Category Archives: UN
What’s wrong with the green economy?: Michelle Maynard of PACJA –
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Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit closes with Declaration and points of struggle
June 25, 2012. One of the opening paragraphs of the Declaration produced at the close of the Peoples’ Summit states:
“The Peoples Summit is a symbolic moment of the beginning of a new cycle in the course of global struggles, which produced a new convergence of the movements of women, Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, youth, family and peasant farmers, workers, the poor, and traditional communities such as quilombos, those who fight for the right to the city, and religious groups world wide.”
80, 000 people attended the Peoples’ Summit and at least 30,000 mobilized daily in different activities.
The full Declaration has yet to be translated into English (and Climate Connections will publish or link to it when it is), but it closes with these consensus points of struggle going forward:
We are:
- Opposed to militarization of territories and states.
- Opposed to criminalization of social movement organizations.
- Opposed to violence against women.
- Opposed to violence against LGBT people.
- Opposed to large corporations.
- Opposed to imposing payments of unjust financial debt and for popular hearings on them.
- For guaranteeing the right of the people to land and territory, urban and rural.
- For free informed and prior consultation and consent, based in the principle of good faith as per Convention 169 of the ILO.
- For food sovereignty and healthy food, against agrochemicals and transgenics.
- For the conquest and guarantee of rights.
- For the solidarity of peoples and countries, chiefly those threatened by military or institutional coups (like the recent one in Paraguay).
- For the sovereignty of the people over ownership of the commons, against attempts to privatize and commodify.
- For changing the current energy grid and system.
- For democratization of the communications media.
- For a recognition of the historic social and ecological debt.
- For building towards a worldwide GENERAL STRIKE.
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Rio+20 Breaking News: ALBA expels USAID from member countries
Cross-posted from Wrong Kind of Green, June 22, 2012
Resolution from the Political Council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) for the immediate withdrawal of USAID from member countries of the alliance.
On behalf of the Chancellors of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Federal Republic of Brazil, on June 21st 2012.
Given the open interference of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the internal politics of the ALBA countries, under the excuse of “planning and administering economic and humanitarian assistance for the whole world outside of the United States,” financing non-governmental organizations and actions and projects designed to destabilise the legitimate governments which do not share their common interests.
Knowing the evidence brought to light by the declassified documents of the North American State Department in which the financing of organisations and political parties in opposition to ALBA countries is made evident, in a clear and shameless interference in the internal political processes of each nation.
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Filed under Climate Change, Latin America-Caribbean, Political Repression, Rio+20
Alternative voices from Rio+20
While world leaders negotiate in the Rio+20 meeting halls, thousands of activists have launched ‘The People’s Summit’.
AlJazeera – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – “The development – the drilling, mining and damming – is affecting everyone, our communities and the Earth, our home and the only planet we have.”
The piercing voice of 11-year-old T’Kaiya is enough to grab the attention of delegates passing by. With the aptitude of a seasoned speaker, this young delegate from Canada comfortably commanded the following of environmental activists staging a sit-in at the Rio+20 conference.
T’Kaiya is in Rio to represent the Indigenous Environmental Network and to speak out against the controversial tar sands project being planned by an energy transport company, Enbridge, that involves a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific northwest coast of Canada.
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Occupiers disrupt closing press briefing on final Rio+20 agreement
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Two members of the Occupy movement disrupted the final press briefing of the United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development, denouncing the final document as not representative of the voices in struggle against the degradation of the environment and oppression. Occupy Wall Street member Alexandre Carvalho and Ocupa Sampa Maryana Sant’ Ana infiltrated the media conference room P3 – 7 with no press credentials, sat close to the panelists, and waited until the brief started, at 2pm.
When one of the speakers started his address, citing the cause of environmental degradation and the crash of the world economy wasn’t due to banks but instead to the failure of governments to take action, the two activists took to the center of the room, grabbed two flowers that were decorating the front of the panel, and said: “They do not represent us! We want a real democracy! We are here to announce a new time; a time of imagination, poetry and no ecocide! NO GENERATIONAL GENOCIDE!” when they were seized and forced out of the room by UN personnel.
The Rio+20 final document was marked by general frustration, with many voices denouncing its lack of ambition, urgency, and real commitment to the environment. While leaders of nation-states paid lip service to the document, members of civil society and NGOs threatened to remove their support to the final statement.
“Corporate take over of the UN is undermining the real solutions coming from grassroots social movements” , said Sant’Ana. “The attempt to market green capitalism as the solution to the world’s environmental problems is a farce – the solution is in international solidarity, open source technologies, and a new world consciousness.
A people’s petition and the Open Source Imperative, foundational statements, can be found here:www.occupytheearth.net
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What’s wrong with the green economy?: Indian human rights activist and journalist Jiten Yumnan
Throughout the week, Climate Connections is posting short videos of participants in Rio+20 and the Peoples’ Summit talking about the meaning of the “green economy.”
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Filed under Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Rio+20
Rio+20: Impressions from the Peoples’ Summit: forging a global social movement
By Avery Pittman, for Climate Connections
Henry Saragih, General Coordinator for La Via Campesina, and Alberto Gomez, from La Via Campesina Mexico listen as former Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations and director of Focus on the Global South talks about the need for a unified social movement strategy to challenge the green economy. Photo: Will Bennington for GJEP
June 21, 2012 – Rio de Janeiro – On the second day of UN Rio+20 “Earth Summit” negotiations, an hour away at the People’s Summit in downtown Rio, a crowd gathered to discuss moving forward as a global movement against the forces of the green economy. A mic was passed around the listening crowd, sitting in a ring of chairs three rows deep. There were bleachers and a stage at the venue, but the organizers of the event insisted that everyone be able to see each other and sit as equals. To the audience, Pablo Solon of Focus on the Global South posed the question “what can we do together, as social movements, after the Peoples Summit?”
Leaders and members from various social movements sat among the inner ring of chairs. The gathering was intimate and diverse, but the message was clear: together, social movements must deepen an analysis of the interconnections of oppression and create a road map to effectively and intentionally counter the logic of capitalism that commercializes nature.
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Indigenous deliver Kari-Oca II Declaration to Rio+20, as military halts hundreds
By Brenda Norrell, cross-posted from NarcoNews
Photos by Ben Powless, Mohawk, IEN
June 21, 2012 – RIO DE JANEIRO – Indigenous Peoples delivered the Kari-Oca II Declaration for the Protection of Mother Earth to leaders at Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainability, after the military halted hundreds of Indigenous Peoples from entering the area.
The Indigenous delegation delivering the Declaration today included members of the Indigenous Environmental Network and Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe.
The Kari-Oca II Declaration was presented to the UN Director for Sustainable Development Nikhil Seth, and Gilberto Carvalho, the Chief Minister to the Presidency of Brazil.
As world leaders seek to profiteer from nature at the summit, Indigenous Peoples, barred by the military from attending, are holding their own encampment at the Kari Oca II and produced the Kari-Oca II Declaration for the protection of Mother Earth. Indigenous leaders are demanding a halt to the false carbon market schemes which allow the world’s worst polluters to continue polluting and profiteering from nature.
Kandi Mossett, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara from North Dakota, was in the delegation of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Mossett said only a small group of Indigenous were allowed past the military to deliver the Declaration.
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Filed under Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Rio+20
