by | 2012-06-06 · 12:51

Human rights remain under threat in Rio+20 negotiating text, warns IBON International

NOTE: This statement comes to us from IBON International — GJEP

New York, Friday, June, 2011 — Real commitments on human rights, financing and macroeconomic reforms that would help developing countries, and regulation of the private sector remain absent from the draft document of the Rio+20 outcome document, warns international civil society organization, IBON International.

After the third and final “informal informal” prior to the meeting of the United Nations Committee on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) to be held Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, delegates from member states of the United Nations failed to make any significant headway towards renewing focus and commitment on sustainable development after five days of intense negotiations in New York.

The New York meeting is the third in a series of negotiations to produce the document to be agreed to by heads of state from across the world at the Rio+20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, later this month

IBON International, one of the civil society organization officially observing the intersessional meeting and coordinating NGOs advocating for a rights-based approach to sustainable development, recognises that there has been progress in terms of the inclusion of language referring to human rights in the text, such as the right to water and basic sanitation. This has been largely due to constant pressure from civil society organizations, as well as from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Nations Special Rapporteurs.

However there are still no real commitments to establish enabling conditions for the protection, respect and fulfilment of human rights in the context of the current economic and ecological crisis.

  • Countries are still shifting the burden to the private sector at the same time removing language that would subject the private sector to stricter public or social regulation.
  • Developed countries are still opposing any commitment to ensure adequate public financing for sustainable development, especially for developing countries, in line with the Right to Development.
  • There are still no commitments to undertake systemic macro-economic reforms in trade, finance, investments policy which currently prevent countries, particularly developing countries, from generating decent jobs, providing basic health and education, and developing green productive capacity.
  • There are still no clear commitments to rights-based accountability mechanisms.

Paul Quintos, program manager at IBON International and coordinator of the NGO Cluster on Rights and Equity, said:  “Whatever nice pledges come out of Rio will mean nothing if people cannot hold our states accountable for them.”

“If Rio+20 merely pays lip service to the vision of sustainable development but leaves the private sector in the drivers seat, then many civil society groups and social movements are likely to denounce and disown Rio+20 as a corporate green agenda.”

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by | 2012-06-05 · 10:30

Tell the US State Department: No Greed Economy at Rio+20!

 NOTE: We will be accompanying our friends at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and other members of the Climate Justice Alignment, Global Forest Coalition, Climate Justice Now! and thousands of social movement groups to the Rio20 summit, and the Cupola dos Povos, in two weeks in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In advance of the summit, we raise our voices together with theirs to tell US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Rio+20 lead negotiator John Matuszak to reject the false solutions of the “Green Economy” and invest in solutions to the ecological and economic crises that put our communities to work, cool the planet, and transition environmental control back to local economies. — GJEP

Dear members, friends and allies of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ),

The global 1% is converging in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this June 20-22 at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to unveil their “Green Economy” strategy—but we know that just calling something “green” doesn’t mean it’s good for people or for the planet.  The “Rio+20” Conference is a key moment when world governments have an opportunity to either act to protect our future, or continue on the same failed strategies that are threating our future.

The US State Department needs to hear from you today!

The 99% are also mobilizing to Brazil this June.

Grassroots Global Justice and ally groups from the Climate Justice Alignment process will join thousands of people from social movements around the world converging in Rio from June 15-22 to hold a parallel People’s Summit and to demand an end to profit-driven dirty energy industries like oil drilling and pipelines, market-based strategies like carbon-trading and forest exploitation, and extreme energy like fossil fuels and incinerators.

The People’s Summit is calling for a June 5th week of action in defense of the environment & against transnational corporations, and a June 20th Global Action Day for social and environmental justice, against the commodification of life, and in defense of the commons.

TAKE ACTION! 

Tell US Secretary of State Hillary Clintonand US Rio+20 lead negotiator John Matuszak to reject the false solutions of the “Green Economy” and invest in solutions to the ecological and economic crises that put our communities to work, cool the planet, and transition environmental control back to local economies.

While we are in Rio, we will call on the US government to take a stand against the worst tendencies of “Green Capitalism” and the “Greed Economy,” and instead invest in solutions to the ecological and economic crises that put our communities to work, cool the planet, and transition environmental control back to local economies.

