The World People’s Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth starts today, Monday 19^th April, in Bolivia.

Delegates are gathering in the city of Cochabamba for a grassroots alternative to last year’s UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.

The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, who refused to sign the Copenhagen climate change deal, called for the gathering to give the poor and the global south an opportunity to respond to the failed climate talks in Denmark.

Several thousand people are expected in Cochabamba. Among them, indigenous and civil society movements, scientists, activists and government delegations will attend the meeting. The summit will run until Thursday 22nd April. Mother Earth will be celebrated that day.

Morales proposed the Cochabamba meeting in the wake of the climate change summit in Copenhagen last December, arguing that the views of developing countries were largely ignored.

Morales’ idea is to give a voice to the world’s poorest people. This week, he should propose a world referendum to ask up to two billion people their views on how to tackle climate change.

“With this summit we need to organize a worldwide coalition of social movements, of networks, of NGOs, in order to—all of them, with different perspectives maybe in Asia, Africa, Europe or here in Latin America, but all with a common purpose, how we are going to save the future of humankind and of our Mother Earth by trying to have enough force in order to press developed governments to have a really commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions”, Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, told Democracy Now.

The Bolivian government wants the UN to set in motion moves to create an international environmental court.

Last year, the UN backed a proposal by Morales to designate 22 April as International Mother Earth Day to celebrate the Andean divinity Pachamama, or Mother Earth.

Meeting in Washington, the president of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, and the US president, Barack Obama, have promised to create a “firm alliance” between the two countries. The leaders discussed increasing trade links and working together on security issues, such as combating drugs trafficking.

Funes flew to Washington, in what was the first visit of a Central American leader to the white house since Obama’s inauguration. The two presidents spoke for just under an hour, before issuing press statements from the oval office.

Both Obama and Funes emphasised the “strategic partnership” between their countries. Funes told press: “as Obama put it so well, we are looking to make the US a strategic partner. Not a stronger partner, or a weaker partner, but an equal and effective partner.”

He specified what El Salvador was hoping to gain for a relationship with the US, saying: “basically what we’re looking for are resources for poor, small and medium sized companies, that will be able to create a better economic situation in El Salvador.” He also talked about working with the US to professionalise the El Salvador police force in order to combat drug traffickers. However, he stressed that the roots of the drug problem lay in El Salvador’s poverty, and it was necessary to combat deprivation, rather than simply increase the power of the police.

Obama praised Funes’ leadership, applauding “the steps he’s taking to try to break down political divisions within the country and move it forward with a spirit of progress and focusing on prosperity at every level of Salvadorian society.”

The US president also stressed the strength of trade ties that exist between the US and El Salvador, pointing out that over half of El Salvador’s exports go to and one third of its imports come from the United States. He promised to improve the economic relationship by assisting El Salvador with credit, and working to improve infrastructure. Moreover, the leaders reached an agreement to work towards increasing the production of bio-fuels and renewable energy, in partnership with Brazil.

Funes, a former journalist, is the first left wing President to be elected in El Salvador since the end of the country’s devastating civil war in 1992. Funes’ party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL), was founded by Marxist guerrillas, who fought against the US backed government in the 1980s. However, since coming to power, he has stressed his moderate stance and sought to strengthen ties with the US. He has distanced himself from more radical left-wing regimes in Latin America, such as that of Hugo Chavéz in Venezuela. Instead he has praised the more centrist economic policies of Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Today the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón and his wife Margarita Zavala, welcomed Latin American heads of state and government to The Rio Group Summit, held in Cancun. Leaders started arriving in the Mexican city yesterday for the two day, biennial meeting, which this year has three major political issues on the agenda.

The 25 luminaries will work through Monday and Tuesday on the contentious decision to create a multilateral organisation made up of ‘American’ countries without the inclusion of the United States or Canada. It is currently unclear as to whether this new body would attempt to replace the existing Organisation of American States (OAS) which includes the United States and Canada. Leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have affirmed that they would like a replacement to OAS but other heads of state have suggested that a co-existence of organisations is possible.

On arriving at the summit, Chavez stated, “It must be a union of republics distinct from the OAS which has always worked under the hegemony of the US.” Mexico’s foreign secretary Patricia Espinosa, said that she promotes the creation of, “an appropriate regional forum which assumes the functions of both the Rio Group and the Latin America and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development”, commonly known as the Unity Summit, also taking place in Cancun this week.

Over the weekend, foreign ministers at the Unity Summit have been discussing the merits of this new and exclusive organisation as well as its legal status, but did not reach a coherent conclusion. The final decisions are now left with the Rio Group leaders but it is thought that a union will not be officially created until 2011 at the next major meeting.

Also on the Rio Group table for discussion is the continued aid needed in Haiti following the earthquake that devastated the country last month. At the recent  Mexico-Caribbean Community Summit (Caricom) Haiti’s president, René Préval appealed to the region’s dignitaries for an international coalition to help and to not forget about his country citizens, more than a million of whom are still homeless.

The other major topic of discussion will be the current dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina over oil and gas exploration in the seas around the Falklands/Malvinas. Although an ‘off-agenda’ item, Argentine president Cristina Kirchener will seek to achieve a formal declaration of support from the Rio Group countries in opposing Britain’s decision to go ahead with hydrocarbon searches in the South Atlantic.

The Rio Group, formally known as the Contadora Support Group, was created in 1986 with The Declaration of Rio de Janeiro and it was initially formed to promote peace amongst the violence of Central American states in the 1980s.