by Anne Petermann, reporting from the streets of Rio, 20 June, 2012
Yearly Archives: 2012
Rio+20 Photo Essay: Peoples’ march takes over the streets of Rio
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Posts from Anne Petermann, Rio+20
Earth Audio podcasts: Achim Steiner of UNEP and Pat Mooney of the ETC Group at the Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit
At a panel session at the Peoples’ Summit, Pat Mooney of the Canadian technology watchdog organization ETC Group challenges UN Environment Program Director Achim Steiner’s concept of the green economy. Mooney says the model would hand control of the world’s biomass over to the same corporations and financial institutions responsible for the current ecological and financial chaos. June 16, 2012.
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Filed under Earth Radio, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Rio+20
Rio+20 Peoples Summit: Major mobilization of grassroots movements to converge on Rio’s downtown this afternoon
The Climate Connections team, together with the Grassroots Global Justice delegations and thousands of others are participating in the march, so we’ll be offline for several hours. We’ll post reports and photos to the blog on our return: please stay tuned…
In the meantime, the blog will be updated with more voices from the Peoples Summit and other info.
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GMO trees and the green economy: Green deserts for all?
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil–In advance of the UN’s Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the international STOP GE Trees Campaign is demanding a global ban on the release of destructive and dangerous genetically engineered trees (also called GE trees, GMO trees or GM trees) into the environment.
A major focus of the UN summit is so-called “renewable” or “sustainable” energy, and Ban Ki Moon, Executive Secretary of the UN has launched a highly controversial “Sustainable Energy for All” (SEFA) Initiative. This initiative includes use of trees to produce electricity or liquid agrofuels and there is an emphasis by industry to genetically engineer trees as feedstocks for this bioenegy production, and Brazil is one of the most active countries promoting this.
“Much of the research on GE trees in Brazil is focused on eucalyptus trees, which are being engineered for faster growth, and for modified wood qualities–such as increased cellulose and decreased lignin content. These engineered traits will facilitate the production of wood-based bioenergy,” stated Isis Alvarez of Global Forest Coalition.
“The dramatic and dangerous impacts of non-GMO industrial eucalyptus plantations are well documented and include invasiveness, desertification of soils, depletion of water, increased threat of wildfire and loss of biodiversity,” stated Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and Coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign. “Eucalyptus trees are not native to the Americas and they inhibit the growth of native vegetation. In Brazil, these plantations are called Green Deserts because nothing can grow in them. Now they want to engineer them, which will make them even more destructive,” she added.
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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Rio+20
Lucia Ortiz, Coordinator, Friends of the Earth, Brazil on KPFK radio
Interview with Lucia Ortiz, Coordinator, Friends of the Earth Brazil and member of the Organizing Committee of the Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit, on KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show, June 19, 2012.
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No rights of nature, no reducing emissions: REDD, el buen vivir, and the standing of forests
By Jeff Conant and Anne Petermann
NOTE: This article is excerpted from the report “Rights of Nature: Planting the Seeds of Real Change” published by Global Exchange, June, 2012
“For my people, the forest is sacred, it is life in all its essence. We can protect Pachamama only if this is respected. REDD and other market mechanisms have turned our relationship with forests into a business.” – Marlon Santi, leader of the Sarayaku Quichua community of Ecuador
Forests have always been valued by human societies for a multitude of uses and non-uses. Among them, the practical-use value of shade and shelter, thatch and timber, fuel wood, food and medicine; the ecological value of capturing, storing and filtering water, producing oxygen, and harboring biodiversity; as well as the spiritual value of their mere existence, for which Indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities have prayed and held ceremony since the dawn of time.
Today, with the emergence of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, the use value and the ecological value of forests have collided to eclipse all other value they may have, and any other values that human societies may place on them. While the emerging PES schemes pretend to shift the paradigm away from extractive approaches to resource use, they have one important feature in common with other uses that industrial society has for forests: the further you are from the forest, the greater the economic value it has — and the greater the potential for forest destruction.
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Filed under Carbon Trading, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, REDD
Three hundred people breach earthen dam, free Xingu River from Belo Monte mega-dam project
Cross-posted from Amazon Watch via Earth First Newswire
June 15, 2012, Belo Monte, Brazil. While the Brazilian Government prepares to host the Rio+20 United Nations Earth Summit, 3,000 kilometers north in the country’s Amazon region indigenous peoples, farmers, fisherfolk, activists and local residents affected by the construction of the massive Belo Monte Dam project began a symbolic peaceful occupation of the dam site to “free the Xingu River.”
In the early morning hours, three hundred women and children arrived in the hamlet of Belo Monte on the Transamazon Highway, and marched onto a temporary earthen dam recently built to impede the flow of the Xingu River. Using pick axes and shovels, local people who are being displaced by the project removed a strip of earthen dam to restore the Xingu’s natural flow.
Residents gathered in formation spelling out the words “Pare Belo Monte” meaning “Stop Belo Monte” to send a powerful message to the world prior to the gathering in Rio and demanding the cancellation of the $18 billion Belo Monte dam project (aerial photos of the human banner available upon request).
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Filed under Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20
Water Warriors reject corporate control of water at Peoples’ Summit
From IBON International
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, June 16, 2012 — “Water is life! Not for profit!” was the resounding message of the water warriors gathered at the plenary discussion on Water as Commons in Countering Green Economy, Privatization and Commodification during the opening of the Cupula dos Povos in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Around 100 participants attended the plenary discussion at the Blue Pavilion. The first session was devoted to analyzing the structural causes of the lack of access to water due to privatization.
Maria Teresa Lauron of IBON International traced the history of water privatization at the international level and shared Manila’s own experience with water privatization. According to Lauron, “the World Bank’s policy shift from the promotion of public water to privatization began n the 1970s to widen the access of investments for surplus capital from highly industrialized countries which were experiencing falling rates of profit at that time.”
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Green Economy, Rio+20, Water