Venezuelan Declaration Toward RIO + 20: Against the Green Economy

We, wrestlers and fighters for the defense of life, gathered in the third Venezuelan Congress of Biological Diversity, we discussed about the multiple dimensions related to the preservation of life by contributing to the deepening of the struggle of the social movements and the new institutions, thus promoting organizational link scenarios in the collective construction of environmental policies of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The rich debate that was generated during the third CVDB, among more than 3500 people, is a valuable input to strengthen the position of our country in the face of Rio +20, by contributing to the construction of another economy, based on respect for the nature and men and women, to eradicate all forms of poverty, domination and colonialism, which starts from this dialogue of knowledge and the collective construction of speeches, agendas for struggle and deconstruction of a system and logical thinkingexhausted, responsible for current global environmental crisis.

From our different ways of thinking and spirituality, nature is our natural heritage, the basis of diversity of knowledge, cultures, lifestyles and sovereignty of peoples. Nature is for us a source of food, water, building materials, inspiration and therefore can not conceive of a world based on its commercialization.

The pattern of life, capitalist production and consumption is based on maximizing profits, commodifying nature and human beings under a logic of progress and unlimited growth. This system has led to hunger, violence and misery, massacring and expelling people from their lands, Indians, farmers and seize their lands campesinasal, commons, germplasm, traditional knowledge and wisdom, among other things causing the disappearance of ancient cultures.This crisis has no solution within the framework of the structural problems generated by a model of civilization that has endangered the life on the planet, separating humans from nature, establishing a logic of domination over it that the destruction of haconducido thereof.

This view, which threatens life on earth, is maintained and reproduced through the adoption of a single mode of knowledge production, based on the idea of control, subjugation and exploitation of nature, which seeks to colonize other invisible and knowledge, rationalities, cultures and lifestyles.

Likewise, this model of civilization is maintained by a system of production and consumption of goods based on the logic of capital, which turns everything into merchandise interchangeably. The capitalist production model intended to replace the laws of nature by market rules.

This model, by separating humans from nature, away from us our livelihoods (water, land, food, construction materials, etc.), leaving us no choice but to sell our labor in the service reproductive system, commercializing men, women and children and on the other hand, transforms the land without people, goods, on private property.

Capitalism has planetary effects that generate global ecological imbalances. Global climate change leads that end, generated mostly by and for the development of a minority, but is experienced by all living things that inhabit the earth and more intensely for the poorest people.Climate change affects biodiversity, causing changes in the distribution of species in their migration patterns, growth and reproduction by increasing extinction rates.

The responsibility for this crisis is common, but differentiated, that is, not everyone shares the same responsibility. Being the highly industrializadoslos main causes of global environmental crisis. But even within the hegemonic countries are the main responsibilities of power elites, colonial and bourgeois, resources and economic power, military, industrial and political.

On the other hand, the global conservation mechanisms, rather than being part of the solution, they strengthen the problem by masking the reproductive system, but with a green facade.Thus the “sustainable development” and the protectionof the environment, peaked at the Rio conference in 1992 was an attempt to disguise the development we now know is globally viable.Today Rio +20 becomes a new attempt to relaunch the modelocapitalista exhausted, trying to transform the great global crisis A chance to market new scenarios. The proposed “green economy” are elintento to endure a failing system, deepening globalization mercantilizacióny of nature.

NATIONAL CONTEXT

From the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela we are moving towards building a socialism to combat all forms of domination. We have made great progress in the fight to eradicate poverty, understood as the result of the historic exclusion of the majority (poor, women and gender diverse, indigenous, black, black and peasant farmers) as an inevitable consequence of the overwhelming passage dominant model of civilization, now in crisis. In this regard, we recognize the efforts undertaken to repay the historic debt with the excluded, now players in this process of transformation and collective construction of a more just and fraternal society.

This process of change, based on the active participation laid the foundations for collective management of the preservation of life, making us part of all subjects and ways of thinking and encouraging a dialogue of knowledge among the great diversity of actors, which leads to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the interaction. These benefits can not be understood as the distribution of goods and plunder the commodification of nature. But rather, on the basis of the rights of Mother Earth, ensuring a respectful and harmonious with nature, to be built on the basis of legitimate democratic decision making and active participation from the exchange of knowledge , rationalities and ways of life.

In terms of preservation of life, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela started the decade 2010-2020 a National Strategy for the Conservation of Biological Diversity and its Action Plan Nacional, built collectively, anticipating five years the goals of the Convention on Biological DiversityBiological United Nations. These instruments are our proposals in this decade and outlines approaches to the classics that were responsible to a great extent, the global failure of the target agreed in 2002: “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss,global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty reduction and the benefit of all life forms on earth. “

Venezuela is prepared to overcome the global objectives in terms of reduction in loss rates on Biological Diversity, through goals, mechanisms and indicators designed from the national reality, contributing to significant contributions to the structural transformation and ensuring the sovereignty, “human development” and social inclusion.

From the standpoint of grand-national, Venezuela has promoted regional integration from the ALBA-TCP and CELAC, UNASUR, as mechanisms for the integration between sister.

We recognize our Bolivarian process as a transition, with the contradictions implicit in any change process. Thus, we identified the need to dismantle the structures of the bourgeois state to give input to other institutions that will lead to the formation of a new state, the communes, indigenous territories and new conservation areas inclusive departing from the collective management territories, are examples of other ways of relating among ourselves and with nature, from the self-recognition and respect for Mother Earth.

