Yearly Archives: 2012

by | 2012-06-15 · 15:05

Rio+20: indigenous peoples denounce green economy and REDD+ as privatization of nature

RIO DE JANEIRO – Indigenous Peoples of the world participating in Rio+20 denounce that the Green Economy and REDD+ privatize nature, sell the air we breathe and destroy the future.

Tom Goldtooth of Indigenous Environmental Network speaks about the negative impacts of REDD. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Indigenous Peoples´ powerful message to the United Nations summit is eloquently conveyed in the No REDD+! in Rio+20 Declaration launched this morning by of the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change against REDD and for Life.  The Alliance warns that REDD+ constitutes a worldwide land grab  and gigantesque carbon offset scam.

REDD+ is an UN-promoted false solution to climate change and the pillar of the Green Economy. Officially, REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. However, Tom Goldtooth (Dakota/Dine´), Director of Indigenous Environmental Network, insists that “REDD+ really means Reaping profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity.”
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by | · 11:35

Grassroots voices Available for Interview at Rio +20 and Peoples Summit

For Immediate Release    15 June, 2012

Climate Justice Groups to Amplify Front-line Struggles for Resilience

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil–As the Peoples Summit for Social and Environmental Justice and Against the Commodification of Life (Cupula dos Povos), kicks off today in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, thousands of international climate justice advocates will be present to draw attention to the struggles faced by grassroots communities, and the solutions these communities offer to the multiple crises facing the world today.

While the triple crises of energy, economy and ecology ultimately affect everyone, low-income communities, land-based cultures, Indigenous Peoples, women, and youth are impacted first and worst. At both the Peoples’ Summit and the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit, Global Justice Ecology Project and the Climate Justice Alignment will be providing media outlets with a comprehensive list of grassroots climate-impacted people for interviews, as well as posting short videos, podcasts, articles and news pieces daily on Climate-Connections.org.

Speakers available for interview have a wide range of expertise, including environmental justice, forests and land tenure; tree plantations and genetically engineered (GMO) trees; REDD, carbon trading and Payment for Environmental Services; Indigenous Peoples’ Rights; land grabbing; bioenergy, and the bioeconomy; women’s, gender and youth issues; recycling, waste-picking and waste-to-energy; just transition strategies; and grassroots perspectives.

Global Justice Ecology Project will release media alerts throughout the events, between June 15 and 23. The speakers list available at climate-connections.org/ will be updated daily. For information regarding the speakers list, to receive media alerts, or to follow the action from the grassroots, subscribe to Climate Connections, or contact GJEP or Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, below.

Contact:

Jeff Conant, Communications Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Email: jc@globaljusticeecology.org

Phone in Brazil:  +55 (0) (21) 8079-0790 (to be activated late in the day on the 15th)

Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Email: anne@globaljusticeecology.org

Phone: +1 (802) 578 0477

Shaun Grogan-Brown, Communications Coordinator, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

Email:  sha@ggjalliance.org

Phone in Brazil:  +55 (0) (21) 8079-0796

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Filed under Climate Change, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20

by | · 07:59

Rio+20 Alternative Peoples’ Summit opens today: People of the world vs. the “green economy” and global economic foreclosure

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Today is the opening day of the Cupola dos Povos–the alternative Peoples’ Summit for Environmental and Social Justice in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It was pulled together by Brazilian groups and is being attended by social movements, Indigenous Peoples, activists and organizations from all over the world who are coming together to identify real solutions to the multiple and rising crises we face as humans on planet Earth.  The summit was organized in direct opposition to the official UN circus known as the Rio+20 Conference for Sustainable Development.  More aptly it would be called the Rio+20 Conference for the greenwashing of Business as Usual.

As I flew to Rio on 12 June, I read an article in the Financial Times titled “Showdown Looms at OPEC After Saudi Arabia Urges Higher Output.”  The article explained how Saudi Arabia is urging OPEC to increase their output of oil in order to ensure that the global price of oil does not exceed US$100/barrel in order to “mitigate the risks that high oil prices pose to the global economy.”

The insane logic of expanding oil production in the face of mounting climate chaos in order to help rescue the global economy accurately reflects the mindset behind the negotiations around the UN’s Rio+20 Earth Summit, set to start next week here in Rio.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Posts from Anne Petermann, REDD, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20, World Bank

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by | · 06:41

Peasants of the world mobilize against green capitalism in Rio

News, pctures and videos on www.viacampesina.org

(Rio de Janeiro, 14 June, 2012) About 3000 people from around the world will mobilize to say NO to the commodification of life and nature at the Peoples Summit for Social and Environmental Justice and in Defense of the Commons.

The peoples Summit is a space for discussion, debate and construction of alternative proposals by the global civil society, social movements and peoples collective organizations. La Via Campesina has been actively participating in the construction of this activity in order to denounce the false solutions of the same failed economic model that is now being dressed in green under the name “green economy”. La Via Campesina is instead promoting peasants sustainable agriculture as a true solution to the global climatic and environmental crises.