On June 20th, GGJ delegates will be in the streets with our social movement allies La Vía Campesina, World March of Women, and other global movements, taking creative action to deliver these demands to John Matuszak and Hillary Clinton.

Help us reach 5,000 signatures!  Add your voice–sign the petition!

In the words of our allies in La Vía Campesina: “globalize the struggle, globalize hope!”

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Green Economy, Rio+20

by | 2012-06-04 · 13:30

Help Stop Corporate Domination of the United Nations

On June 5, on World Environment Day, and two weeks before a major United Nations (UN) Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) is beginning a campaign urging the UN to limit the excessive influence of multinational corporations on its decision-making processes.

FOEI is launching an online public petition asking UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon  to take the steps needed to reclaim the UN from corporate capture.

Already more than 335 civil society organizations representing millions of people from around the world signed an earlier joint statement initiated by FOEI and nine other organizations, denouncing the corporate domination of the UN.

Signatories are requesting a clear public response from the UN that its priority is to serve the public interest instead of business interests, and that the UN will take concrete steps to limit business and industry’s influence in UN decision-making processes.

“We have clear and troubling examples of how major corporations and business lobby groups exercise an increasing and unacceptable level of influence on UN decision-making processes,” said Paul de Clerck, corporates campaign coordinator at FOEI.

“We are demanding a formal response from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and from the UN member states, we want them to curb the business lobby at the UN, to halt  UN-business partnerships, starting with companies involved in human rights violations, and to introduce global rules to hold companies accountable for their negative impacts,” he added.

“The people are reclaiming the UN from the influence of big business and calling on  governments to restate that their over-riding prerogative is to serve the public interest… Friends of the Earth International will participate in the alternative Peoples Summit in Rio to underscore that the system needs to change in order to solve the current crisis,” said Brazil Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International.

Background Information

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as the Rio Earth Summit. For 20 years governments have tried to agree on ways to save our planet—and ultimately our lives. As we are facing multiple global crises today, people around the world can no longer remain silent about the false solutions offered and the environmental injustices that remain unresolved.

The UN is the only forum we have to address global problems, in which all of the world’s 192 countries have an equal voice. However, more and more we see that UN policies do not necessarily serve the public interest but instead promote the interests of corporations.

Steps to be taken include limiting the privileged status that business currently has in official UN negotiations and policy-making; limits on the role of the “business and industry” major group; disclosure of existing relations and links between the UN with the private sector; a code of conduct for UN officials; a review of existing partnerships with corporations and trade associations, and a halt to entering into any new such partnerships; increased transparency around lobbying; and the establishment of a legally binding framework to hold companies accountable to environmental, human rights and labor rights law.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Corporate Globalization, Rio+20, UNFCCC

by | 2012-06-01 · 19:00

Venezuelan Declaration Toward RIO + 20: Against the Green Economy

We, wrestlers and fighters for the defense of life, gathered in the third Venezuelan Congress of Biological Diversity, we discussed about the multiple dimensions related to the preservation of life by contributing to the deepening of the struggle of the social movements and the new institutions, thus promoting organizational link scenarios in the collective construction of environmental policies of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The rich debate that was generated during the third CVDB, among more than 3500 people, is a valuable input to strengthen the position of our country in the face of Rio +20, by contributing to the construction of another economy, based on respect for the nature and men and women, to eradicate all forms of poverty, domination and colonialism, which starts from this dialogue of knowledge and the collective construction of speeches, agendas for struggle and deconstruction of a system and logical thinkingexhausted, responsible for current global environmental crisis.

From our different ways of thinking and spirituality, nature is our natural heritage, the basis of diversity of knowledge, cultures, lifestyles and sovereignty of peoples. Nature is for us a source of food, water, building materials, inspiration and therefore can not conceive of a world based on its commercialization.

The pattern of life, capitalist production and consumption is based on maximizing profits, commodifying nature and human beings under a logic of progress and unlimited growth. This system has led to hunger, violence and misery, massacring and expelling people from their lands, Indians, farmers and seize their lands campesinasal, commons, germplasm, traditional knowledge and wisdom, among other things causing the disappearance of ancient cultures.This crisis has no solution within the framework of the structural problems generated by a model of civilization that has endangered the life on the planet, separating humans from nature, establishing a logic of domination over it that the destruction of haconducido thereof.

