Summit

Critical analysis

Peoples' Summit of the Americas

Recommendations and citizens' proposal. Santiago. April 1998.

Energy Sustainability

The development of sustainable energy is premised upon environmental conservation, the defense of community rights and savings in excessive energy consumption. Energy sources must be renewable, clean, and low impact, and more equitable and democratic access to energy must be guaranteed.

Energy integration must be understood as a process to support growth potential and cooperation among countries based on relationships of equity, and founded upon recognition of distinct environmental, cultural, economic and social characteristics. How the hemisphere chooses to develop its energy sector will have a profound impact on its citizens, the environment and the economy.

To minimize society's energy costs through a least-life-cycle-cost mix of resource and end-use options that incorporates environmental and social externality costs; and

To identify and eliminate causes of market failure and ensure institutional conditions, structures, habits, and incentives favor sustainable energy development. To reach these goals, we propose that the hemisphere focus actions in the energy sector according to the following eight initiatives in order of priority:

Demands
Hence, the civil society organizations present in the Summit of the Peoples demand:

1. Prevent the expansion of carbon, gas and petroleum extraction frontiers through a moratorium on exploration of new areas as a step in the transition toward clean, renewable energies with a low impact on local ecosystems and the global climate.

2. Do not authorize loans, credits nor subsidies by national, bilateral, or multilateral agencies for energy extraction and/or generation projects based on fossil fuels, large dams, nuclear energy and related infrastructure.

3. Reorient investments, loans and subsidies toward projects based on clean, renewable, low impact energy and toward energy efficiency, equitable access to energy and other national priorities.

4. Create and strengthen formal channels which guaranteedemocratic citizen participation in decision-making within the energy sector, specifically in affected communities, including respect for their right to reject energy projects with potential negative impacts.

5. Design and implement national and regional energy policies focused on the production and use of clean, renewable energies with low environmental impacts. These should include sustainable transport initiatives, prioritizing public transport and providing disincentives to private transport, specially in urban centers, and permit democratic access to domestic, craft, commercial and industrial energy.

6. Develop a legislative and institutional framework which promotes sustainable energy, including support for the research capacity of countries, establishment of funds for research, creation of clean energy diffusion initiatives and elimination of direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuel based energy.

7. Adopt standards for all energy projects which offer the highest social and environmental guarantees, applying the precautionary principle which holds that the lack of scientific evidence should not prevent actions being taken to prevent environmental damage.

8. Guarantee measures in the implementation of all environmental impact studies to ensure obligatory consideration of consumption reduction and clean, renewable energy options. The projects must take into consideration the useful life of the project.