Category Archives: Climate Justice

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.

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

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

Tagged as , , ,

by | 2012-06-12 · 10:10

Civil society groups denounce Sustainable Energy for All initiative promoted at Rio+20 Earth Summit

As the final negotiations for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 conference get underway in Rio de Janeiro, almost 50 civil society groups have published an open letter denouncing the UN Secretary General’s new “Sustainable Energy For All Initiative” (SEFA). The letter states: “The SEFA process and Action Agenda are deeply flawed and threaten to further entrench destructive, polluting and unjust energy policies for corporate profit under the guise of alleviating energy poverty, while undermining community rights to energy sovereignty and self determination.”

The “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative was announced in September 2011, and a “high level panel” was established by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon. The panel includes major investors in the fossil fuel economy including, Statoil, Eskom, Siemens and Riverstone Holdings. The initiative’s stated goals are to 1) double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency, 2) double the share of renewables in the global energy mix by 2030, and 3) provide access to modern energy services for all of humanity. An action agenda is being put forward for endorsement at Rio+20, along with commitments for action from countries and groups.

Groups denouncing the initiative view it as an attempt to use claims of poverty alleviation to further expand corporate control over energy policies with the aim of gaining access to new markets and investment opportunities. The letter points out that the initiative’s goals are inadequate,that it promotes dangerous and unsustainable forms of energy and that there is a deplorable lack of transparency and democratic participation in the process thus far.
Continue reading →

Comments Off on Civil society groups denounce Sustainable Energy for All initiative promoted at Rio+20 Earth Summit

Filed under Actions / Protest, Africa, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Industrial agriculture, Land Grabs, Rio+20

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | 2012-05-16 · 11:00

Report from the International Joint People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice in Rio

For the unity and mobilization of the people in defense of life and the common good, social justice and environmental against the commodification of nature and “green economy”

Rio de Janeiro, May 12, 2012

A month before the UN Conference Rio +20, the world’s people do not see positive results of the negotiation process that is taking place in the lead up to the official conference. There is no discussion in the agreements reached in Rio+20 about how to change the causes of the crisis. The focus of the discussion is a package of proposals misleadingly called the “green economy” and the establishment of a new system of international environmental governance to facilitate it.

The real cause of the multiple structural crisis of capitalism, with its classical forms of domination, which concentrates wealth and produces social inequality, unemployment, violence against the people, and the criminalization of those who report it. The current system of consumption and production – maintained by large corporations, financial markets and governments – produces and deepens crises of global warming, hunger and malnutrition, loss of forests and biological and socio-cultural diversity, chemical pollution, water scarcity, increasing desertification of soils, acidification of the seas, land grabbing and the commodification of all aspects of life in cities and the countryside.

The “green economy”, contrary to what its name suggests, is another phase of capitalist accumulation. Nothing in the “green economy” questions the current economy based in the extractive and fossil fuels, nor the patterns of consumption and industrial production, but extends the economy into new areas, feeding the myth of that economic growth can be infinite.

The failed economic model, now dressed in green, aims to bring all life cycles of nature to the market rules and the domain of technology, privatization and commodification of nature and its functions, as well as traditional knowledge, increasing speculative financial markets through carbon markets for environmental services, biodiversity offsets and REDD + (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

GMOs, agrochemicals, Terminator technology, biofuels, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, artificial life, geo-engineering and nuclear power, among others, are presented as “technological solutions” to the natural limits of the planet and the many crises, without addressing the real causes that provoke them.

The Green Economy also promotes the expansion of the agro-industrial food system, which is one of the biggest factors leading to climate change, environmental, economic and social crises; the speculation in food, and the promotion of the interests of agribusiness corporations at the expense of production local peasant family, indigenous peoples and traditional populations and affecting the health of entire populations.

As a trading strategy in the Rio +20 conference, some governments in rich countries are proposing a setback of 1992 Rio Principles, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, the precautionary principle, the right to information and participation, and threatening already established rights, such as the rights of  indigenous and traditional peoples, peasants, the human right to water, the rights of workers, migrants, the right to food, housing, the rights of youth and women, the right to sexual and reproductive health, education and cultural rights.

They are also trying to install so-called Sustainable Development Objectives (ODS) to be used to promote “green economy”, further weakening the already inadequate Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The official process aims to establish global environmental governance forms that serve as managers and facilitators of this “green economy”, giving prominence to the World Bank and other public or private financial institutions, international and national, which will provide a new cycle of indebtedness and structural adjustments dressed in green.

There can be no democratic global governance without ending the current corporate capture of the United Nations.

We reject this process and call for strengthening and building alternatives demonstrations around the world.

