RÍO DE JANEIRO, 23 jun (TerraViva) La investigación y el desarrollo de sistemas agroforestales son una apuesta a la sostenibilidad de la agricultura en zonas vulnerables, como América Central.

El Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (Catie), con sede en Costa Rica, viene investigando desde hace años sobre los cultivos que combinan producción forestal con alimentos, en especial el café y el cacao, dos productos tradicionales de América Central.

La agroforestería ayuda a restaurar las nacientes de agua. Crédito: Cortesía Acicafoc

En 2005 fundó el Centro de Recursos de Información Bibliográfica sobre Cacao, Árboles, Bosques y el Ambiente (Inaforesta), junto con instituciones similares de África y Asia, entre otras.

Inaforesta es un grupo mundial de estudio y mejoramiento de las relaciones entre la gente, el caco, los árboles y el ambiente.

El cacao se cultiva en más de 50 países, cubre más de siete millones de hectáreas y es el sustento de más de cinco millones de familias en las regiones tropicales húmedas del planeta. Pero su plantación asociada a bosques o en zonas deforestadas presenta diversos desafíos ambientales.

De modo similar, la producción de café fue perdiendo técnicas tradicionales que la hacían más sustentable, como la combinación con árboles para aprovechar su sombra.

Los sistemas agroforestales incorporan especies arbóreas a las labores agrícolas y agropecuarias. Su práctica, acompañada de investigación científica, permite encontrar métodos y tecnologías amigables con el ambiente, dijo a TerraViva el director ejecutivo de la Asociación Coordinadora Indígena y Campesina de Agroforestería Comunitaria Centroamericana (Acicafoc), Alberto Chinchilla.

Los árboles permiten recuperar nacientes de agua, protegen con su sombra los cultivos, conservando más la humedad, y mantienen más frescos los predios de pasturas, lo que reduce el estrés de calor del ganado.

Además, así se pueden recuperar especies nativas o en extinción y mejorar la seguridad alimentaria de las comunidades.

Esta agricultura climáticamente inteligente puede reducir la vulnerabilidad de América Central, coincidieron ministros, científicos, técnicos en un encuentro paralelo a la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible (Río+20).

Para el Catie, se trata de crear territorios climáticamente inteligentes.

La entidad plantea que el desarrollo sostenible debe ser un “trabajo colectivo”, afincado en un “territorio, el cual no solo es un espacio geográfico sino también una construcción social reflejada en la cultura, la producción, la gobernanza, es decir, un hilo conductor que caracteriza y diferencia una zona de un país”, según el director general del Catie,  José Joaquín Campos.

El Catie colabora en proyectos con organizaciones de productores, como Acicafoc, con el que está creando un programa de capacitación para reforzar el conocimiento tradicional y el académico en materia de sistemas agroforestales tropicales.

Otro de sus aportes es el software gratuito ShadeMotion http://www.shademotion.com/, que calcula la posición, forma y acumulación de las sombras de árboles en distintos lugares de la Tierra y en distintas fechas y horas.

Esto permite determinar cuántas horas de sombra hay en cada lugar de una parcela por la presencia de árboles y tomar decisiones acerca de qué y cómo plantar.

El programa informático es de uso sencillo para los productores, que solo necesitan incorporar datos de cantidad de árboles, ubicación, forma, tamaño y densidad de follaje;  coordenadas de tiempo en que se requiere la simulación e información geográfica del terreno.

El resultado, en la pantalla de la computadora, es un sombreado en distintas tonalidades de gris, sobre un cuadriculado que representa la parcela. Las tonalidades más oscuras denotan aquellas zonas que acumulan mayor cantidad de horas de sombra.

América Central podría perder hasta 19 por ciento de su producto interno bruto por el cambio climático, según el ministro de la Secretaría de Recursos Naturales y Ambiente de Honduras, Rigoberto Cuéllar.

Los efectos de los cambios del clima son las principales amenazas de la región, formada por siete países con una población de 43 millones de habitantes, casi la mitad de ellos pobres.

La superficie tiene apenas 27,5 por ciento de áreas protegidas. Pero posee una gran biodiversidad, según Cuéllar, que apoya la implementación del sistema agroforestal en su país.

