Category Archives: UN

by | 2012-05-31 · 17:00

Sustainable Energy for All Initiative — Using poverty and climate change as excuses to increase corporate profits from energy provision

NOTE: One of the initiatives on the table at the upcoming Rio +20 Summit is The United Nations new initiative, “Sustainable Energy for All.” In the words of the UN:

“The Initiative brings all sectors of society to the table in support of three inter-linked objectives:

•         Ensure universal access to modern energy services.

•         Double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

•         Double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.”

The initiative is chaired by Charles Holliday, Chairman of Bank of America, and Kandeh Yumkella, Chair of UN-Energy and Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization, co-chair the Secretary-General’s High-level Group, with the ultimate stated objective to “expand energy access, improve efficiency, and increase the uptake of renewable energy.”
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But, like many such corporate-led initiatives, SEFA appears to be profoundly misleading, and to engage in the worst form of greenwashing. Following, we post an open letter from our friends at BioFuelWatch, which explains the substance of SEFA and asks for sign-ons to reject the initiative in favor of real solutions to the global energy crisis. — GJEP

[To sign the Open Letter, please send an email with your organisation’s name and country to biofuelwatch@ymail.com ]

OPEN LETTER: Sustainable Energy for All Initiative – Using poverty and climate change as excuses to increase corporate profits from energy provision

We call on Governments to reject the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SEFA). 

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.

Like the UN Global Compact, SEFA is another attempt to supersede multilateral UN decision-making processes with ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ whose primary mission is to generate profits for private companies irrespective of impacts on people and the environment.  Any initiative that seeks to genuinely address the climate crisis and provide access to ‘energy for all’ must be based on the principle of energy sovereignty rather than on corporate profits.

Reasons why SEFA is inherently flawed include:

1)    SEFA is undemocratic, unaccountable and corporate-controlled:

ñ SEFA, launched by the UN Secretary-General in September 2011, is led by a hand-picked High-Level Panel.  Its principal members include energy, industrial and finance corporations that are major investors in the fossil fuel economy and have a clear interest in benefiting from SEFA – such as Statoil, Eskom, Siemens and Riverstone Holdings, while only five government representatives and three NGOs are involved[1].  There was no democratic or transparent process to select group members.

ñ SEFA’s Action Agenda[2], which  will be put to Governments for endorsement and support at Rio, has been drawn up by this hand-picked High-Level Panel without any open, public consultation, either with governments or civil society.  Subsequent ‘civil society consultations’ by the SEFA Secretariat have had no impact on the Action Agenda. Neither the Action Agenda nor SEFA’s overall process and principles have been put out for any type of consultation.

ñ SEFA foresees no role for communities other than as new energy consumers, ‘recipients’ and supporters of private-sector investments.  The initiative ignores the principle of free, prior and informed consent as well as all other basic rights, including rights to land and food and the right to self-determination.

2)        SEFA’s aim is even greater corporate control over energy policies and decision:

ñ Public-private partnerships designed to favour ever greater corporate investments, expansion and profits lie at the heart of SEFA’s vision and strategy. Meanwhile, governments are expected to absorb more of the risks and costs of corporate investments in energy, for example through research and development funding to facilitate subsequent private investment, and through the use of public funds for loan guarantees and risk mitigation . Energy policies are to be drawn up ‘in partnership’ with corporations and thus for their benefit. Instead of holding corporations accountable for destructive and polluting energy investments and for excluding communities from access to energy, SEFA’s priority is to ‘create a better investment climate’, including for corporations with major responsibility for the  current ecological and social crises.

3)    SEFA’s goals are deeply inadequate:

ñ SEFA’s goals of “doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency” and “doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix” by 2030 are entirely inadequate in the face of the climate crisis. The over-consumption of energy in the global North will not be addressed by energy efficiency alone.   Furthermore, according to SEFA the goal of ‘energy access’ in developing countries is independent from the renewable energy and energy efficiency calls.  It can thus be met through any type of  polluting and destructive energy.   SEFA’s goals would thus allow for an overall growth in energy use and carbon emissions – including expanding fossil fuel consumption.