We fight for a radical change from the current model of production and consumption, solidifying our right to develop alternative models based on the multiple realities and experiences of the people that are genuinely democratic, respect human rights and are in harmony with nature and social and environmental justice.

We raise the assertion and collective construction of new paradigms based on food sovereignty, agro-ecology and the solidarity economy, the defense of life and the commons, the affirmation of all the threatened rights, the right to land and territory, the rights of nature and future generations, the elimination of all forms of colonialism and imperialism.

We call on people everywhere to support the Brazilian people’s struggle against the destruction of a major legal frameworks for the protection of forests (Forestry Code), which opens avenues for further deforestation in favor of the interests of agribusiness and enlargement of the monocultures, and against the implementation of mega hydro-electric dam–the Belo Monte, which is affecting the survival and livelihoods of forest peoples and the Amazonian biodiversity.

We reiterate the call to participate in the People’s Summit to be held from 15 to 23 June in Rio de Janeiro, which will be an important point in the trajectory of the global struggles for social and environmental justice that we are building since The first Rio Earth Summit in 1992, particularly building from Seattle, FSM, Cochabamba, where the struggles against the WTO and the FTAA were catapulted, for climate justice and against the G-20. Are also included mass mobilizations as Occupy, and Arab Spring.

We call for a global mobilization on 5 June (World Environment day), on June 18 against the G20 (which this time will focus on “green growth”) and the progress of the People’s Summit on 20 June in Rio de Janeiro and in the world, social and environmental justice, against the “green economy”, the commodification of life and nature and the defense of the commons and rights of peoples.

 

Group’s international joint People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice

Comments Off on Report from the International Joint People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice in Rio

Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

by | 2012-04-09 · 14:00

Critical Information Collective Offers Resources for Advancing Movement for Justice

Note: The following post regards a new organization, Critical information Collective, set up by our friends Joe Zacune and Ronnie Hall (both ex-campaign coordinators with Friends of the Earth International).  This initiative will be a very useful and powerful resource and clearinghouse for our collective struggle for social and ecological justice.  Check it out!

–The GJEP Team

From Critical Information Collective:

We really hope that you have time to read this short message introducing a new organisation, Critical Information Collective (CIC). It’s been set up by the two of us, Ronnie Hall and Joseph Zacune (ex-campaign coordinators with Friends of the Earth International), although we hope to expand it to include more researchers and advisors soon.

 CIC aims to be a resource for you all, providing social movements, NGOs and communities campaigning against corporate globalisation with a single ‘one stop shop’ of incisive, political and campaign-oriented analysis, images and tools – as well as more visibility for our collective effort to challenge the prevailing economic paradigm.

We aim to cover a broad range of critical issues related to corporate-led globalisation, including agrofuels, climate change, deforestation, food, GMOs, land, mining, poverty, rights, and trade and investment.

If you want to find the key documents on any one topic, from a range of different organisations (including your own), or easily find relevant and free/cheap images for your publications, or point your members to additional information resources and campaign tools, we hope you will visit/link to us.”

Comments Off on Critical Information Collective Offers Resources for Advancing Movement for Justice

Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Indigenous Peoples, REDD, Rio+20, UNFCCC, World Bank

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | 2012-03-30 · 15:00

Sustainable Energy For All: The UN’s Trojan Horse for Corporate Energy Control?

gaspipes29 March 2012

Note: Sustainable Energy For All, or SEFA, is a UN initiative focused on “clean” energy development in the developing world.  Coincidentally, it might be a scheme to increase the role that multi-national corporations play in delivering energy services to communities, and to decrease pressure on developed countries (US, Canada, EU member-states) to implement energy efficiency and carbon-neutral projects.  Check out a BiofuelWatch report on SEFA, Sustainable Energy for All-Or Sustained Profits for a Few? for more background information.

-Gears of Change Youth Media

As soon as Morton Wetland, Norway’s representative to the UN, opened his mouth to moderate a panel discussion on public-private relationships for the Sustainable Energy For All (SEFA) initiative, it was clear on which side of the public-private divide the panelists stood.  In a belittling tone he said, “I was informed that the G77 has deleted everything in the text which has not been proposed by the G77,” referring to the attempts of mostly southern countries to defend against the stripping away of all language in the Zero Draft document referring to human rights, social inclusion and equity.  Considering the chummy, smug chuckles this comment elicited from the room, it immediately appeared that this discussion of SEFA would be more concerned with what is good for business than with what is best for human and natural communities.