“El cambio climático es uno de los aspectos que limitan el desarrollo sustentable de la región. Estamos apoyando fuertemente la agroforestería y el impulso a las actividades productivas. Hay que definir políticas claras para cruzar acciones coordinadas en los países”, dijo.

El PIB centroamericano crece cinco por ciento al año, pero se estima que la región ha perdido 1,7 puntos del PIB en las últimas dos décadas, debido a los desastres climáticos.

En este contexto, el sistema agroforestal es “la única alternativa que nos queda para adaptar y mitigar los cambios climáticos”, dijo Chinchilla.

La práctica agroforestal avanzó en la última década en la región. Los países centroamericanos pueden convertirse en vanguardia por una serie de proyectos que promueven la agroforestería y la seguridad alimentaria. (FIN/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) – The downpour that fell Friday in this Brazilian city was nature’s warning to the heads of state meeting at the Rio+20 summit. The generation of Noe (Noah), an environmentalist’s son who will be born a month from now, will have to save biodiversity that is more complex than that of his Biblical namesake.

Maureen Santos is working for a better world for her unborn son Noe (Noah). Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“It was really heavy rainfall, and we were worried,” Maureen Santos told IPS. She is an activist with FASE, one of the Brazilian groups that organised the People’s Summit, held parallel since Jun. 15 to the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20.

In Rio de Janeiro, like in other cities around the world, this kind of unusually heavy rainfall is causing environmental tragedies like flooding, destruction of homes, and deaths in at-risk areas like hillsides and lowlands. Scientists say it is one of the effects of climate change.

“We were worried about the people camping here, and about the final assembly, which was held outside. But although that was the reason for the delay of the assembly, we had a shining closing session,” Santos said.

The activist is pregnant. In one month she will give birth to her first son, Noe (which is Noah in Portuguese).

The activist hopes her son will not have to suffer such destructive downpours like the ones that are forecast unless urgent action against climate change is taken, and that a kind of modern-day Noah’s ark will not have to be resorted to in order to salvage millions of endangered species.

“We might not see it, but we want the future to be different for him,” Santos told IPS in an interview given under a giant globe representing planet Earth.

“A world where we share common goods, nature does not have a price, the economy serves the people and is based on local trade, the crazy traffic in cities is reduced, there is less pollution and disease, and people are not as selfish,” she said.

The young expectant mother hopes this will be brought about by global demonstrations like the ones that the People’s Summit decided to promote.

Santos’ hopes for her son echo what was expressed in the People’s Summit’s final assembly for “social and environmental justice,” which brought together peasant, indigenous, black, student and faith-based movements, among others.

The assembly said the heads of state meeting over the last three days at Rio+20 “demonstrated irresponsibility towards the future of the planet and promoted their own government’s interests.”

The activists say the majority of the governments form part of the “new capitalist economy,” dominated by multilateral financial institutions, coalitions at their service like the G8 most powerful countries and the G20 industrialised and emerging economies, and a United Nations “taken over” by corporate interests.

“As the (global economic) crisis is aggravated, more corporations are encroaching on the rights of the people, democracy and nature, kidnapping the shared goods of humanity to save the economic and financial system,” the assembly’s final declaration says.

The assembly decided to hold worldwide demonstrations to combat “the current phase of capitalism, which is the green economy” and the new “financialisation” of the carbon and biodiversity markets.

They also committed to fighting for a solidarity economy, a clean energy mix, organic family agriculture, food sovereignty, decent, healthy work, access to all rights for everyone, better distribution of wealth, and the fight against racism and other forms of intolerance.

“It is clear that our document has more proposals and solutions than the official one,” said Santos.

The assembly ended with a “mystical” ceremony in which a group of women dressed up as “indignant jaguars” chanted slogans like “Mother Earth is outraged/Nothing happened in the official summit.”

Marcelo Durao, with Brazil’s Landless Movement and the international small farmers’ movement Via Campesina, told IPS that the official document was “a mere formality… adopted by corporations, which expresses little concern for the (planet’s) people.”

Darci Frigo with Terra de Direitos (Land of Rights), a Brazilian NGO, said “We confirmed that the official summit was a huge failure because the document approved significantly diluted the proposals and left it clear that it is just a first step for them, which confirms that in the last 20 years since the 1992 Earth Summit (in Rio de Janeiro) little progress was made in the fight against poverty and other causes that are generating environmental and economic crises,” she said.