4)    SEFA promotes dangerous, unsustainable and unproven types of energy generation:

ñ SEFA explicitly promotes and facilitates new fossil fuel investments, including for example a gas pipeline and processing infrastructure in West Africa[3].  Finance initiatives for oil pipelines are cited as ‘examples’[4].  No type of industrial energy generation, however polluting and destructive has been excluded from SEFA’s definition of ‘sustainable energy’ – with at least one government looking at the potential for nuclear power investments to progress SEFA’s aims[5]. Waste incineration is listed as a positive example in the Action Agenda.

ñ SEFA indiscriminately promotes all types of ‘modern’, i.e. industrial bioenergy, including agrofuels and electricity from biomass, as well as large scale hydroelectric power as ‘sustainable’ despite well known and well documented negative impacts on communities, ecosystems and the climate.  SEFA has already been cited as a justification for new finance for mega-dams (by the World Bank)[6] and for corporate investments in land-grabbing for agrofuels[7].

ñ Even where a technology could, in principle, improve people’s lives and minimise climate change – such as clean and efficient cookstoves – actual investments may offer few or no benefits.  For example, cookstoves that are being promoted by a SEFA-supported initiative[8] have already been shown to offer no actual improvement to indoor pollution and thus people’s health[9].

Sustainable energy must mean a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels. However, this does not mean replacing them with other harmful types of energy generation.  Agrofuels, large-scale hydro power, nuclear energy, “more efficient” fossil fuel combustion and more natural gas exploitation will not serve the interests of people or the planet.   Energy “access for all” must address both energy poverty and energy overconsumption. It must also address humanity’s footprint on planetary systems, given that we are dangerously close to and in some cases clearly beyond various tipping points.  Those who are energy poor, including in particular women, need access to energy that really is sustainable and renewable, while those who are over-consuming must reduce energy consumption. This means that the high-energy development model of rich countries must be changed and must not be replicated in the global South by corporations – as SEFA seeks to do. There are many examples of community-driven, genuinely sustainable initiatives that contribute to energy sovereignty for women and men that can be replicated.  Far from moving in the right direction, the SEFA initiative is poised to further entrench corporate control of energy policies and investments in polluting, destructive and socially exclusive forms of energy generation.

[3] Ghana was the first country to enter into a formal SEFA commitment.  Investments in natural gas distribution and processing for LPG use expansion is a central feature of their country commitment: www.sustainableenergyforall.org/commitments/single/national-action-plan-for-sustainable-energy-for-all   and

[4] An example is the African Development Bank’s  Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa which includes investments in oil and gas pipelines and which is listed as an example of an initiative that could fall under the SEFA Action Area “Grid Infrastructure and Supply Efficiency”

[7] At a SEFA meeting in Brussels, the Swiss Addax ethanol investment in Sierra Leone (http://www.ief.org/news/news-details.aspx?nid=710 ) was cited as a ‘positive example’.  Furthermore, the Action Agenda suggests that EU biofuel policies, which are a major driver of land-grabs, as a positive example for ‘transportation’ policies.

[8] Global  Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Rio+20

by | 2012-05-17 · 12:00

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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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

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by | 2012-05-11 · 18:00

Mother Earth Should Not Be “Owned, Privatised and Exploited” : Interview with Tom Goldtooth

In this report from IPS, Aline Jenckel interviews, TOM B.K. GOLDTOOTH, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

UNITED NATIONS, May 9, 2012 (IPS) – For centuries, indigenous peoples and their rights, resources and lands have been exploited. Yet long overdue acknowledgment of past exploitation and dedicated efforts by indigenous peoples have done little to end or prevent violations of the present, stated indigenous leaders in the Manaus Declaration of 2011.

The declaration, part of preparations for the upcoming U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, frequently referred to as Rio+20, in June, recounted the “active participation” of indigenous groups in the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and similar efforts in 2002 that led to the adoption of the term “indigenous peoples” for the United Nations (U.N.) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Despite this work, “the continuing gross violations of our rights…by governments and corporations” remain major obstacles to sustainable development, the declaration continued. “Indigenous activists and leaders defending their territories still continue to be harassed, tortured, vilified as ‘terrorists’ and assassinated by powerful vested interests.”

