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People's summit played countervailing role at Rio+20

The just concluded UN summit in Rio de Janeiro saw the gathering of thousands of people providing alternative views and solutions from the grassroots.

Since June 15, the People’s Summit on Rio+20 has gathered thousands of participants from civil society and social movements from around the world in “Atero do Flamengo” - a park in downtown Rio de Janeiro - to articulate alternative analyses and proposals from the official Rio+20 Conference taking place in the outskirts of the city.

The motivation for organising a People’s “Summit” (as opposed the conventional civil society forum) was sparked by widespread disillusionment with the ability of governments and the multilateral system to implement effectively the agreements reached at the landmark 1992 Earth Summit - as illustrated through the continued deterioration of the environment, the cascade of multiple crises and rising inequalities in past two decades. Through a combination of self-managed activities, thematic plenaries and people’s assemblies, the Summit aims to build convergences around three cross-cutting axes:

1. Structural causes and false solutions;
2. Our solutions;
3. Agenda for future campaigns and struggles

The main themes discussed in the plenaries cover 1) Rights for Social and Environmental Justice; 2) Defence of Common Goods Against Commodification; 3) Food Sovereignty; 4) Energy and Extractive Industries; and 5) Work: For Another Economy and New Paradigms for Society.

“Green Economy”

A major highlight of the Summit was an open dialogue between Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and People’s Summit representatives on June 16 around the “green economy,” one of the major themes of the official Rio+20 Conference. The dialogue, brokered with the Summit organisers and NGLS, was an opportunity for a frank exchange on one of the most controversial themes of both summits, under a packed plenary tent which gathered some 800 participants at very short notice.

In opening the meeting, Brazilian activist and summit organiser Fátima Mello said “the People’s Summit is critical of the green economy, because we are the people who have suffered the crisis of capitalism and of its model of production which, the worse things get, the more it undermines our rights.” Steiner heard the critiques and perspectives of representatives of indigenous peoples, the farmers’, workers’, environmental movements, people of colour and NGOs on what they perceived as an agenda to reinforce the current unsustainable mainstream economic model, by creating new sources of profit and exploitation through commodification and financialisation of nature and life.

The UNEP Executive Director expressed his surprise at these critiques of the green economy, which he said is conceived of as a “major transformation of the current models of production and consumption, aimed at curbing pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources.” The critiques assume a perpetuation of the current model, which UNEP also denounces as having led to the catastrophic ecological destruction we see today.

He said that the green economy was meant to confront and engage the economic system that is dominating the political agenda in every country around the world. It is not because there is the word “economy” in “green economy” that we necessarily refer to the existing capitalist economy, he said. “Giving also an economic value to ecosystems can help governments better understand how essential it is to preserve them. For instance, the value of the Amazon forest is much more than the value of the timber that can be extracted,” he said - explaining how it also plays an essential function in regulating water flow systems for the entire continent.

Placing a monetary value of ecosystems in national accounts does not mean that this value will then be turned into private assets to be bought and sold. “In fact, I would argue that….maybe the opposite would happen: we would actually issue laws to protect nature, we would increase protected areas, we would have far more indigenous peoples managed lands and reserves and we would have laws and criteria for the private sector and business to conduct business in a way that is not destructive.”

In the second round of comments, one participant, Pat Mooney from ETC Group, argued that UNEP [as one of the main instigators of the green economy concept] may be the messenger, but “you cannot control what is done with your message.” He gave examples of transnational corporations’ explicit plans to gain private control of the earth’s biomass. He stated that the green economy agenda is being promoted at the official Conference by handing over its implementation to the private sector through financialisation and relying on technological breakthroughs.

“The crises we are in have been driven by financial interests and proponents of disastrous technologies” such as nuclear power, or transgenic crops. “And now we are asking the same people to lead the way out of this mess.”

In effect, financialisation and technological quick fixes are replacing responsible public policy, he said.

Pablo Solón, Executive Director of Focus on the Global South and former Ambassador of Bolivia to the United Nations, argued that it was hard to believe that the purpose of putting a monetary value to nature would somehow stop at inclusion in national accounts. “The purpose of the green economy is too clear: when capitalism assigns a monetary value to ecosystems and biodiversity, it is not only to place it in national accounts, but to introduce it in the market.”

Referring to the multi-trillion dollar price-tag attributed by UNEP and other institutions to the cost of the transition to a green economy, he said: “governments say they are broke because of the financial crisis, and many are pushing for this financing to come from the private sector. How is that not commodification/financialisation of nature?” He proposed a financial transactions tax that could generate the scales of revenue needed as an alternative to the financialisation agenda.

Juan Herrero, from the grassroots global farmers’ movement La Via Campesina, stressed that the alternatives being developed at the People’s Summit are following a “very different logic” from what is discussed at the official Conference, built on a “popular, social and solidarity economy” rather than the profit motive.

Achim Steiner expressed his gratitude for this opportunity to - at least for a brief moment - to connect the two summits. He said he understood and shared the frustration of the people with the way the negotiations were going at the official Conference. “But I want to assure you that – even if you find it hard to believe - there are people in the United Nations and in the official process who care deeply and are listening carefully at what is being said at the Summit of the People.”

People’s Summit

Among the many ideas for more sustainable development paths articulated at the People’s Summit is the growing movement for a “social and solidarity economy” built on the values of cooperation, complementarity, sharing, mutual support, human rights and democratic control over economic decisions and resources.

Many summit workshops gave examples of the myriad initiatives taking place on the ground - notably in Brazil - to promote these new forms of economic relations that can meet social and environmental goals. Proponents argue that the strategy for the poor and excluded is not to begin with political demands on the State (for e.g. basic public services such access to housing, water or sanitation), but to build first their autonomous economic base, which then places them in a stronger position to make demands on the authorities.

- Third World Network Features

 

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