Frigo was on the committee that delivered the final declaration of the People’s Summit to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
“
Ban only admitted that there were discrepancies over the concept of the “green economy” and “he was impacted by our position on the green economy as a false mechanism and solution for the problems of humanity,” Frigo told IPS.

The People’s Summit organisers said the debates there were positive, and praised the new method established to make the conclusions of the different thematic groups and seminars converge in plenary assemblies.

But they played down the problems of organisation at an event that mobilised some 14,000 people from across the globe, such as changes of venues for the debates, and difficulties in access to food and lodging for participants and in centralising the information to be made available to the press.

RÍO DE JANEIRO, 22 jun (TerraViva) El diluvio que cayó este viernes 22 en esta ciudad brasileña fue una advertencia de la naturaleza a los gobernantes presentes en Río+20. La generación de Noé, hijo de una ambientalista que nacerá dentro de un mes, tendrá que salvar una biodiversidad más compleja que la de su antecesor bíblico.

Maureen Santos trabaja por un mundo mejor su futuro hijo, Noé. Crédito: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“Fue realmente una lluvia muy fuerte y nos preocupamos”, dijo a TerraViva la activista Maureen Santos, de la organización brasileña FASE, una de las que convocóla Cubrede los Pueblos en Río+20 porla Justicia Socialy Ambiente, que transcurrió del 15 de este mes en paralelo ala Conferenciade las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible.

En Río de Janeiro, como en otras ciudades del planeta, ese tipo de precipitaciones fuera de los parámetros habituales causan tragedias ambientales como inundaciones, destrucción de viviendas y muertes en áreas de riesgo como los cerros y zonas bajas. Según los científicos, es uno de los efectos de las transformaciones climáticas provocadas por la actividad humana.

“Nos preocupamos por las personas que están acampadas y por la asamblea final que debió realizarse al aire libre. Pero, aunque ese fue el motivo del atraso, tuvimos un broche de oro brillante”, dijo Santos.

Esta activista esta embarazada. Solo le falta un mes para que nazca su primer hijo, Noah, un nombre hebreo que, según aclara, en portugués es Noé (el que trae la paz).

Espera que su hijo no tenga que sufrir diluvios destructores como los que se anticipan si no se actúa de manera urgente, ni que como última opción el mundo tenga que salvar en una nueva arca las millones de especies de la biodiversidad del planeta en riesgo de extinción.

“Nosotros tal vez no lo podamos ver, pero es el futuro que queremos para él”, dijo Santos a TerraViva, quien brindó la entrevista bajo un globo gigante que representa el planeta Tierra.

“Un mundo donde compartamos bienes comunes, que la naturaleza no tenga precio, la economía venga del pueblo y se base en el comercio local, que disminuya el transporte loco en las ciudades, con menos contaminación y enfermedades, y que las personas sean menos egoístas”, auguró.

Esta joven madre espera conseguir eso contribuyendo a las movilizaciones mundiales como las promovidas porla Cumbrede los Pueblos.

En ese sentido, tiene esperanza en ese tipo de encuentros, que promovió grupos de debate que convergieron en una asamblea y documento final.

Por el mismo sentido de los deseos de Santos para su hijo fue la declaración por “justicia social y ambiental” de la asamblea dela Cumbre de los Pueblos, donde convergieron movimientos de campesinos, indígenas, negros, estudiantes y de religiosos, entre otros.

La asamblea consideró que los gobernantes reunidos en Río+20 “demostraron la irresponsabilidad con el futuro del planeta y promovieron sus propios intereses”.

Los activistas entienden que la mayoría de esos gobiernos conforman la nueva economía capitalista, dominada por entidades financieras multilaterales, coaliciones a su servicio como el Grupo de los Ocho (G-8) países industrializados y el Grupo de los 20 (G-20, donde se suman estados emergentes) yla ONU(Organización de las Naciones Unidas) capturada por intereses corporativos.

“A medida que esa crisis se profundiza, más corporaciones avanzan contra los derechos de los pueblos, la democracia y la naturaleza, secuestrando los bienes comunes de la humanidad para salvar el sistema económico financiero”, puntualizaron.

La asamblea decidió movilizaciones internacionales para combatir “la actual fase del capitalismo, que es la economía verde” y las firmas transnacionales que “avanzan sobre los derechos de los pueblos“.