As Rio+20 approaches, IPS interviewed Tom B.K. Goldtooth, who has been an activist for social change in Native American communities for more than three decades and is the executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), an alliance of indigenous peoples that combats the exploitation and contamination of the earth and will participate in the Rio+20 conference.

Goldtooth called for a “new paradigm of laws that redefine humanity and its governance relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth and the natural world”.

The activist explained that the most effective measures for reducing deforestation, protecting the environment from unsustainable mineral extraction and preserving a better world for future generations are to strengthen international, national and sub-national frameworks for collectively demarcating and titling indigenous peoples’ territories.

U.N. Correspondent Aline Jenckel spoke with Tom Goldtooth about the main threats faced by indigenous peoples and how the Rio+ 20 conference could be a success.

Q: At the Rio+20 conference in June, you will speak on behalf of indigenous peoples and their human rights, in terms of protecting their natural environment and creating sustainable development. What is the key message you hope to convey? 

A: The thematic discussion of green economy and sustainability creates differences in views between the money-centred Western views and our indigenous life-centred worldview of our relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth.

Many of our indigenous peoples globally are deeply concerned with the current economic globalisation model that looks at Mother Earth and nature as a resource to be owned, privatised and exploited for maximised financial return through the marketplace.

With this development model, indigenous peoples continue to be displaced from their lands, cultures and spiritual relationship to Mother Earth, and destruction to the life-sustaining capacity of nature and the ecosystem that sustains us and all life continues as well.

For the sake of humanity and the world as we know her, to survive, there must be a new paradigm of laws that redefine humanity and its governance relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth and the natural world.

This includes the integration of the human-rights based approach, ecosystem approach and culturally- sensitive and knowledge-based approaches. The world must forge a new economic system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings.

We can only achieve balance with nature if there is equity among human beings.

At Rio+20, global governments must look cautiously at any green economy agenda that supports the commodification and financialisation of nature and take concerted action to initiate the development of a new framework that begins with a recognition that nature is sacred and not for sale and that the ecosystems of our Mother Earth have jurisprudence for conservation and protection.

Full recognition of land tenure of our place-based indigenous communities are the most effective measures for protecting the rich biological and cultural diversity of the world.

Q: What are the biggest threats to Indigenous people’s livelihoods today, and how can they be addressed? 

A: Indigenous peoples from every region of the world continue to inhabit and maintain the last remaining sustainable ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots in the world.

Destructive mineral extractive industries continue to encroach on indigenous peoples’ traditional territories. Unconventional oil and extreme energy development, with the real-life effects of climate chaos, are directly affecting the wellbeing of indigenous peoples from the North to the Global South.

Indigenous peoples can contribute substantially to sustainable development, but they believe that a holistic framework for sustainable development should be promoted.

With the knowledge that development that violates human rights is by definition unsustainable, Rio+20 must affirm a human rights-based approach to sustainable development.

Particularly, the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples must serve as a key framework which underpins all international, national and sub-national policies and programs on sustainable development with regard to indigenous peoples.

Q: Recently, some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) expressed deep concern about the reversals on agreements made by governments in 1992 and say there’s no country taking leadership of or acting as a visionary role in the conference. Do you believe there is still hope for new, binding commitments? 

A: Because of the climate chaos, financial instabilities and ecological devastation, the world doesn’t have an option to reverse the agreements made in 1992.

World leaders must remember the active participation of indigenous peoples in the Rio Earth Summit (UNCED 1992) and the parallel processes indigenous peoples organised, which resulted into the Kari- oca Indigenous Peoples’ Declaration.

Agenda 21 embraced the language of Kari-Oca that recognised the vital role of indigenous peoples in sustainable development and identified Indigenous Peoples as a Major Group. Rio+20 must reaffirm the commitments made by UNCED to indigenous peoples in 1992.