SEFA may seem to be an initiative with good intentions—to increase global access to clean, “modern” energy sources—but what ultimately plays out on the ground looks to have dire consequences.  The initiative happens to include members from some of the world’s most lovable institutions: Charles Holliday, current chair of America and former director of DuPont, also chairs SEFA.  Statoil, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and Riverstone Holdings, represented by former BP CEO John Browne, are all there too.  Mark Moody Stuart, ex chairman of Shell, is also on the board.

What kind of projects can we expect this not-so-motley crew to promote?  According to Rachel Smolker from BiofuelWatch, “The first country commitment for the Sustainable Energy For All initiative is from Ghana, and it is a project which will construct a natural gas pipeline in the country with the assistance of a UK company that has long been seeking to do that.”  Since when is natural gas considered sustainable energy? In this case, the private sector is using the legitimate concern of improving the health of rural women to push through business-friendly mandates at the national and international levels.  Apparently that is the kind of sustainable energy you get when you put the heads of some of the largest energy and finance corporations in charge.

At first glance, it seems like the old regime has just put on new masks.  As Justin Perrettson, a panelist representing biotech giant Novozymes, said, “Business as usual doesn’t work…its all about companies doing what they do better,” and, “Sustainable energy is all about mindset.”  Indeed, so long as stopping business as usual means creating new, more attractive markets to investors and business, and the mindset with which sustainability is defined thinks primarily about profit margins, investment opportunity and increased corporate power instead human rights, environmental impact and community control.

Perrettson’s presentation focused primarily on the new market potentials for biotech (bioenergy, bioplastics, biochemicals) that SEFA can create with proper public investment and backing.  He hopes that the Rio+20 process can be used to initiate, “…a dialogue around…the bio-based economy,” which involves using more of the planets living communities in a more productive way.  What he really means is identifying things like “agricultural residues,” which are often vital to traditional forms of agriculture for maintaining soil fertility, and transforming them into synthetic fuels, plastics and chemical products.  Not to mention his apparent infatuation with corn, which he described as a, “ power plant.”

If industrial-scale biomass and biofuels are considered sustainable—which they currently are—than SEFA will serve as a mechanism to make investments in these dangerous technologies more attractive.  As no less than three panelists pointed out during the hour and a half long session, “Green [as in the Green Economy being promoted at Rio+20] is a good word because it also means the color of money.”

The 800 pound gorilla in the room, of course, was the actual financing for large scale energy projects.  Petter Norre, who has spent decades in the Norwegian oil and gas industry and is now a member of the SEFA technical advisory group, described a subset of SEFA, Energy+.  Energy+ was developed last fall by UN Seretary General Ban-Ki Moon and the Norwegian government, and is focused on creating attractive investment opportunities for renewable energy projects in the developing world.  It is inspired by the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) initiative, which is vehemently opposed by many civil society and indigenous organization throughout the world.  Energy+, like REDD, is all about climate finance and making countries, “Green Fund-ready.”

In Norre’s words, Energy+ is about, “…getting down the country risk for big international investors who live by their spreadsheets and their cost of capital….” In other words, how to get the public sector to subsidize, deregulate or structurally adjust in ways that can make otherwise risky development projects appear attractive to the big multi-nationals.  And what is the real role of the public sector here?  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be providing a regulatory framework to ensure equity and rights.  Quite the contrary, according to Norre, the public sector needs to provide, “…a regulatory framework to have a state that functions that somehow encourages investment.”

Just as Energy+ was making me feel warm and fuzzy about the role the private sector would play in what was now being discussed mostly in terms of finance, decoupling risk from investment, and commercial opportunity, the World Bank reared its ugly head.  While I was surprised to hear World Bank Senior Energy Specialist Magnus Gehringer talking about geothermal (I figured they also would have been in the natural gas-as-sustainable energy camp), his presentation came to similar conclusions as Norre’s.  Speaking with a starry-eyed gaze about the potentials of geothermal energy, Gehringer explained the Bank’s new push, coming from the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), to access this below ground energy source.  Drill, baby, drill.

While geothermal has a relatively high return on investment, it requires huge upfront costs.  The biggest hurdle for countries lacking access to large amounts of cash is the test drilling required prior to geothermal development.  It is prohibitively expensive and requires drilling 2-3 km below the ground.  And this is to test for geothermal potential.

But high up-front investment costs won’t stop the World Bank.  In fact, nothing short of direct community resistance will.  Magnus showed a map of geothermal hotspots, most of which are in the southern Pacific Ocean, the western coasts of North, Central and South America, and eastern Africa.  While it is true that geothermal is at the “edge of what people think about,” that might be due to the fact that most of the world is looking for solutions that are cheap, don’t require huge amounts of international finance and corporate control, and that won’t result in further ecological destruction.  As Gehringer noted, “Japan has an estimated potential…of 23,000 megawatts….And they didn’t use it because most of their geothermal fields are in national protected parks, and they didn’t want to damage their landscape.”  Well shame on you, Japan, for placing ecological protection before increased energy development.  The Bank will have to see about that.