También se organizaran contra la nueva “financierización” de los mercados de carbono y la biodiversidad y se comprometieron a luchar por una economía solidaria, la matriz energética limpia, la agricultura familiar y orgánica, la soberanía alimentaria, el trabajo digno y saludable y el acceso a todos los derechos de las poblaciones, así como por la distribución de la riqueza y el combate al racismo, entre otras formas de intolerancia.

“Quedó demostrado que nuestro documento tiene más propuestas y soluciones que el oficial”, comparó Santos.

La asamblea finalizó con un acto “místico” en el que un grupo de mujeres disfrazadas de “panteras indignadas” cantaron consignas como “la MadreTierraestá indignada/ En la cumbre oficial no paso nada”.

Marcelo Durao, del brasileño Movimiento de Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra y deLa Vía Campesina, dijo a IPS que el documento oficial es una conclusión de “pura formalidad”,  “tomado por las corporaciones y poco preocupado por los pueblos”.

A su vez, Darcy Frigo, de la organización Tierra de Derechos”, señaló “que la cumbre oficial fue un gran fracaso, porque el documento aprobado rebajó significativamente las propuestas y dejó claro que es apenas un primer paso para ellos, lo cual confirma que estos últimos 20 años desdela Cumbredela Tierrade 1992 no se avanzó en la línea de combatir las causas de la pobreza y otras que están generando crisis ambientales y económicas”, sostuvo.

Frigo integró la comitiva que entregó el documento final al secretario general dela ONU, Ban Ki-moon.

“Ban admitió apenas que hubo divergencia en la definición del concepto de economía verde, y que se sintió impactado por nuestra posición sobre el particular de que es un falso mecanismo y solución para los problemas de la humanidad”, dijo Frigo a TerraViva.

Los organizadores consideraron positivo los debates en la cumbre de los pueblos y el nuevo método establecido de hacer converger en asambleas plenarias las conclusiones de los diversos grupos temáticos.

Pero minimizaron los problemas de organización en un evento que movilizó unas 14.000 personas de todo el mundo, como el cambio de lugares de debate, las dificultades de acceso a la alimentación y alojamiento de los participantes y de centralización de información para la prensa. (FIN/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) – The countries of the Amazon river basin are pursuing definite goals for the region, such as zero deforestation by 2020, even though the Rio+20 conference’s outcome document does not include “sustainable development goals”.

The vast Amazon region needs sustainable development.

For the last three days, concluding this Friday Jun. 22, Rio de Janeiro has been hosting the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20. The final declaration prepared for signing by the participating heads of state has already been described as “weak” and “disappointing” by the U.N., official delegates and civil society representatives.

Claudio Maretti, the coordinator of the WWF Living Amazon Initiative, told IPS the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO) has the challenging task of agreeing common goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire in 2015.

The MDGs are a set of global anti-poverty and development targets agreed in 2000 by the United Nations member states that include halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, from 1990 levels.

The eight Amazon countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – are worried that without measurable new targets the region may be overtaken by ecological disaster, which would reverberate around the planet.

“The primary need in the Amazon is the sustainable use of its resources, in order to avoid a collapse. It is possible to achieve zero deforestation by 2020, and maintain the region as a provider of services for humanity. There is still time,” said Maretti.

Twenty years ago, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Amazon countries spoke with a united voice at the inter-government meeting as well as at the parallel forum of social organisations.

One result of their combined effort was the presentation of a document titled “La Amazonia en pie” (roughly, Keep the Amazon Forest Standing), which analysed the reality of the megadiverse Amazon region, debunking many myths. The summary was written by Colombian Nobel Literature Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez.

Two decades later, the WWF predicts that if current trends of deforestation and forest fires continue, the Amazon region will lose one-third of its vegetation by 2030.

Rainforest destruction may be exacerbated in the next 50 years, in which case the planet’s largest biome will shrink to less than 10 percent of its original forest cover by 2080, according to forecasts by the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO).

The Amazon jungle is the world’s largest tropical forest, covering six percent of the earth’s land surface and 40 percent of that of Latin America and the Caribbean.

This immense region is home to 38.7 million people, including 40 indigenous peoples who speak nearly 90 different languages.