(END)

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by | 2012-05-08 · 12:15

Brazil: Peoples’ Alternative Summit to Boycott Gov’t “Dialogues” prior to Rio+20 Summit

Note: Climate Connections will be in Rio in June to cover the activities inside and outside of the Rio+20 Summit and the Peoples’ Alternative Summit.
Against the Green Economy and the Commodification of Nature!
–The GJEP Team
The Summit will not participate in Rio+20 preparatory event organized by the Brazilian government
Cross-Posted from Cupula dos Povos
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Regarding the invitation made to the Brazilian Civil Society Facilitation Committee at Rio+20 (CSFC) to participate to the Dialogues for Sustainable Development (DSD), we inform that :
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During the last decades, networks and entities that compose the CSFC and organize the People’s Summit during Rio+20 for the Social and Environmental Justicehave fought – and keep on doing it – for the opening of participative and dialogue spaces aiming to conquest public policies improving the democratization of States, Social and Environmental Justice, and fair distribution of incomes and wealth.
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Thanks to the social participation and to the dialogue between State and society, we have won important victories, that can be found in certain programs and policies that answer, although still weakly, to the people historical demands to fight inequalities. That is why we believe and invest in dialogue as one of the fundamental methods to push forward our demands. We will keep on trying to set up dialogues aiming at pressuring the Brazilian government, in order to respond our demands, as we are conscious that the Brazilian society is penetrated by conflicts of interest and that the role of each sector is to express their interests, while the government’s is to take these pressures into account and to make choices in terms of investments and policies.
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According to us, the method set up by the DSD does not match this dialogue dynamic that we are trying to push forward. The DSD proposal was built up in a top-down approach, as the Brazilian government chose the themes, participants and facilitators, clearly showing that the Dialogues and their results would be controlled by the government itself. Conscious that the debated themes are objects of conflicts and heterogeneous visions, the method that consists in defining three recommendations per theme, chosen in a closed way, clearly means taking exclusive positions in a context in which we have no chance to influence the decision-making process. To take part to this dynamic means giving a free hand to the “civil society recommendations”, on whose results we wouldn’t have had the minimum impact.
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The People’s Summit in Rio+20 for the Social and Environmental Justice during Rio+20 is an autonomous space, critical of the Official Conference’s agenda, and of the big corporations.
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We have resistance positions and proposals regarding all the themes set up by the DSD, that express the accumulation of the organizations and Brazilian and international social movements fighting over rights, environmental justice, and against inequalities in Brazil and in the world. We will give our visions as much visibility as possible, for them to be seen and heard, using all sort of media. We hope that the proposals of the people who will be present at the Peoples’ Summit will be heard by society and the heads of state present at Rio+20.
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The Civil Society Facilitating Committee at Rio+20
Rio de Janeiro, 02d of May 2012

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by | 2012-05-07 · 15:00

Statement: The Peoples’ Summit of the Americas vs the UN Rio+20 Summit

Statement of Teotihuacan 2012

Cross-Posted from the Red Ecologista Autónoma de la Cuenca de México

lunes 7 de mayo de 2012

 The Peoples’ Summit, parallel to the United Nations Rio+20 Summit, 20 years after Rio92 – the so-called United Nations Earth Summit-, will take place in Rio de Janeiro from June 15 to 22, 2012.

Meeting in the Sun and the Moon pyramids; in the Teotihuacan great house, a group of Mexican activists from various social groups and organizations concerned with the contempt shown by modern industrial societies for Mother Earth, the ancient cultures and the vernacular world vision that integrate the human being with nature and the universe, we want to share our word with all peoples and nations of the world.

To make economic growth into a dogma provokes the accelerated destruction of the essentials for life on this Earth.

Perennial snows areas, ancient forests, animals, plants and landscapes that marvel us are quickly vanishing; the air that we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, grow worst everywhere. Seas, rivers, mangroves, jungles, lakes, coral reef are dying. Water tables, fishing areas, springs deplete seriously. Fields are being poisoned by industrialized agricultural & farm business, megaprojects and urban sprawl; cities are becoming hellish places due to automobile traffic and conglomeration. Like cancerous bodies, cities annihilate the countryside and seas situated many kilometers apart from them; they turn into the epicenter of all modern evils. Human conviviality is dying along with the soaring growth of all kind of violence: domestic or intra-family, at school, at work, among communities, states, nations, worldwide.