The scariest piece of what the Bank is proposing, and about all public-private partnerships proposed for Rio+20, are the proposed private sector benefits.  Gehringer described a dream project of his, involving, “…a loan [for geothermal development] to the…east African countries for example, that they could then repay by just, for example, tendering out some of their [developed geothermal] fields to the private sector, and they would get their money back and they could repay the loans and still keep some of it.”  How much of whose fields?  When do they get them back?  And at what cost to local people and the planet?

What is so troubling about this initiative, as Ana Belén Sánchez López from Sustainlabour pointed out in a question to the panel, is that increasing access to safe, reliable, sustainable energy is a crucial issue for women, workers and many of the world’s most marginalized people.  Energy is necessary for survival.  However, it is also imperative that energy is considered in the context of human rights, not market commodities, and that the public sector­—trade unions, civil society organizations, local communities­—have a real seat at the table.

Sustianable Energy For All needs to focus on making projects that work for public utilities, and that really address the needs of local communities in healthy, sustainable ways.  It can’t be used as a Trojan Horse for the corporate world to ride into marginalized urban and rural areas to access newly developing markets.  That is not the future we want.  As the moderator made clear in his response to Sánchez López’s comments, the focus needs to be on the private sector because right now the private sector is a, “four-letter word,” at the UN.  Well, maybe it should stay that way.

Comments Off on Sustainable Energy For All: The UN’s Trojan Horse for Corporate Energy Control?

Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Rio+20

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | 2012-03-22 · 15:45

KPFK Earth Segment: Marty Cobenais of IEN on Obama’s Keystone Pipeline reversal and ETC Group’s Jim Thomas on the threat of synthetic biology

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod and the Sojourner Truth show at KPFK Pacifica in Los Angeles for weekly Earth Segments and weekly Earth Minutes.

This week’s Earth Segment features Marty Cobenais of Indigenous Environmental Network giving IEN’s perspective on Obama’s Keystone pipeline reversal, and Jim Thomas of ETC Group on the threat to communities of synthetic biology, and the upcoming public forum Unmasking the Bay Area Bio-labs and Synthetic Biology: Health, Justice and Communities at Risk.

To listen to the Earth Segment, click on the link below and scroll to minute  42:00:

http://www.archive.org/details/Sojournertruthradio032212

Comments Off on KPFK Earth Segment: Marty Cobenais of IEN on Obama’s Keystone Pipeline reversal and ETC Group’s Jim Thomas on the threat of synthetic biology

Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Media, Synthetic Biology, Tar Sands

by | 2012-02-16 · 13:10

Reclaiming our future: Rio +20 and Beyond: La Vía Campesina Call to action

(Español debajo)

On 20-22 June 2012, governments from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to commemorate 20 years of the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that first established a global agenda for “sustainable development”. During the 1992 summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Convention to Combat Desertification, were all adopted. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was also established to ensure effective follow-up of the UNCED “Earth Summit.”

Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.

La Vía Campesina will mobilize for this historical moment, representing the voice of the millions of peasants and indigenous globally who are defending the well-being of all by implementing food sovereignty and the protection of natural resources.

20 Years later: a planet in crisis

20 years after the Earth Summit, life has become more difficult for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. The number of hungry people has increased to almost one billion, which means that one out of six human beings is going hungry, women and small farmers being the most affected. Meanwhile, the environment is depleting fast, biodiversity is being destroyed, water resources are getting scarce and contaminated and the climate is in crisis. This is jeopardizing our very future on Earth while poverty and inequalities are increasing.

The idea of “Sustainable Development” put forward in 1992, which merged “development” and “environment” concerns, did not solve the problem because it did not stop the capitalist system in its race towards profit at the expense of all human and natural resources:

– The food system is increasingly in the grips of large corporations seeking profit, not aimed at feeding the people.

– The Convention on Biodiversiy has created benefit sharing mechanisms but at the end of the day, they legitimize the capitalization of genetic resources by the private sector.

– The UN Convention on Climate Change, instead of forcing countries and corporations to reduce pollution, invented a new profitable and speculative commodity with the carbon trading mechanisms, allowing the polluter to continue polluting and profit from it.

The framework of “sustainable development” continues to see peasant agriculture as backwards and responsible for the deterioration of natural resources and the environment. The same paradigm of development is perpetuated, which is nothing less than the development of capitalism by means of a “green industrialization.”

The “Green Economy” – Final Enclosure?

Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.

The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.

In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!

Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.

The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.

Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.

The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”.

The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.

Why peasant farmers mobilize

Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants – women and men – are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life and to propose another way to organize our relationship with nature on earth based on agrarian reform, food sovereignty and peasant based agroecology.

We reject the “Green Economy” as it is pushed now in the Rio+20 process. It is a new mask to hide an ever-present, growing greed of corporations and food imperialism in the world.

  • We oppose carbon trading and all market solutions to the environmental crisis including the proposed liberalization of environmental services under the WTO.
  • We reject REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) which allows rich countries to avoid cutting their carbon emissions by financing often damaging projects in developing countries.
  • We expose and reject the corporate capture of the rio+20 process and all multilateral processes within the United Nations.
  • We oppose land grabs, water grabs, seeds grabs, forest grabs – all resources’ grabs!
  • We defend the natural resources in our countries as a matter of national and popular sovereignty, to face the offensive and private appropriation of capital;
  • We demand public policies from governments for the protection of the interests of the majority of the population, especially the poorest, and landless workers;
  • We demand a complete ban on geoengineering projects and experiments; under the guise of ‘green’ or ‘clean’ technology to the benefit of agribusiness. This includes new technologies being proposed for adaptation and mitigation to climate change under the banners of “geo-engineering” and “climate smart agriculture”, including false solutions like transgenic plants supposed to adapt to climate change, and “biochar” purported to replenish the soil with carbon.
  • We resolve to protect our native seeds and our right to exchange seeds.
  • We demand genuine agrarian reform that distributes and redistributes the land – the main factor in production – especially taking into account women and youth. Land must be a means of production to secure the livelihood of the people and must not be a commodity subject to speculation on international markets. We reject “market assisted land reform”, which is another word for land privatization.
  • We struggle for small scale sustainable food production for community and local consumption as opposed to agribusiness, monoculture plantations for export.
  • We continue to organize and practice agroecology based production, ensuring food sovereignty for all and implementing collective management of our resources

Call to action

We call for a major world mobilization to be held between 18-26 June in Rio de Janeiro, with a permanent camp, for the Peoples Summit, to counter the summit of governments and capital.

We will be in Rio at the People’s Summit where anti-capitalist struggles of the world will meet and together we will propose real solutions. The People’s Permanent Assembly, between the 18 and 22, will present the daily struggles against the promoters of capitalism y the attacks against our lands. Today, Rio de Janeiro is one of the cities which receive the most contributions from global capital and will host the Soccer World Cup and Olympics. We will unite our symbolic struggles from the urban to the landless movements and fishers.

We also declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:

  • Defend sustainable peasant agriculture
  • Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food
  • Reclaim and exchange native seeds
  • Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land
  • Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism
  • Dream of a different world and create it!!

The future that we want is based on Agrarian Reform, Peasant’s based sustainable agriculture and Food Sovereignty!

GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!!

GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!

—

La Via Campesina
Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers. We are an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent of any political, economic, or other type of affiliation. Born in 1993, La Via Campesina now gathers about 150 organisations in 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

International Operational Secretariat:
Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV no 5 Jakarta Selatan 12790, Indonesia
Tel/fax: +62-21-7991890/+62-21-7993426
Email: viacampesina@viacampesina.org

__________________________________

Llamado a la acción de La Vía Campesina

Recuperando nuestro futuro: Río +20 y más allá

Entre los días 20 y 22 de junio de 2012, los gobiernos de todo el mundo se reunirán en Río de Janeiro, Brasil, para conmemorar los 20 años de la “Cumbre de la Tierra”, la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo (CNUMAD), que estableció por primera vez una agenda global para el “desarrollo sostenible”. Durante la cumbre de 1992 se adoptaron la Convención sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CDB), la Convención de Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC) y la Convención de Lucha contra la Desertificación. También se estableció La Comisión sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible (CDS) para garantizar el seguimiento efectivo de la “Cumbre de la Tierra”.

Veinte años después, los gobiernos hubieran tenido que volver a reunirse para reseñar sus compromisos y sus avances, pero en realidad el tema a debate será el desarrollo basado en la “economía verde”, propagando el mismo modelo capitalista que causó el caos climático y otras profundas crisis económicas, sociales y ambientales.

La Vía Campesina se movilizará para este acontecimiento histórico, representando la voz de las campesinas, campesinos y pueblos indígenas que defienden el bienestar de todos y todas a través de la implementación de la soberanía alimentaria y la protección de los recursos naturales.