This view, which threatens life on earth, is maintained and reproduced through the adoption of a single mode of knowledge production, based on the idea of control, subjugation and exploitation of nature, which seeks to colonize other invisible and knowledge, rationalities, cultures and lifestyles.

Likewise, this model of civilization is maintained by a system of production and consumption of goods based on the logic of capital, which turns everything into merchandise interchangeably. The capitalist production model intended to replace the laws of nature by market rules.

This model, by separating humans from nature, away from us our livelihoods (water, land, food, construction materials, etc.), leaving us no choice but to sell our labor in the service reproductive system, commercializing men, women and children and on the other hand, transforms the land without people, goods, on private property.

Capitalism has planetary effects that generate global ecological imbalances. Global climate change leads that end, generated mostly by and for the development of a minority, but is experienced by all living things that inhabit the earth and more intensely for the poorest people.Climate change affects biodiversity, causing changes in the distribution of species in their migration patterns, growth and reproduction by increasing extinction rates.

The responsibility for this crisis is common, but differentiated, that is, not everyone shares the same responsibility. Being the highly industrializadoslos main causes of global environmental crisis. But even within the hegemonic countries are the main responsibilities of power elites, colonial and bourgeois, resources and economic power, military, industrial and political.

On the other hand, the global conservation mechanisms, rather than being part of the solution, they strengthen the problem by masking the reproductive system, but with a green facade.Thus the “sustainable development” and the protectionof the environment, peaked at the Rio conference in 1992 was an attempt to disguise the development we now know is globally viable.Today Rio +20 becomes a new attempt to relaunch the modelocapitalista exhausted, trying to transform the great global crisis A chance to market new scenarios. The proposed “green economy” are elintento to endure a failing system, deepening globalization mercantilizacióny of nature.

NATIONAL CONTEXT

From the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela we are moving towards building a socialism to combat all forms of domination. We have made great progress in the fight to eradicate poverty, understood as the result of the historic exclusion of the majority (poor, women and gender diverse, indigenous, black, black and peasant farmers) as an inevitable consequence of the overwhelming passage dominant model of civilization, now in crisis. In this regard, we recognize the efforts undertaken to repay the historic debt with the excluded, now players in this process of transformation and collective construction of a more just and fraternal society.

This process of change, based on the active participation laid the foundations for collective management of the preservation of life, making us part of all subjects and ways of thinking and encouraging a dialogue of knowledge among the great diversity of actors, which leads to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the interaction. These benefits can not be understood as the distribution of goods and plunder the commodification of nature. But rather, on the basis of the rights of Mother Earth, ensuring a respectful and harmonious with nature, to be built on the basis of legitimate democratic decision making and active participation from the exchange of knowledge , rationalities and ways of life.

In terms of preservation of life, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela started the decade 2010-2020 a National Strategy for the Conservation of Biological Diversity and its Action Plan Nacional, built collectively, anticipating five years the goals of the Convention on Biological DiversityBiological United Nations. These instruments are our proposals in this decade and outlines approaches to the classics that were responsible to a great extent, the global failure of the target agreed in 2002: “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss,global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty reduction and the benefit of all life forms on earth. “

Venezuela is prepared to overcome the global objectives in terms of reduction in loss rates on Biological Diversity, through goals, mechanisms and indicators designed from the national reality, contributing to significant contributions to the structural transformation and ensuring the sovereignty, “human development” and social inclusion.

From the standpoint of grand-national, Venezuela has promoted regional integration from the ALBA-TCP and CELAC, UNASUR, as mechanisms for the integration between sister.

We recognize our Bolivarian process as a transition, with the contradictions implicit in any change process. Thus, we identified the need to dismantle the structures of the bourgeois state to give input to other institutions that will lead to the formation of a new state, the communes, indigenous territories and new conservation areas inclusive departing from the collective management territories, are examples of other ways of relating among ourselves and with nature, from the self-recognition and respect for Mother Earth.