Horror, tragedy, dwells at almost every corner of the world, in the places where poor people live: all the people devalued in fact by the economy growth and techno-science: indigenous people, peasants, laborers. Violence against Earth’s gifts is identical to that exerted against the oppressed communities, peoples and nations. Environmental disasters go hand in hand with social catastrophes. Peoples’ minds are impoverished every day by the false values introduced since infancy, both by the State and the Market. Schools, television broadcasts and the daily indiscriminate consumption of technologies colonize minds and annihilate peoples’ will. Power, greed, individualism, excess, consumerism, competition, spectacle, speed, exploitation of the human being by the human being, have become supreme values throughout the world.

Banks, multinational corporations, governments, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations, the media, the schools, colleges and universities conspire in order to boost an economic growth which destroys at great speed Mother Earth’s gifts, the fabric of society and the vernacular cultures, and which benefits solely the 1% who control those businesses and institutions. Banks, markets and economic growth have become so sacred to governments, that they have no qualms about applying radical measures of violence against a society bothered and discontent with the universal catastrophe generated by the economic dogma, both through abusive political publicity saturating the media, and ever-increasing expenditure in the army, paramilitary and law-enforcement forces and in espionage on citizens. Economic growth devastates people’s wealth and results in the extinction of humanity.


Powerful governments, headed by the U.S.A., are preparing a big coup against the Environment and Mother Earth during the United Nations Rio+20 Summit.

In a desperate bid to solve the worldwide economic crisis, powerful governments, led by the United States, prepare a new strike against Mother Earth’s gifts and the Environment during the United Nations Rio+20 Summit, which they have had sequestered since many years ago. Together with Big Banks and multinational corporations, they want an ominous world policy on economics approved. Something like the so called sustainable development introduced in the Earth Summit, Río 1992 that has so gravely undermined Nature. They now have agreed to launch globally the Green Economy scheme presenting it as the major global solution to the environmental and social disasters that we are undergoing; as a perverted response to social demands in favor of a real clean environment and the preservation of Nature’s gifts. They want to open great business opportunities by applying false solutions to these predicaments, aiming, specifically at promoting and legitimating carbon markets, environmental services, biodiversity markets, REDD+ Programs, CDM, Clean Development Mechanisms, among other seedy “environmental” dealings which incorporate the true meaning of the term Green Economy.