20 años después: un planeta en crisis

20 años después de la Cumbre de la Tierra, la vida se ha vuelto más difícil para la mayoría de la humanidad. El número de personas sufriendo de hambre ha aumentado a casi mil millones, lo que significa que uno de cada seis seres humanos está pasando hambre, siendo las mujeres y las campesinas y campesinos los más afectados. Mientras tanto, el medio ambiente se degrada rápidamente, la biodiversidad está siendo destruida, los recursos hídricos empiezan a escasear y se contaminan, sin hablar de los daños de la crisis climática. Esto pone en peligro nuestro futuro en la Tierra mientras que se incrementa la pobreza y la desigualdad.

La idea del “desarrollo sostenible” presentada en 1992, cual fusionó las preocupaciones del “desarrollo” y del “medio ambiente”, no pudo resolver estos problemas porque no freno al sistema capitalista en su galopada por las ganancias a costa de los recursos humanos y naturales:

– El sistema alimentario está cada vez más controlado por las grandes empresas que buscan su propio beneficio, y no alimentar a los pueblos.

– La Convención sobre la Biodiversidad ha creado mecanismos de repartición de beneficios, que a fin de cuentas legitiman la capitalización de los recursos genéticos por el sector privado.

– La Convención de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático inventó un nuevo producto muy rentable y especulativo con los mecanismos de comercio de carbono, permitiendo a quienes contaminan continuar haciéndolo obteniendo además un beneficio de ello, en lugar de forzar a los países y a las empresas a reducir la contaminación.

El marco del “desarrollo sustentable” sigue tratando a la agricultura campesina como atrasada y responsable del deterioro de los recursos naturales y el medioambiente. Se perpetua el mismo paradigma de crecimiento, cual es nada menos que el desarrollo capitalista bajo la “industrialización verde.”

La “Economía Verde”, ¿el Cercamiento final?

Hoy en día, la “ecologización de la economía” impulsada en el período previo a Río +20 se basa en la misma lógica y mecanismos que están destruyendo el planeta y manteniendo a la gente en hambre. Por ejemplo, busca incorporar los aspectos de la fracasada “revolución verde” de una manera más amplia para garantizar las necesidades de los sectores industriales de producción, tales como la promoción de la uniformidad de las semillas, las semillas patentadas por empresas, las semillas genéticamente modificadas, etc.

La economía capitalista nunca será verde porque está requiere en la sobre explotación de los recursos naturales y del ser humano. Se basa en el crecimiento ilimitado en un planeta que ha llegado a sus límites y en la mercantilización de los bienes naturales que quedan y los recursos que han permanecido hasta ahora sin precio o bajo control del sector público.

En esta época de crisis financiera, el capitalismo mundial busca nuevas formas de acumulación. Y es en estas crisis que el capitalismo más acumula. AhoraHoy, son los territorios y los bienes comunes que son el blanco principal del capital. Así, la economía verde no es solamente una mascara verde del capitalismo. Es también una nueva ingeniería para apropiarse de nuestros bosques, ríos, suelos… de nuestros territorios!

Desde las reuniones preparatorias del año pasado hacia Río +20, la agricultura ha sido citada como una de las causas del cambio climático. Sin embargo, en las negociaciones oficiales no se ha hecho la distinción entre la agricultura industrial y la agricultura campesina. Tampoco se han explicitado las diferencias entre sus efectos sobre la pobreza, el clima y otros problemas sociales a los que nos enfrentamos.

La “economía verde” se está vendiendo como una forma de implementar el desarrollo sostenible en aquellos países que continúan experimentando altos y desproporcionados niveles de pobreza, hambre y miseria. En realidad, lo que se propone es una nueva fase de lo que identificamos como “programas verdes de ajuste estructural”, que buscan alinear y ordenar los mercados y las regulaciones nacionales para someterlos a la rápida llegada del “capitalismo verde”.

En la lógica de la “economía verde”, los recursos naturales del planeta son considerados como materias primas para la producción industrial, como sumideros de carbono o para la especulación. Esto queda demostrado por el aumento de los acaparamientos de tierras a nivel mundial para la producción de cultivos para la exportación y los agrocombustibles. Nuevas propuestas como la agricultura “climática inteligente”, que promueve la “intensificación sostenible” de la agricultura, encarnan también el objetivo de las corporaciones y los agronegocios de sobre explotar el planeta usando la etiqueta “verde”, y haciendo que las campesinas y campesinos dependan cada vez más de insumos y semillas de elevados costes. Se está emitiendo una nueva generación de permisos de contaminación para el sector industrial, especialmente en los países desarrollados, a través de los mecanismos de Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación Forestal (REDD++) y otros programas de servicios ambientales.

