Our time in Cochabamba is drawing to a close and we will all be back in Canada by late Sunday afternoon.

The People's World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was a profound learning experience.

It helped me better understand the concept of Plachamama (Mother Earth), though it runs so much deeper than a concept.

It made me more fully see that the Harper government is truly an eco-outlaw and that we must find ways to stop the injustices our country now perpetrates.

It allowed me to see the pride in the Bolivian people who have held on to their culture, developed a new constitution, and stepped into their place in history.

The Council of Canadians has endorsed the ‘Hands Off Mother Earth!' campaign launched here in Cochabamba this week by the ETC Group to counter the threat of geoengineering.

What is geoengineering? In short, it is the intentional manipulation of eco-systems, as opposed to our governments recognizing that we need to adjust to the limits of nature.

For example, geoengineering includes large-scale proposals to ‘fix' climate change by "changing the chemistry of the oceans to polluting the upper atmosphere with sulphur particles."

The Cochabamba Accord emerging from the 17 working groups at the Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is to be read this afternoon to the thousands assembled at the stadium in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

People, music and dance have filled this stadium with a joyous celebratory feeling of hope and solidarity.

Leaders from many governments are on the stage to take part in this event and hear the reading of the Cochabamba Accord.

At the ‘dialogo pueblos - gobiernos conferencia mundial climatica' (the dialogue between governments and the people) this morning, government leaders stated they would take this accord to COP 16, the climate summit in Cancun, as an alternative to the Copenhagen Accord.

More to come.

Earlier today the Council of Canadians joined the Indigenous Environmental Network in hosting a workshop, "Join the International Movement Against the Tar Sands." On the panel were Kimia Ghomeshi, G20 and Climate Organizer with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, Susan Deranger, long-time activist and member of the Fort Chipewyan community, Maude Barlow, National Chairperson with the Council of Canadians, and Tom Goldtooth, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

The "dialogo pueblos -- gobiernos conferencia mundial climatica" (the dialogue between governments and the people) is taking place at this moment.

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow is at the Hotel Regina where it is underway, while climate justice campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue and I are at the media centre at the universidad watching the coverage live on television.

(Maude e-mailed us as Bolivian president Evo Morales and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez passed by her as they entered the meeting space.)

Al Jazeera now reports that, "the United Nations has backed (the) Bolivian sponsored summit on climate change..."

The working group on a world referendum or a popular consultation (plebiscito o consulta popular) has just made its presentation.

QUESTIONS
The five questions being recommended for the global referendum are:

1. Do you agree with changing the capitalist model of over-production and over-consumption in defence of Mother Earth?

2. Do you agree that countries must reduce and re-absorb their carbon emissions proportional to their emissions and historical debt?

3. Do you agree that all that is spent on wars should be transferred to a bigger budget in defence of Mother Earth?

4. Do you agree that our countries should be transformed into territories of peace free of foreign troops?

I am in the Auditorio de Cultura at Univalle at this moment for the presentation of the conclusions of the working groups on climate migration, technology transfers, adaptation, and the global referendum.

There are several hundred people in this university auditorium to vigorously discuss and debate the conclusions of these working groups which have been meeting over the past two days.

The working group statements will go next to a drafting committee and then form the foundation of the dialogue between government leaders and civil society tomorrow at the conclusion of the Peoples World Conference on Climate Change here in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This morning we are at Biblioteca Piso 3 for a workshop on ‘climate change, glaciers and human rights' (Cambio climatico, glaciares y derechos humanos, economicos sociales y culturales) organized by Agua Sustenable, Fundacion Solon, IHH-UMSA, and AMPM.

The panel of prominent speakers includes Sara Larrain of Programa Chile Sustentable, Elyzabeth Peredo of Fundacion Solon, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, and others.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has observed that, "Water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to decline, reducing water availability in regions supplied by meltwater."

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow has just finished speaking on the connections between water and climate change to several hundred people gathered at the Auditorio de Cultura at the Universidad del Valle.

This is part of the Peoples World Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This evening's forum, brought together by the Water Justice Movement, is titled ‘Vinculo entre el Agua y el Cambio Climatico - Explorando la Justicia del Agua como una verdadera solucion para el Cambio Climatico'.