The Mexican government, subdued to U.S government and the world’s financial centers rule, has delivered not only our oil, minerals, aquifers, soil and markets to the international pirates; it also participates in the conspiracy to impose the Green Economy.  It is concealing its support to such pirates and to this abominable policy under “a war on drug trafficking and organized crime” –which it neither wants to win nor is able to win- as well as under an extremely costly national media campaign.
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The increasing convergence of governments with multinationals’ intentions worsens and deepens another process currently observed, which is the increasing loss of legitimacy or representativeness of both governments and political parties in most nations, who rather than consulting their peoples to resolve ecological, economic and social issues, devote their best efforts to defend the owners of economic power. Too many politics now turn into compulsive thieves, enemies of their peoples and obstacles to the comprehensive solutions to national and international problems.
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During the last five years, Mexican government has waged a war against the poor and Mother Earth’s Gifts under the guise of “disciplined” finance and Macro Economy, war on drugs and programs of investments in infrastructure, development and poverty eradication. The outcome of this new war: 10 million people thrown to extreme poverty, thus joining the previous 20 million; 70,000 deaths and 20,000 “disappeared” persons as a result of violence carried to a horrid extreme, as well as a terrible ecological destruction resulting from the abusive extraction of oil, minerals, water and soil, the impacts of new infrastructure, the application of new technologies, and the production and distribution of psychotropic drugs.
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The new technologies and megaprojects exacerbate social disruption and contamination, and annihilate the peoples’ natural and cultural treasures.
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Techno-science, builds every day the social and ecological catastrophes of our time. Techno-science facilitates and allows the construction and operation of nuclear plants; oil extraction from deep waters, shale and tar sands; open-air extraction of minerals, using great amounts of water, dynamite and cyanide; transgenic crops of trees, corn, soya, cotton; huge cattle runs and breeding stalls; industrialized animal slaughter; the manufacture of weapons, faster motor vehicles, planes and trains; the highly polluting production of food, clothing, housing, buildings, equipment, and instruments harmful for human health; the construction of military bases, dams, water transfers, super highways, freeways, great bridges, ports, tunnels, channels, towers, airports, refineries, landfills, hazardous-waste landfills, tourist developments, industrial cities, and even university cities, hospital cities, entertainment towns, among other megaprojects that over the years imply a exorbitant social and ecological impact.
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Driven by universities and scientific research centers, techno-science serves the population’s 1% interests. More than a third of the world’s scientists are engaged in research linked to military aims. The excess of power, loss of moral references, disproportionate greed and the most degrading addictions derange the controllers of Techno-Science. Finance’s cultural misery invades the scientific and technologic world and denigrates art and beauty around the world.
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To de-grow serenely rather than de-grow painfully because of the new global policies to boost economic growth; There are efficient ways to face the System’s crisis.
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Peoples have always counted with persons, groups and communities who abhor the destruction of forests, jungles, rivers, lakes, wetlands, seas, and the slaughter and debasement of animals, who detest dependency and a bad alienated life, waste and hubris, who oppose to war, oppression and inequality. In millenary cultures there still survive values, customs and techniques that resist the aggressions of the ideology of progress, modernity, development and economic growth. Ancient communities foster self-sufficiency and responsibility. The old age techniques to build roofs, floors, walls, cisterns, latrines, ceramics; to cultivate vegetables, to raise and handle animals, to limit hunt and fishing, to walk great distances and steep hills; for education and the good life, prove most effective in the defense of Nature and by the way, to healthier lifestyles . They promote peace and conviviality among peoples. In Mexico, the Zapatista movement of Chiapas peoples has given to the world one of the most important political initiative to confront cultural, economic and political disaster. Mesoamerican cultures’ vision constitutes a great spiritual wealth of our country given to the world.
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For more than fifty years, thousands of groups and millions of persons around the world have studied and experimented with alternatives to industrial technology; they have created ecological techniques to cultivate vegetables and produce food, preserve water and other gifts of Mother Earth, handle residues, build homes, as well as develop health-care, enhance learning and organize ecological communities. These field trials based upon science, together with millenary cultures’ wisdoms, offer efficient ways to confront the present System crisis.
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Frugal life, reciprocity, complementarities, solidarity, collaboration, respect towards Mother Earth, all these values that are so present in millennia-old cultures and in some social groups that have emerged during the last centuries, are crucial elements for the resistance to chaotic urbanization and extreme industrialization; to finance, air-conditioned automobiles, consumerism and to the USA lifestyles. Equally, efficient values are the raising of food for family and community consumption, art, festivities and rituals, which halt the spirit of hard competition, egoism, violence and war.
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Solidarity networks, civil disobedience and occupation of streets and squares are resources that help curb the suffering and horrors produced by the inevitable economic degrowth that societies sentenced to grow will one near day experience; they are resources that allow to degrow in a serene manner and rescue the genuine good life that restores our relations with Mother Earth.
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In the face of worldwide environmental and social catastrophe, we make the call to
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-Initiate a process of de-colonization of the social imaginary aimed to eradicate the values imposed on the world by the State and the Market during the last five hundred years; to subvert and reorient the world’s westernization; at turning into heinous practices usury, private accumulation of goods and power, and the radical, irresponsible alteration of Nature. To decolonize the social imaginary, in order to foster a moral regeneration of our societies; to create a new ethics that will introduce in the laws guarantees of respect towards Mother Earth and of protection of society’s most helpless groups. Create a counter-culture that incorporates the best of the past and the present in order to fill with joy our lives and oppose it to the ecocidal, genocidal ideology that rules today’s world.
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-Reconceptualize and restructure food production and other basic elements for human survival, including health care, learning and amenities; Regenerate our communities, neighborhoods, quarters, ejidos, towns and cities by means of ecological techniques and practices approved of by all neighbors.
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-Strengthen or enhance the autonomy, self-sufficiency and self-management of communities, neighborhoods, quarters, ejidos, towns and borough confederations, and ecological micro-regions (micro-basins or micro watersheds), by means of permanent community assemblies in the public square.
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-Set up the bases for a peaceful transition to a society with a low consumption of energy, water and other resources provided by Mother Earth, by means of regional meetings to engage in dialog and reflexive debate, as well as by means of studies and applied research decided by the community.
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-Carry out actions in support of local resistances and the worldwide tidal wave of regional revolutions rising from harsh economic conditions imposed by decaying governments. Back the movements of those severely affected by the increasing disorder created by State and Market activities; participate in the Peoples’ summits organized by international networks on environmental and climate justice vis-à-vis official forums like Rio+20; provide support to the revolutions in  production/consumption techniques and practices; in the management of communities, boroughs and cities; accompany both social movements, and urban and peasant revolutions in each ecological or cultural region; endorse the resistance of indigenous populations, fishers, peasants, laborers, workers, migrants, women, unemployed youth, homeless families, landless peasants, and citizens dispossessed or with no degrees or professional qualifications.
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-Relocate life and economy, by having most of the community consume what the ecological region produces and produce most what the eco-region consumes. Support the new artisans and the new peasants who adopt, and take advantage of the best from the past and of the present.