El uso intensivo de varias formas de biotecnología, de las tecnologías de síntesis y de la geoingeniería son partes fundamentales de la agricultura industrial promovidos en el marco de la “economía verde.” Con esto, la economía verde busca asegurar que los sistemas ecológicos y biológicos del planeta se mantengan a la disposición del capital.

La promoción de la “economía verde” incluye llamadas a la plena aplicación de la Ronda de Doha de la OMC, la eliminación de todas las barreras comerciales a la entrada de “soluciones verdes”, la financiación y el apoyo de las instituciones financieras como el Banco Mundial y de proyectos, como los programas de la USAID, y la legitimación continua de las instituciones internacionales que sirven para perpetuar y promover el capitalismo global.

¿Por qué nos movilizamos las campesinas y campesinos?

Nosotras y nosotros, campesinas y campesinos, los agricultores familiares, los sin tierra, los pueblos indígenas, los emigrantes —hombres y mujeres— estamos decididos a movilizarnos para oponernos a cualquier mercantilización de la vida y para proponer otra manera de organizar nuestra relación con la naturaleza en la Tierra. Esta se basa en la reforma agraria, la agroecología y la soberanía alimentaria.

Rechazamos la “Economía Verde” como se defiende ahora en el proceso de Río +20. Es una nueva máscara para ocultar la creciente codicia de las empresas y del imperialismo alimentario en el mundo.

  • Exponemos y rechazamos la captura del Proceso de Río +20 y de todos los procesos multilaterales de las Naciones Unidas por parte de las corporaciones;
  • Nos oponemos al comercio de carbono y a todas las soluciones de mercado a la crisis medioambiental, incluyendo la liberalización propuesta de servicios ambientales bajo la OMC.
  • Rechazamos el REDD (Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación Forestal), que permite que los países ricos eviten recortar sus emisiones de carbono mediante la financiación de proyectos, a menudo perjudiciales, en los países en desarrollo;
  • Nos oponemos al acaparamiento de tierras, del agua, de las semillas, de los bosques… ¡Al acaparamiento de todos los recursos!
  • Rechazamos las formas de apropriación de nuestros territorios, que sea con los créditos de carbono o con los pagos de servicios ambientales hechos por gran corporaciones;
  • Exigimos la prohibición total de los proyectos y experimentos de geoingeniería, con la apariencia de tecnología “verde” o “limpia” en beneficio de los agronegocios. Esto incluye nuevas tecnologías que se están proponiendo para la adaptación y la mitigación del cambio climático bajo el lema de “geoingeniería” y “agricultura inteligente climática”, incluyendo soluciones falsas como plantas transgénicas que supuestamente se adaptan al cambio climático y el “biocarbón”, que se supone devuelve al suelo el carbono;
  • Exigimos una reforma agraria auténtica que distribuya y redistribuya la tierra —el principal factor de producción— teniendo en cuenta a las mujeres y jóvenes. La tierra debe ser un medio de producción para garantizar la subsistencia de los pueblos y no debe ser una mercancía sometida a la especulación en los mercados internacionales. Rechazamos la “reforma agraria asistida por el mercado”, que es solo una forma distinta de hablar de la privatización de la tierra
  • Luchamos por la producción sostenible de alimentos a pequeña escala para el consumo comunitario y local, en oposición a la agroindustria y a los monocultivos para la exportación;
  • Continuamos organizando y practicando una producción basada en la agroecología, garantizando la soberanía alimentaria para todos y seguimos poniendo en marcha una gestión colectiva de los recursos.

Llamado a la acción

Hacemos un llamado a una gran movilización mundial entre el 18 y el 26 de junio en Río de Janeiro, con un campamento permanente y a una Cumbre de los Pueblos en la que nos opondremos a la cumbre de los gobiernos y el capital.

Estaremos en Rio en el la Cumbre de los Ppueblos, donde se juntaran las luchas anti-capitalistas del mundo y donde propondremos verdaderas soluciones. La Asamblea Permanente de los Pueblos, entre los días 18 y 22 presentaran la lucha diaria contra los promotores del capitalismo y de los ataques a nuestros territorios. Rio de Janeiro es hoy una de las ciudades que más recibe aportes del capital mundial, y que recebara la copa del mundo y las olimpiadas. Es decir que juntaremos muchas luchas simbólicas, desde los movimientos urbanos hasta los sin tierra y los pescadores.

Declaramos la semana del 5 de junio como la mayor semana en defensa del medio ambiente y contra las empresas transnacionales donde invitamos a todas y todos en el mundo a movilizarse:

  • Defiende la agricultura campesina.
  • Ocupa tierras para la producción de alimentos agroecológicos y no dominados por el mercado.
  • Reclama e intercambia semillas campesinas.
  • Protesta ante las oficinas de intercambio y comercio y pide que se ponga fin a los mercados que especulan con las materias primas y la tierra.
  • Organiza asambleas locales de personas afectadas por el capitalismo.
  • ¡Sueña con un mundo diferente y créalo!