In short, our process of change in Venezuela and Nuestramerica, based on social justice, brotherhood and defense of the sovereignty of the people are fighting back against the prevailing world system. This fight needs to involve commodification and against the hegemony of knowledge, that is, anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist. That is why proposals to the commodification of life in Rio + 20, we declare our deepest rejection wing green economy.

OUR POSITION
We believe that the green economy is inseparable from the vision of commodification of nature and therefore incompatible with the view from our people and our struggles in defense of the diversity of life.
We denounce the attempt of the green economy as a response to the environmental crisis, but in reality the lever to the relaunching of the market mechanisms through the naturalization of the infamous law of supply and demand, confirming the structural causes major global environmental crisis.
We oppose the green economy as to its meaning and backgrounds, therefore we do not accept the guise of this concept with other names such as ecological economics and sustainable economy.
We do not believe in sustainable development.The sustainable development proposal fell short of expectations in the context of the Rio Summit in 1992. The course balance between economic, social and environmental served only as a platform for the justification of a development based on exploitation of nature and humans.Today we know that development is generally not feasible.
We believe that the vision of global sustainable development goes against the very idea of sustainability. We believe that beyond the sustainable development is necessary to question the neo-extractivism economy based on fossil fuels and their consumption patterns and industrial production, in addition to rethink the development from the self-recognition and self-determination of our happiness to collective happiness.
We denounce the attempt to boost the green economy in the context of sustainable development as a panacea for a new economic paradigm of capital for the “eradication of poverty, food security, universal access to modern energy services.”
We believe that the green economy deepens the structural causes of the global environmental crisis and therefore maintains the social and cultural burdens of the capitalist economy, maintaining the same poverty that puts the poorest in the vulnerability to situations ofdisaster. It is the responsibility of states to ensure access to housing for a dignified and secure life as a fundamental right and need real human beings, respecting the sovereignty and cultural diversity of peoples.
We are convinced that the real solution to stop the great environmental crisis is to change the system and not disguise this development model predator, colonialist and patriarchal.
We denounce the green economy breaks with the integration of regional economies, generating units to the world centers of high technology development in the area.
We reject the proposal to create an international platform that aims at facilitating or encouraging countries to design policies and implement green economy.
We reiterate that stimulate the economy from large markets, industries and corporations threatens the sustainable and save money on the sovereignty of peoples.
We reject the corporate pattern of production, distribution, and consumption of food waste based on the regime of agribusiness (factory farms, monoculture, GMO, nanotechnologies, pesticides, biofuels, artificial life, geo-piracy, etc.), which precludes sustainable production of healthy food and a threat to peasant agriculture, food security and sovereignty. This pattern is presented as a technological solution to hunger, without discussing the real causes of the crisis and its implications for global change.
We reaffirm the right to self-determination, nonintervention and respect for peace and diversity of life of peoples. Since we recognize the right of self-determination of peoples to decide their ways to achieve the supreme social happiness in harmony with nature and good living, without the imposition of forms of development and technology packages.
We recognize the need for unity of our people, through our own bridges and integration mechanisms that are not reflected in the large engineering works in the service of the union of the transnational monopolies and not the people and represent a serious attack against one of the most diverse regions of the planet.
We demand respect for the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities under the principle of precautelativo, the right to information, education and participation, the rights of indigenous and traditional peoples, peasants, the human rightwater, the rights of workers, migrants, the right to food, housing, the city, the rights of youth and women’s rights, the right to sexual and reproductive health cultural rights.
We demand respect for the diversity of life in all its forms, including multiple world views of our people.
We recognize the importance of knowledge and information (responsible, truthful) for making decisions from a holistic and collective management of our environmental policies and reaffirm the need for mechanisms and willingness to facilitate access to information on equal terms and with respect to the rights of the ancient cultures, including prior informed consent of our indigenous peoples.
We reject the interference in the sovereignty of the people through comprehensive training programs as a mechanism of domination, loss of sovereignty, detachment from reality, application of inappropriate methodologies.
We reject the imposition of technologies that create dependency, violating the traditional methods and threaten the diversity of life through programs based on the creation and strengthening of physical abilities.
We demand the strengthening of national, regional, local and community for the preservation of life, collectively built from the popular empowerment as a mechanism for the sovereignty of our lifestyles and shielded against the capitalist system in the green economy.
We recognize and we show the important role from grassroots organizing in communities, collective, commune, technical water tables, socially owned enterprises, student councils, conservation committees, meetings and other forms of knowledge organization, face the consequences of the implementation green economy in our markets and generate resistance and alternatives.
We warn that the imposition of globalized strategies carefully and compromises the future of life. The implementation agenda for the preservation of life must come from the actions and collective management of people in ensuring their own sovereignty and livelihoods.
States warn the world that the United Nations attempt to boost the green economy only ratifies the discrediting and disparagement of this international body to the peoples of the world.
We invite all people and organizations to close ranks against the green economy.
We accompany our delegations Venezuelan people’s power and communal executive, and other fraternal countries delegations to the Conference and the People’s Summit in Rio +20 in the difficult and urgent struggle just to oppose or refuse to represent the green economy and we are with them in this commitment not to violate the principles of nature and of our sovereign peoples in these multilateral institutions.