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by | 2012-05-04 · 13:43

Brazil: Eucalyptus developer begins final GE tree field trial

Note: The article below shows the key role that industry hopes GE trees will play in the development of extreme agrofuels (jet fuel, biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol, what have you), by manipulating the trees’ lignin and cellulose content.  They are trying to sell GE trees to the public as a solution to climate change, when GE trees will actually exacerbate climate change by accelerating the destruction of native forests globally to make room for new plantations of GE trees–which are invasive, flammable and extremely water-intensive.  Brazil and the US are considering commercial approval of these frankentrees, which is why mobilizing to stop this disaster before it is too late is so crucial.

GJEP and the STOP GE Trees Campaign will be in Brazil next month at the UN’s Rio+20 Earth Summit and the Alternative Peoples’ Forum to mobilize against the commercial approval of GE trees.

To learn more about the campaign to stop GE trees and what you can do, including signing the petition against GE trees and donating to the campaign, go to: nogetrees.org.

–The GJEP Team

By Luke Geiver | May 03, 2012

Cross-Posted from Biomass Magazine

  • FuturaGene, a genetic research and development firm focused on enhancing the eucalyptus tree, has been granted approval to begin a fourth field trial of its genetically modified eucalyptus tree in Brazil.

The Brazilian National Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio) granted the company approval for a fourth trial, and in the coming weeks FuturaGene will begin planting. The goal of the field trial, according to the company, is to evaluate plantation agronomic properties and the biosafety aspects of the plantation.

In order for a eucalyptus plantation consisting of genetically enhanced trees to qualify for the CTNBio’s regulatory dossier that allows market approval in Brazil, FuturaGene has to record and present data on the biosafety concerns of the tree. Starting in 2006, FuturaGene, which also has facilities in China and Israel, began a series of test plantations to acquire the necessary data. The first plantation was planted through a partnership between FuturaGene and Brazilian pulp and paper company Suzano, a partnership that resulted in Suzanao acquiring FuturaGene.

The modified eucalyptus tree developed by FuturaGene alters the structure of the plant cell wall. “The plant cell wall is a rigid barrier surrounding plant cell walls,” explained Stanley Hirsch, CEO of the company. “In order for the plant cell to elongate and divide, this wall must relax and then reform in an ordered manner. We effect changes in the plant cell wall which allow this process to occur more rapidly, thus releasing a rate limiting step on plant growth.”