¡El futuro que queremos se construye gracias a la reforma agraria, la agricultura campesina y la soberanía alimentaria!

¡¡GLOBALICEMOS LA LUCHA!!

¡¡GLOBALICEMOS LA ESPERANZA!!

Comments Off on Reclaiming our future: Rio +20 and Beyond: La Vía Campesina Call to action

Filed under Actions / Protest, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Rio+20

by | 2012-02-14 · 14:56

Rio+20 and the Peoples´ Summit

In the bit of analysis below, sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos contrasts the recent World Economic Forum with the Thematic Social Forum of Porto Alegre, whose goal was to prepare popular responses to the upcoming Rio+20 Summit. The author argues that ” the proposals advanced [by the UN and its member bodies toward Rio+20] – summed up in the concept of green economy – are shockingly inefficient and even counterproductive: the aim is to persuade the always free, ever unrestrained markets that there are opportunities for profit in investing in the environment, accounting for environmental costs (externalities) and ascribing market value to nature.”

In contrast, the social movements stand for rights, resiliency, reparations, and, as always, resistance.  — the GJEP team

Rio+20 and the Peoples´ Summit

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Cross-posted from Other News.

The treatment given by the major media to two events occurring during the last few weeks – the World Economic Social Forum of Davos and the Thematic Social Forum of Porto Alegre – speaks loudly of the interests presiding over world public opinion in our time.

The former attracted a lot of attention, although its discussions did not contribute anything new: the same old analyses of the European crisis and the same insistent ruminations on the symptoms of the crisis while concealing its true causes. The latter was totally ignored, even though it engaged in productive discussion of the issues that most decisively condition our future: climate change, water availability, quality and quantity of food resources in view of the threat of hunger and malnutrition, environmental justice, the common goods of humankind, and the worth of grassroots, non-Eurocentric knowledges in the pursuit of environmental justice. This kind of media selectivity clearly exposes the risks we run when public opinion is reduced to publicized opinion.

The objective of the Porto Alegre Forum was to debate Rio+20, that is to say, the UN Conference on sustainable development to take place next June in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after the first UN Conference on the same topic, which took place in Rio as well. It was a path-breaking conference in that it called attention to the environmental problems we face and the new dimensions of social injustice they bring along. The debates focused on two major issues. On the one hand, the critical analysis of the past twenty years and how it is reflected on the documents preparatory of the Conference; on the other, the discussion of the proposals to be presented at the Peoples Summit, the conference of the civil society organizations taking place alongside the UN intergovernamental conference. Let us ponder each one of them in turn.

Rio+20: The critique

20 years ago, the UN played an important role in calling attention to the dangers that human and nonhuman life runs if the myth of endless economic growth goes on dominating economic policies and if irresponsible consumerism is not curbed: the planet is finite, the vital cycles for replenishment of natural resources are being destroyed, and nature will inevitably “take revenge” in climate changes soon to become irreversible and affect, in special ways, the poorest populations, thus adding more social injustice to the one already existing. The States seemed to heed the warnings and many promises were made in conventions and protocols.

The multinationals, those major agents of environmental deterioration, seemed to be on guard. Unfortunately, this moment of reflection and hope soon disappeared. The USA, then the main polluter and today the main per capita polluter, refused to assume any binding commitment toward reducing the emissions that cause global warming. Instead of decreasing, the emissions increased even more. The less developed countries claimed their right to pollute until the more developed ones agreed to assume their ecological debt for having polluted so much for so long. The multinationals successfully invested in the formulation of laws and international treaties allowing them to pursue their polluting activities with a minimum of restrictions. The result is glaringly to be seen in the documents prepared by the UN for the Rio+20 Conference. There is some relevant information about innovations regarding environmental care but the proposals advanced – summed up in the concept of green economy – are shockingly inefficient and even counterproductive: the aim is to persuade the always free, ever unrestrained markets that there are opportunities for profit in investing in the environment, accounting for environmental costs (externalities) and ascribing market value to nature. In the fantasy world in which these documents exist, the “market failures” are due exclusively to lack of information; as soon as these are overcome, there will be plenty of green investment and innovation. In other words, there is no other way for relationships among humans and with nature but the market and strife for individual profit. In sum, a neoliberal orgy in the North that seems now to be spreading to the emergent countries.

To read the rest, go to Other News.

*Sociologist, PhD, professor at the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin Madison Law School.

Comments Off on Rio+20 and the Peoples´ Summit

Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Rio+20