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Filed under Green Economy, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20

by | · 15:00

Plastic Waste: Cash Cow, or Fundamental Design Flaw?

Note: The New York Times Green Blog has just posted the piece below suggesting that plastic waste, if converted to new plastics or fuels, could be a “cash cow,” and a great way to address the huge ecological impact of plastics and boost the economy at the same time.

We’ve addressed this issue before, most recently, here; while there are clear merits to recycling and reuse, we find the approach as the Times describes it to be dangerously oversimplified. Below, we post the Times piece; we follow it with a proposal that the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives — one of the leading authorities on the subject of waste and its handling in the Global South — submitted to the Rio+20 process, and shared with us. — Jeff Conant, for GJEP

Plastic Waste = Cash Cow?

By BETTINA WASSENER, cross-posted from The NY Times Green Blog

May 29, 2012 — A group of environmentalists and entrepreneurs is looking for ideas on how to “capture gold”  that is, how to collect and convert plastic waste into new plastic or fuel.
O.K., describing plastic waste as potential “gold” may be overdoing it. But the campaigners say that publicizing the notion that plastic is worth something may help reduce the amount of waste that ends up in oceans and the bellies of sea creatures.

To that end, they have set up a competition inviting members of the public to <http://competition.plasticityforum.com/session/new>submit ideas online. Organizers will take the best ones to the Rio+20 earth summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro next month, where they are planning a daylong side event called <http://www.plasticityforum.com/>Plasticity focusing on issues related to plastic pollution.

The plastic waste problem is gaining broader attention as environmentalists scientists, manufacturers and the public become more aware of the sheer volume of the stuff that finds its way into the sea.

More than 260 million metric tons of plastic are now produced per year, according to the trade association <http://www.plasticseurope.org/>PlasticsEurope. The majority of that  estimates range up to 85 percent  is not recycled. Most of it ends up in landfill, and a significant amount ends up as litter on land, in rivers and in the oceans.

Technological advances have made clear that it is possible to reuse much of this plastic by turning it into fuel or new products. Yet the companies that have come up with such solutions have not achieved the economies of scale that would allow them to function profitably. Insufficient waste-collection and recycling systems in most countries also stand in the way of “trash to cash” concepts, said Doug Woodring, an environmental entrepreneur in Hong Kong who is among the organizers of the Plasticity forum in Rio.

Rather than breast-beating, the forum aims to highlight some of the technologies and ideas out there for collection and reuse. My personal favorite for now is a vacuum cleaner with plastic parts made from plastic. (END)

To follow is a set of proposals that our friends at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives have submitted to the ‘Zero-draft” — the document being developed by the United Nations at Rio +20.  (ed.)

GAIA Proposal to Rio+20 Zero Draft

GAIA is a worldwide alliance of grassroots organizations, non-governmental organizations, and individuals who recognize that our planet’s finite resources, fragile biosphere and the health of people and other living beings are endangered by polluting and inefficient production practices and health-threatening disposal methods.

We oppose incinerators, landfills, and other end-of-pipe interventions.