The delegation of La Via Campesina will participate in various plenaries as well as the global mobilization that will take place on the 20th of June concentrating at the junction of the roads Av. Rio Branco and Av Presidente Vargas in Rio de Janeiro. La Via Campesina has been actively participating in the planning of the Peoples Summit that will take place as a parellel activity to the UN conference on Sustainable Development or Rio + 20. This meeting marks the twentieth aniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio 92 or Eco 92).

The most important political space in the Peoples Summit will be the Peoples Permanant Assembly that will organize around three main themes: The denouncement of the structural causes of global poverty and environmental crisis as well as the new forms of the reproduction of capital; Peoples real solutions and new paradigms; and the agendas, campaigns and mobilizations of anticapitalist struggles after Rio +20.

La Via Campesina is an international movement that brings together about 200 million peasants, small and medium-sized producers, landless, rural workers and indigenous people from around the world. LVC advocates sustainable small scale peasant’s agriculture as a means of promoting social justice and dignity. The organization brings together more than 150 organizations in about 70 countries of Africa, Asia, Europe and America.

Link to document – La Via Campesina’s position on Rio+20

To facilitate interviews with peasants from different continents we have available a list of spokespersons of La Via Campesina as well as the overall agenda of the Summit.

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Filed under Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20

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by | 2012-06-14 · 13:51

KPFK Audio: GJEP’s Anne Petermann reports from Rio on the Rio+20 Earth Summit and Alternative Peoples’ Summit

Today as the official negotiations continue in preparation for the upcoming Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development–also known as the Rio+20 Earth Summit–KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show interviewed Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) Executive Director Anne Petermann, who is on the ground in Rio about the Rio+20 summit, which starts on 20 June, as well as the alternative Peoples’ Summit, which starts on 15 June.

To listen to the 15 minute interview, click here: Rio+20 interview with GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann on KPFK

Global Justice Ecology Project will be in Rio to report on and campaign around both the official UN meetings and the alternative Peoples’ Summmit, from 15 June to 23 June. Stay tuned to this blog for daily news and reports.  Beginning Tuesday, 19 June GJEP will be partnering with the Sojourner Truth show to provide daily interviews on the events in Rio.

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Earth Radio, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Posts from Anne Petermann, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20

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by | 2012-06-13 · 16:00

IBON International: “Put rights and Rio principles at the heart of Rio+20”

IBON International and Rights for Sustainability Delegation at Rio+20 Summit

Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, June 13, 2012 — IBON International’s 34-strong “Rights for Sustainability” delegation of civil society representatives from Asia, Africa and Latin America arrived in Rio today with the message, “Put Rights and the Rio Principles at the Heart of Rio+20.”

The Rights for Sustainability (R4S) delegation is an advocacy platform coordinated by Philippines-based civil society organisation IBON International to push for a rights-based approach to sustainable development. It will be involved in a series of side events at Rio+20 as well as monitoring continuing negotiations on the summit outcome document in the Preparatory Committee (Prep Com) meetings at Rio Centro, and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development itself. IBON International coordinates the NGO Rights and Equity Cluster for Rio+20.
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by | · 10:00

Rio + 20: IITC joins Indigenous Peoples from around the world to call for a new model of development

“Indigenous Peoples continue to challenge the development model based on resource extraction and market-based models, which fails to recognize that we human beings are an integral part of the natural world, and also fails to respect human rights, including the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

—“Indigenous Peoples in Route to the Rio +20 Conference,” Global Preparatory Meeting of Indigenous Peoples, August 22 – 24, 2011, Manaus, Brazil

The International Indian Treaty Council is pleased to be a part of two great events during the upcoming Rio +20 Conference in Brazil. Please click title for more information.

“Indigenous Peoples, Food Sovereignty and Sustainable Development”, June 14, 5:30 – 7 PM, Room T-4, Rio Centro, Avenida Salvador Allende, 6555 – Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND SELF-DETERMINATION, “Standing Together for our Food Sovereignty, Traditional Cultures and Ways of Life” JUNE 17TH – 19TH, 2012, Museu da República, Rua do Catete 153, Catete, cep 22220 000


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Filed under Indigenous Peoples, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20

by | 2012-06-12 · 15:00

Climate Connections exclusive: World Agricultural Report, ignored by states, promotes agroecology

By Laetitia Mailhes

Producing food is undoubtedly the most vital of all human activities. Yet, in conversations about climate change, agriculture has been astoundingly overlooked. General approaches to climate have typically focused on energy, or, at best, on the vague marker of ‘sustainability’.

Yet, agriculture is the elephant in the room. Think about it: agriculture is about environmental conservation (lest we waste away the natural resources we depend on, such as soil, clean water, biodiversity, fisheries, forests), energy use (dependency on fossil fuels makes our food system extremely vulnerable to oil price volatility and availability), public health, social justice, local communities, land rights, economic security. You name it: food and farming are at the heart of every issue on the table.
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Filed under Climate Change, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20