Wild women take to the streets of Rio for the World March of Women, June 18. Photo: Jorge Glackman.
Tag Archives: rio+20
Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit: Grassroots groups confront the mastermind of the green economy
By Christy Rodgers for Climate Connections
18 June 2012 – Rio de Janeiro. The Peoples’ Summit opened this weekend with what is likely to be the highest level UN visit all week: by Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program (UNEP). Steiner is perhaps the single person most responsible for the “green economy” model being touted as the best path to global sustainability. He was invited to speak – or rather listen – to the concerns of a broad array of social movement organizations that have been highly critical of this market-dependent strategy and what it means for the world’s people and ecosystems.
The mainstream US press, when it pays any attention at all to the official UN “Earth Summit,” seems to fret mostly about bureaucracy and obstructionism by poor countries. The concerns of hundreds, if not thousands of organizations and networks of peasant farmers, trade union workers, corporate watchdogs, indigenous peoples, and many other groups worldwide are quite different. They see the main problem is that the UN, like many member states, appears to have been functionally captured by the private sector. In the lead-up to the summit, major corporations positioning themselves to benefit from the market mechanisms being promoted have launched a greenwashing onslaught beyond anything the movement groups have seen before—which is considerable.
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Civil society activists join forces to protest at Rio+20
From Ibon International
Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, June 17, 2012 – Civil society activists from across the world joined for a protest on Sunday inside the Riocentro convention center to push the messsage: “Our Future, Our Voice.”
The activists, part of the Rights for Sustainability campaign, taped their mouths and held placards before gathered media.
The protest was in reaction to a lack of voice for civil society at Rio+20; back-tracking on the Rio principles established at the 1992 Earth Summit; and the prioritizing of unregulated corporate interests over human rights and equity.
Paul Quintos of IBON International, which coordinates the NGO Cluster on Rights and Equity at Rio+20, and the Rights for Sustainability advocacy platform, said: “Civil society’s ability to promote the voice of the people it represents has been steadily eroded throughout the process leading up to Rio+20.”
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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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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Green Economy, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, REDD, Rio+20
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
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
Rio+20: Guide Document on Convergence Plenary and People’s Assembly
Note: Here is a statement from the organizers of the alternative Peoples’ Summit that will occur in Rio around the time of the official UN Rio+20 (corporate sell-out) Summit. People from around the world are coming together to talk about what it will really take to successfully address the myriad ecological and social crises we face, and how to make the real solutions happen. This is not symbolic, this is people taking real action to make a change.
Climate-Connections will be covering daily the alternative Peoples’ Summit from 15 to 23 June and also the Greenwashed Rio+20 UN Summit from the 20-22 of June. Stay tuned, or subscribe to stay in touch.
–The GJEP Team
Wednesday, 16 May, 2012
To set in motion the spaces of convergence and expression of mobilization, unity and diversity in the People’s Summit
For Social and Environmental Justice, Against Commodification of Life and Nature, In defense of the Commons
We, Peoples of the World, invited to reinvent the World in the People’s Summit, we are (re) constructing all together a reading of reality from our historical fights and from our territories and looking for ways to get away with our discussions, convergence and organization.
We think about
- structural causes of crises and social and environmental injustice, fake solutions and new ways of capital accumulation on peoples and territories.
- real solutions and new paradigms of peoples that we are putting in practice and in proposals
- collective setting-up of agendas, campaigns and common mobilizations beyond Rio+ 20
Setting-up of the Peoples’ Assembly from Convergence Plenaries
Networks, movements, thematic articulations and organized civil society, that are part of the People’s Summit are called to bring together to the Convergence Plenaries before Assemblies, the reflexion of their struggles and debates based on the 3 axis.
This process of reflection and previous construction can also take place during the Self managed Activities, but the organization, objectives and results of these activities are under responsibility of the organizations who want to propose it.
The Plenaries, that will take place on 17 (all day) and 18 June (afternoon), will be spaces facilitated by the organization of the People’s Summit, in order to strengthen the dialogue and the convergence between thematics and areas, and strengthen positions and commons messages.
The Plenaries will be simultaneous and distributed in the People’s Summit place according to the thematic, space, and planning.
We don’t claim that we produce negotiated documents, we are not the UN. We want to generate political agreements between our movements and also common messages that mobilize us to answer with political and popular force to the capital offensive that is expressed through the “green economy” in the Agenda of Rio+20 Conference.
How the movement of water strengthens when rivers meet together going to the sea
Every day we will spend together, in each Plenary, we will bring agreements and common messages to People’s Assembly. This will be a time of mobilization and expression of convergences and positions built within People’s Summit ‘s process
Public presentation of positions and convergence of each Plenary will be reflected in common messages, stories, symbolic and cultural actions, celebrated and facilitated by different movements, respecting and promoting cultural diversity regarding organization and mobilization.
The Assemblies
In the Assembly on Structural Causes of crises, social and environmental injustices, and fake solutions (19 June), we will denounce and mobilize people for the Global Action Day (20 June).
In the Assembly on People’s solutions (21 June) we will present our proposals.
In the Assembly about our Agenda, Campaigns and future struggles (22 June), we will take position in front of Rio+20 Conference and we will strengthen our commitment to still change together the world and get the future we want.
The Assembly is not a time for deliberations of agreements, it is a time for expression of unity built within the Plenary process and by discussion and articulation between movements in People’s Summit
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Filed under Actions / Protest, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Rio+20
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
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20