Our ultimate vision is a just, toxic-free world without incineration. Our goal is clean production and the creation of a closed-loop, materials-efficient economy where all products are reused, repaired or recycled back into the marketplace or nature.

GAIA’s membership-based network brings together more than 650 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in 90 countries, all of whom have signed on to the above shared vision statement.

Together, we are calling for changes in production, consumption, and waste disposal practices that are core to the goals of the Rio +20 Conference.

To achieve true sustainability and poverty eradication, we need to shift our economic paradigm away from the current “take-make-waste” system of resource destruction.  In its place, we can reclaim long-held human values of resource conservation and equity, caring, trust, justice, and diversity – and build the local living economies that will be essential to ensuring that life on earth is harmonious with nature while all people’s material needs are met.

Changes in lifestyles and production systems must be global. The affluent, who consume disproportionate resources and are responsible for most pollution, bear a greater responsibility and must take proportionate steps for change.

GAIA asks governments engaged in the Rio+20 process to commit to full-scale investment in inclusive Zero Waste systems, with a transition goal for 2040. Our demands include:

1-      Transform the economy to reclaim resources and revalue community well-being

Create and use development indicators other than GDP–which does not take into account environmental impact, sustainability, equitable distribution of resources, unpaid labor, or quality of life. Stop the export and import of cultures of overconsumption. Emphasize forms and indicators of development that take into account social and environmental well-being, such as those being explored by the OECD and various governments.

Ensure that all products and materials are returned back to the marketplace or nature at the end of the use, emphasizing the “best and highest use” principle in materials management decisions.

Revive and strengthen rural life and livelihoods, recognizing that growth of urban areas is driven by poverty and concentrates consumption and waste generation.

2-   Prevent waste in the first place, and reduce hazardous materials

Reduce the use of energy, materials and natural resources in the lifecycle of products and packaging, and reduce waste generation, toxicity and pollution by investing in in green chemistry and clean production. Discourage disposable and toxic products and processes.

Promote local economies based on the provision of public use, rental and lending services rather than sale of products, and the use of reused products..

3-      Design for recycling and reuse

Increase the durability, reuse, recycling and recyclability of goods, recognizing that recycling conserves resources, saves energy throughout the materials lifecycle, and prevents pollution.

Promote extended producer responsibility for products and packaging to inhibit and punish the practice of planned obsolescence or intentional wasting.

4-   Ensure best and highest use for organics

Put composting, biogas, and animal feed programs in place that return all organic matter, uncontaminated, to the environment to provide a healthy basis for a toxics-free agriculture. Such programs are critical, given the high percentage of organic material in most metropolitan waste streams.

Avoid using biomass resources for energy and fuel, creating a demand that will further deplete forestry and soils.

5-      Respect the rights of recyclers

Prioritize programs that, following the proximity principle, create green, sustainable, local jobs. Waste workers, whether private-sector, public-sector, informal or entrepreneurial, must be accorded due respect and integrated into comprehensive materials management strategies.

Promote social inclusion in activities related to waste management, particularly the dignification of urban recyclers, fostering the internalization of their positive environmental impacts.

6-      Invest in the future we want, and support real solutions through public policy

Guarantee that public funds and international and national legislation support increasing reuse, recycling and composting combined with ecodesign in order to guarantee that any product can be safely repaired, reused and /or recycled at the end of its life.

Shift current subsidies from extraction and waste disposal to resource recovery, creating significantly more jobs, while distributing income more equitably.

7-      Promote innovative community-led programs that protect public health

Encourage the adoption of materials recovery techniques and processes that are local, safe, and respectful of local and indigenous cultures; where technology transfer occurs, it must respect the sovereignty and rights of local communities.

Give communities real participation in the materials recovery programs; include them in the design, implementation and monitoring of the programs, pay attention to their needs and ideas. Zero waste policies and programs contribute to social cohesion and enable the active participation and involvement of communities in the transformation of development patterns and sustainability building.

8-      No incineration! Put technology at the service of people

Phase out incinerators and other end-of-pipe waste technologies, which are expensive, inefficient, and highly hazardous to human health. Such technologies undermine a Zero Waste economy and are incompatible with Zero Waste.

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Filed under Rio+20, Solutions, Waste

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.”
.
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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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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