The Colombian deputy minister for Environment and Sustainable Development, Adriana Soto, said that when the Rio+20 conference is over, the joint work of the Amazon countries will continue in earnest.

“We work with the Amazon countries in the framework of ACTO, learning from the experiences of each country and their ways of managing pressures from the expanding agricultural frontier and from illegal mining, one of the greatest threats we have in Colombia,” Soto told IPS.

According to Soto, the main causes of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon region are forest fires, illegal tree felling, cattle ranching and illegal mining, which is “as complex” as the illicit drug trade that goes on in the region. “In the case of Colombia, a large proportion of illegal mining revenues goes to financing illegal groups,” she said.

“We have a declaration (on sustainability) from the Amazonian peoples, and we are organising management models to make sustainable use of forest products, so that forest dwellers can meet their needs without deforestation,” Soto said.

Consolidación Amazónica (COAMA), an NGO that has been working for indigenous people’s land rights in Colombia for the past 20 years, along with other civil society organisations, is supporting sustainable development goals for the rainforest.

But COAMA representatives stress that the goals must take into account the specific cultures, and respect the traditional knowledge, of the Amazon forest peoples.

Anthropologist Martin von Hildebrand of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation, an organisation that is part of COAMA, emphasised the importance of reaching a consensus on sustainable goals with the indigenous peoples living in the Amazon regions of the eight countries.

“We support the fight against hunger and the struggle for gender equality and access to education and healthcare, but the goals must be set in consultation with the indigenous people,” he said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 21 de junho (TerraViva) Chewang Norphel é um herói improvável. Ele é um homem modesto, pequeno, quieto e pensativo, que não checa sua imagem cada vez que passa por um espelho. Há alguns anos, seus vizinhos até pensaram que ele era louco.

Agora, Norphel, um engenheiro civil  indiano que trabalha para o departamento de Desenvolvimento Rural (DRD) de Jammu Kashmir, em Ladakh, no Himalaia, é cumprimentado pelas mesmas pessoas que não o consideravam como um benfeitor. Durante a sua longa carreira no DRD, Norphel veio a perceber que a água que flui a partir das geleiras do Himalaia para baixo das montanhas estava mudando seus padrões, tornando-se erráticos. Em uma região onde quase nunca chove, e onde a população depende 100% da água das geleiras para irrigar as plantações de trigo e legumes, estes novos padrões irregulares de fluxo eram dramáticos.

O lago glacial Tso Rolpa, na região central do Nepal, tem crescido devido ao rápido derretimento da neve com o aquecimento global. Foto: Kishor Rimal/IPS

No final da década de 1980, Norphel projetou geleiras artificiais nos lados das montanhas perto de Ladakh, que seriam expostas à luz solar direta. Tanques colocados ao lado dos leitos dos rios, ligados a eles por canais, serviriam como reservatórios de água doce durante a primavera e o verão, e em seguida, congelariam durante o inverno, para serem liberados novamente quando necessário. A princípio, os vizinhos pensaram que os engenheiros haviam enlouquecido.

No entanto, quando a primavera e o verão chegaram e os reservatórios derretidos  forneceram um fluxo constante de água para a agricultura, a genialidade de Norphel foi finalmente reconhecida. Agora ele é conhecido como “o homem do gelo”, e saudado com gratidão pelos agricultores locais. A história de Norphel é um dos exemplos mais vívidos de como as pessoas estão lidando com as mudanças climáticas no Himalaia, e ao mesmo tempo, tornando possível o desenvolvimento sustentável.

A história é contada no documentário Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown, que foi apresentado no dia 20, no Rio de Janeiro, como um evento paralelo à Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20. “Estou feliz que minha ideia foi aceita pelas pessoas, e está servindo para ajudá-los agora”, Norphel afirma no filme. A mudança climática e o aquecimento global causados pelo homem estão colocando em risco as vidas de milhões de pessoas no Paquistão, Índia, Butão, Nepal, Bangladesh e China – pessoas que não emitem quase nenhum gás de efeito estufa, e não pode pagar por soluções caras.

Os impactos do derretimento do Himalaia são múltiplos. Embora os campos de trigo de Ladakh sofram com os fluxos erráticos de água glacial na primavera e verão, outras regiões são confrontadas com a possibilidade de que o derretimento provoque uma enchente devastadora. Este é o caso de um novo lago chamado Thortormi no reino do Butão, na encosta sul da Montanha Table, perto da fronteira com o Tibete. Ele é formado a partir de água que flui para baixo a partir do derretimento da geleira Thortormi, que até alguns meses atrás foi mantida no lugar apenas por uma represa de moraina, um material constituído por restos de rochas e lama.

