index of Human Rights in the UN
Recognition of environmental refugees
Cooperation between the great cities of the world to get best environmental practice
Promote sustainable cultural policies
Promote structured dialogue among world religions (to include atheists)
Reinforcing the rights of youth
Facilitating access to medicine for poorer countries
Promote peace (my submission to include a reference to the 2weeks arms spending/52 weeks basic needs spending was accepted)
Work to make the 21st century a green century

It was passed with I think 3 against and some abstentions. I voted for, despite a weakness in its CO2 targets, on the understanding that the wording would be cleared up in the final tidy up.
It is not a perfect document – perfection is not an option in any document – but all in all, it was an impressive achievement in a few days, with so many diverse nations there, and the language difficulty. It is rightly said that broken English is the lingua franca of the world community.

We also passed papers on
Support for the Tibetan people
Against nuclear power
Biodiversity
Sustainable cities
The next steps for the Global Greens (Europe gave way to world pressure, and the final document has global ambition tempered with European caution)
A declaration on sustainable cities (which will be useful for Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones in the London Assembly)
A Declaration on Climate Change.

This last I abstained on. I explained regretfully to the plenary that I could not support it despite the correct temperature rise target (2 degrees Celsius) its CO2 emissions target clashed with the policy of the GPEW, and that I would be in deep doodoo if I did anything but abstain. I hoped that I was the only one to abstain, and I was.

The thing is that C&C has not gone far beyond Dover, and we are going to have to take time to sell it, maybe with a motion to the next conference.

The final papers will be up on the Global Greens website soon.