Following the fourth field trial, FuturaGene hopes to deploy the use of the tree on a commercial scale. According to Hirsch, the company has deployment plans for Brazil. “Suzano owns eucalyptus plantations totalling almost 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres),” he said, adding that FuturaGene has also formed relationships with other entities around the world to address the possibility of planting on more hectares.

The land characteristic requirement for the modified trees is identical to that of a non-modified version, Hirsch said. Certain versions of the tree can produce higher lignin yields, he also said. “But the major energy enhancement comes from producing more biomass per unit of land employed.

Along with private partnership work with Suzano and Bayer CropScience, FuturaGene has also partnered with several academic institutions in the U.S., including Oregon State University, Purdue University, and the University of Arizona. In China, the company has worked with Guangxi Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute of Forestry of the Chinese Academy of Forestry.

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by | 2012-04-17 · 15:00

Indigenous Peoples from around the World agree on solidarity: RIO+20

Note: Rio+20 is the twenty-year anniversary of the historic Rio Earth Summit where the world’s leaders came together to address the growing interlinked crises of environmental degradation and unjust development models–at least in theory.  They emerged from the 1992 summit with new commitments to tackle the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the desertification crisis and to promote sustainable development.  Twenty years on and things are worse than ever.  As a result, organizations, social movements, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and others are mobilizing for Rio+20–not just to demand real action to address the roots of these crises, but to hold an alternative summit where people can start coming up with the real solutions on their own.  This approach is critical since it is clear that many corporate controlled governments are heavily invested in business-as-usual and have no intention of doing anything but spooning out some greenwashed PR nonsense in the form of the so-called “green economy,” or as some are calling it, the “greed economy.”

This Climate Connections blog will be offering daily coverage of the Rio+20 summit–both the inner machinations of the official negotiations and the highlights of the alternative summit.  Stay tuned for articles, photo essays, videos and interviews as well as scathing critiques of the attempts by the “1%” to maintain their power and privilege at all costs.

–The GJEP Team

Indigenous Peoples Caucus

3rd Intersessional Meeting of the Preparatory Process for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)

March 26-27, 2012

New York

 We, indigenous peoples representatives meeting together as an indigenous peoples caucus during the 3rdIntersessional meeting of the UNCSD, after a thorough discussion of urgent issues and concerns affecting indigenous peoples activities related to the Rio+20 process, resolve and agree to the following points:

1. We will take efforts to build solidarity among the different Brazilian IP organizations and regional networks in Latin America in the spirit of reconciliation, and seek the help of some of our brothers and sisters in this effort [Tom Goldtooth (IEN), Vicky Tauli-Corpuz (Tebtebba) and Miguel Palacin (CAOI);]

2. We uphold and support the messages and agreements of the Manaus Declaration “INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN ROUTE TO THE RIO + 20 CONFERENCE” made during the Global preparatory meeting of Indigenous Peoples on Rio + 20 and Kari-Oca 2 on August 22- 24, 2011 in Manaus, Brazil. This declaration includes the agreement to “organize Kari-Oca 2 as a global conference of Indigenous Peoples where we will share our efforts to implement development with identity and culture or our self- determined development, … and endeavour to reach a consensus on themes and issues of Rio +20.”

3. We appreciate the ongoing efforts and hard work of the Inter-Tribal Council to prepare a site for Kari-Oca 2 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in accordance with the agreements reached during the Manaus meeting. We therefore urge the Global IP Steering Committee to support this effort and maximize the site being prepared for the Kari-Oca 2 Global Conference of indigenous peoples.

4. We further urge the Global IP Steering Committee to coordinate and harmonize the various indigenous peoples’ initiatives in Rio and come up with a common, unified calendar of activities for indigenous peoples during Rio+20 and Kari-Oca 2.

This will ensure that indigenous peoples will project a strong and united voice on the themes and issues related to Rio +20.

Agreed by the Indigenous Peoples Caucus with representatives from Latin America, North America, Africa and Asia on May 27, 2012, New York.

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