THE ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE IS HERE
Greetings to the Australian ecosocialist movement from Socialists Without Borders (USA) and Proyecto Ecosocialista (Bolivia).
Socialists Without Borders is a revolutionary ecosocialist organization based in the United States. Proyecto Ecosocialista works in Bolivia. We came to this conference together to take part in the discussion and to propose that we move toward international coordination.
The ecological crisis has already crossed thresholds that cannot simply be reversed. The future is partly written in the heat-trapping gases already released into the atmosphere. Warming is moving past the 1.5°C threshold, itself already catastrophic, while ecological destruction, threatened food and water supplies, and mass displacement are becoming defining political questions of this century. Our task is not only to prevent greater destruction, but to preserve human society and organize the just distribution of the resources necessary for life.
We see socialist revolution and the transformation of humanity’s relationship with nature as inseparable tasks.
We differ from much of the revolutionary left by placing climate change at the center of the struggle for socialism. Socialism must guarantee food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, and freedom of expression for all, while respecting the ecological limits of our world. It cannot simply reproduce capitalism’s drive for endless production.
We also differ from social-democratic and Green ecosocialists because we are revolutionaries. Capitalism cannot be made ecologically sustainable. Ecosocialism cannot be built in partnership with the banks, the oil corporations, and agribusiness. Their power must be defeated, and production reorganized for human and ecological needs.
Our revolutionary practice begins with workers and oppressed people organizing to meet their own immediate needs. Through mobilization, struggle, and solidarity, people can discover their collective power and make an ecosocialist world first possible, then probable, and at last achievable—if we build the forces capable of winning it. This struggle confronts a ruling class whose wars and imperial rivalries are inseparable from control of fossil fuels, land, and resources, and are organized through the imperial-semicolonial-dependent system. Ecosocialism requires the abolition of that system, not its greener management.
FROM CONFERENCES TO INTERNATIONAL ACTION
More than ten ecosocialist conferences have taken place across the world in the last three years, and more are coming. We meet and we talk, but we too rarely leave with common goals and common action.
This conference can begin to change that. We propose a closing plenary where resolutions can be debated and voted upon; an elected body to coordinate among international ecosocialist networks; outreach toward a joint international conference within six months; and a representative liaison committee to establish a shared calendar, map the live fronts of struggle, identify the organizations active on them, and bring concrete tasks to our next international encounter.
It is not too late to act. But we have to begin organizing internationally as if the future depends on it—because it does.
FOR A REVOLUTIONARY ECOSOCIALISM — BUILD BRIDGES, NOT WALLS
OUR DEMANDS
LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND. End the exploration, extraction, and exploitation of oil, gas, and coal, and rapidly phase out existing fossil-fuel infrastructure. Mitigation is no longer enough. Workers in these industries must lead the conversion, with guaranteed wages and retraining.
LAND BACK. Return stolen lands to Indigenous peoples; defend Indigenous self-determination; restore traditional forms of stewardship that nurture and preserve the land and its resources while using them for social need.
GLOBAL JUSTICE AND REPARATIONS. Reject and abolish the imperial-semicolonial-dependent system: the world order in which imperialist powers dominate formally independent nations through debt, unequal exchange, resource plunder, and military force. Cancel the debt. Ecological reparations and transfers of resources and technology, without new forms of plunder.
AID, NOT WAR. Defund, disarm, and demobilize the machinery of war. Redirect these enormous resources toward food, medicine, shelter, essential supplies, and evacuation for populations already living through ecological disaster.
WORKERS’ CONTROL OF PRODUCTION, ESPECIALLY ENERGY. Public ownership of the means of production under democratic workers’ control. Reduce energy consumption in the imperial centers. Transfer technology and resources to nations oppressed by that system without creating new forms of plunder.
RESTORE THE METABOLIC EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN HUMANITY AND NATURE. Reorient agriculture toward agroecology. Redesign cities and transportation around proximity and public mobility. Reduce material throughput in imperialist countries. Organize production around real human needs. Close the cycles of nutrients, water, and materials.