As populações locais temem que o lago recém-nascido extravase seus limites, destruindo a moraina, e provocando o que os cientistas chamam de enchentes por explosão de lago glacial, ou GLOF na sigla em inglês, que são tsunamis mortíferos que fluem montanha abaixo. Um tsunami desse tipo já aconteceu em 1994, matando pelo menos 21 pessoas e destruindo plantações e aldeias. Com o apoio técnico e financeiro de organizações internacionais como a Convenção das Nações Unidas sobre Mudança Climática (UNFCCC), o Programa das Nações Unidas para o Meio Ambiente (Pnuma) e o Fundo Global para o Meio Ambiente (GEF), entre outros, as populações locais transformaram a moraina em uma barragem adequada.

Para fazer isso, cerca de 350 moradores locais, incluindo mulheres e adolescentes, trabalharam em condições extremamente difíceis para transportar ferramentas, pedras e outros materiais de construção até a montanha, cinco mil metros acima. O documentário mostra o grupo de trabalho até os joelhos em água glacial, carregando pedras e lama para refazer a represa. O lago Thortormi é um dos 24 lagos glaciais butaneses considerados instáveis. O país tem 2.674 desses lagos glaciais. No filme, Pradeep Mool, um engenheiro do Centro Internacional para Desenvolvimento Integrado das Montanhas (ICIMOD), sediado em Katmandu, Nepal, disse que, “graças a imagens de satélite, é possível identificar as geleiras mais perigosas. Contudo, é impossível dizer quando ou onde uma catástrofe vai acontecer”. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) The continued exodus of Somalis to Kenya and Ethiopia has fuelled the debate on a new issue of global concern: climate refugees, driven from their homes and across borders by extreme weather events.

Climate refugees in East Africa. Credit: UNHCR

Massive displacement of people in some parts of Africa, especially the eastern part of the continent, is caused by lengthy periods of drought, famine and armed conflict. One illustration of this is the flood of people leaving Somalia since late 2010.

The issue has caused deep concern in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which launched the report “Climate Change, Vulnerability and Human Mobility” at the Rio+20 climate conference on Thursday Jun. 21.

Social organisations are highly disappointed by the outcome document of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, which has drawn heads of state from around 130 countries to Rio de Janeiro and ends Friday.

The UNHCR report, presented in the Riocentro, the conference venue, is based on the personal testimonies of 150 refugees and internally displaced people in Ethiopia and Uganda, and assesses global trends of forced displacement and their relation with climate change and natural disasters.

The growing number of climate refugees gives new urgency to the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in areas far away from the parts of the world that are most affected by the phenomenon, such as Africa.

Protesters around the world took to the streets this week to mark World Refugee Day Jun. 20 and demand that the international community do more to address the growing humanitarian problem.

The report presented by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres was produced by the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security in partnership with the UNHCR, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Bonn.

The rector of the U.N. University, Konrad Osterwalder, said “The report highlights how important it is to understand the real experiences of vulnerable people with environmental stressors today.”

“This report confirms what we have been hearing for years from refugees,” said Guterres. “They did everything they could to stay at home, but when their last crops failed, their livestock died, they had no option but to move; movement which often led them into greater harm’s way.

“I am convinced that climate change will increasingly be a driver in worsening displacement crises in the world. It is very important for the world to come together to respond to this challenge,” he said.

UNHCR spokesman in Brazil Luiz Fernando Godinho told TerraViva that although there is still no clear definition of what constitutes a “climate refugee”, what is important to understand is that climate-related phenomena are driving more and more people from their homes and countries.

“The UNHCR has issued a call at Rio+20 for (the world) to pay more attention to the existence of refugees who have been displaced by extreme climate changes,” he said. “The international community has not come up with a set of measures or agreements to give guarantees to people who are driven from their homes by natural disasters.”

There are some 15 million refugees in the world today, 10 million of whom are under the UNHCR’s mandate. But it is impossible to determine how many of them were displaced by natural disasters and climate-related phenomena.