In short, our process of change in Venezuela and Nuestramerica, based on social justice, brotherhood and defense of the sovereignty of the people are fighting back against the prevailing world system. This fight needs to involve commodification and against the hegemony of knowledge, that is, anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist. That is why proposals to the commodification of life in Rio + 20, we declare our deepest rejection wing green economy.

OUR POSITION
We believe that the green economy is inseparable from the vision of commodification of nature and therefore incompatible with the view from our people and our struggles in defense of the diversity of life.
We denounce the attempt of the green economy as a response to the environmental crisis, but in reality the lever to the relaunching of the market mechanisms through the naturalization of the infamous law of supply and demand, confirming the structural causes major global environmental crisis.
We oppose the green economy as to its meaning and backgrounds, therefore we do not accept the guise of this concept with other names such as ecological economics and sustainable economy.
We do not believe in sustainable development.The sustainable development proposal fell short of expectations in the context of the Rio Summit in 1992. The course balance between economic, social and environmental served only as a platform for the justification of a development based on exploitation of nature and humans.Today we know that development is generally not feasible.
We believe that the vision of global sustainable development goes against the very idea of sustainability. We believe that beyond the sustainable development is necessary to question the neo-extractivism economy based on fossil fuels and their consumption patterns and industrial production, in addition to rethink the development from the self-recognition and self-determination of our happiness to collective happiness.
We denounce the attempt to boost the green economy in the context of sustainable development as a panacea for a new economic paradigm of capital for the “eradication of poverty, food security, universal access to modern energy services.”
We believe that the green economy deepens the structural causes of the global environmental crisis and therefore maintains the social and cultural burdens of the capitalist economy, maintaining the same poverty that puts the poorest in the vulnerability to situations ofdisaster. It is the responsibility of states to ensure access to housing for a dignified and secure life as a fundamental right and need real human beings, respecting the sovereignty and cultural diversity of peoples.
We are convinced that the real solution to stop the great environmental crisis is to change the system and not disguise this development model predator, colonialist and patriarchal.
We denounce the green economy breaks with the integration of regional economies, generating units to the world centers of high technology development in the area.
We reject the proposal to create an international platform that aims at facilitating or encouraging countries to design policies and implement green economy.
We reiterate that stimulate the economy from large markets, industries and corporations threatens the sustainable and save money on the sovereignty of peoples.
We reject the corporate pattern of production, distribution, and consumption of food waste based on the regime of agribusiness (factory farms, monoculture, GMO, nanotechnologies, pesticides, biofuels, artificial life, geo-piracy, etc.), which precludes sustainable production of healthy food and a threat to peasant agriculture, food security and sovereignty. This pattern is presented as a technological solution to hunger, without discussing the real causes of the crisis and its implications for global change.
We reaffirm the right to self-determination, nonintervention and respect for peace and diversity of life of peoples. Since we recognize the right of self-determination of peoples to decide their ways to achieve the supreme social happiness in harmony with nature and good living, without the imposition of forms of development and technology packages.
We recognize the need for unity of our people, through our own bridges and integration mechanisms that are not reflected in the large engineering works in the service of the union of the transnational monopolies and not the people and represent a serious attack against one of the most diverse regions of the planet.
We demand respect for the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities under the principle of precautelativo, the right to information, education and participation, the rights of indigenous and traditional peoples, peasants, the human rightwater, the rights of workers, migrants, the right to food, housing, the city, the rights of youth and women’s rights, the right to sexual and reproductive health cultural rights.
We demand respect for the diversity of life in all its forms, including multiple world views of our people.
We recognize the importance of knowledge and information (responsible, truthful) for making decisions from a holistic and collective management of our environmental policies and reaffirm the need for mechanisms and willingness to facilitate access to information on equal terms and with respect to the rights of the ancient cultures, including prior informed consent of our indigenous peoples.
We reject the interference in the sovereignty of the people through comprehensive training programs as a mechanism of domination, loss of sovereignty, detachment from reality, application of inappropriate methodologies.
We reject the imposition of technologies that create dependency, violating the traditional methods and threaten the diversity of life through programs based on the creation and strengthening of physical abilities.
We demand the strengthening of national, regional, local and community for the preservation of life, collectively built from the popular empowerment as a mechanism for the sovereignty of our lifestyles and shielded against the capitalist system in the green economy.
We recognize and we show the important role from grassroots organizing in communities, collective, commune, technical water tables, socially owned enterprises, student councils, conservation committees, meetings and other forms of knowledge organization, face the consequences of the implementation green economy in our markets and generate resistance and alternatives.
We warn that the imposition of globalized strategies carefully and compromises the future of life. The implementation agenda for the preservation of life must come from the actions and collective management of people in ensuring their own sovereignty and livelihoods.
States warn the world that the United Nations attempt to boost the green economy only ratifies the discrediting and disparagement of this international body to the peoples of the world.
We invite all people and organizations to close ranks against the green economy.
We accompany our delegations Venezuelan people’s power and communal executive, and other fraternal countries delegations to the Conference and the People’s Summit in Rio +20 in the difficult and urgent struggle just to oppose or refuse to represent the green economy and we are with them in this commitment not to violate the principles of nature and of our sovereign peoples in these multilateral institutions.