Somalia alone, which has the third largest displaced population in the world, has 1.1 million refugees living in neighbouring countries, three times the 2004 total. They were driven out of the country by a combination of armed conflict, drought and famine.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) Last year was a particularly bad one for Asian countries facing nature’s wrath.

A bus navigates rushing floodwaters in Batticaloa, a town in eastern Sri Lanka, during the January 2011 floods. Credit: Courtesy of Sarvodaya

Of the 14.9 million people who were displaced by natural disasters in 2011, 89 percent lived in Asia, according to a new report released here by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The report, titled “Global Estimates 2011, Peoples Displaced by Natural Disasters”, said that the bulk of the displacements were the results of floods or storms. But even in previous years, Asia has claimed the number one spot in terms of the number of people forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters.

China and Thailand had the largest number of people displaced by extreme weather events, primarily due to recurring disasters. Over 4.5 million were displaced in China alone.

However, Sri Lanka, with an overall population of just over 20 million, saw the largest per capita displacements, with floods between January and February displacing three percent of the entire population, or 685,000 persons.

Most of those displacements occurred in the eastern and northeastern regions of the island, which are also some of the poorest areas.

Ponnanbalam Thanesveran, the top government official for the remote village of Verugal in eastern Trincomalee District, experienced firsthand the details of the disaster.

Between January and February of 2011, the eastern region of Sri Lanka received a year’s worth of rain in one month. Thanesveran’s office was cut off for over two weeks, during which time he used a boat to get to his office and get around his small constituency.

“I might be the first Sri Lankan government official who carried out his duties from a boat, wearing a life jacket and shorts,” he told TerraViva.

The floods destroyed the entire rice harvest in Verugal. According to figures released later by the government, around 20 percent of the overall harvest was wiped out.

The report had more bad news. It said that changing climate patterns that have altered rainfall patterns combined with growing populations were likely to increase the vulnerabilities of Asian populations living at risk of natural disasters.

In Sri Lanka, weather experts warn that while the number of days of precipitation has gone down, the shorter rains have increased in intensity, leading to frequent flash floods.

“The (other) problem is that most of the people who get affected in areas like Verugal are the poorest. One blow like last year’s floods and it will take years for some of them to recover,” Thanesveran said.

At the release of the report, officials said that the inability of poor villagers and farmers to cope with such disasters needs to be taken into consideration at negotiations like those which just concluded in Rio.

“The international community must ensure that vulnerable communities are prepared to respond and able to find sustainable solutions as they recover from such life-changing events,” NRC’s Secretary General Elisabeth Rasmusson said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) When the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development ended Friday, there were winners and losers – mostly losers.

The omission of reproductive rights is a step backwards from previous agreements, said Gro Harlem Brundtland. UN Photo/Mark Garten

The United Nations and the host country Brazil – along with big business – put a positive spin on the outcome of the conference, a follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit.

It was another historic document that will change the world, they claimed.

But most non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society representatives and women activists expressed disappointment and outrage over the final blueprint, titled “The Future We Want”, which was approved by world leaders Friday.

The comparison with the 1992 Agenda 21 was inevitable.

Anita Nayar of the Manila-based Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) told IPS that in the historic agreement adopted in 1992, there were around 170 references to gender and an entire chapter on women.

In the latest version of “The Future We Want”, there are only around 50, and these have been watered down and were used as negotiating chips by states, she said.

“It is not a simple matter of gender mentions either, but rather there is clearly an unwillingness by some states to agree on concrete actions and an overall weakening of internationally agreed commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment,” Nayar added.

She said while human rights is generally affirmed in the context of sexual and reproductive health, the specific omission of reproductive rights is glaring.

Equally critical was Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and chair of the Brundtland Commission (named after her) which brought the concept of sustainable development to global attention 25 years ago.

“The Rio+20 declaration does not do enough to set humanity on a sustainable path, decades after it was agreed that this is essential for both people and the planet. I understand the frustration in Rio today,” she said in a statement released Thursday.

Brundtland, who is a member of a group called The Elders, said, “We can no longer assume that our collective actions will not trigger tipping points, as environmental thresholds are breached, risking irreversible damage to both ecosystems and human communities. These are the facts – but they have been lost in the final document.

“Also regrettable is the omission of reproductive rights – which is a step backwards from previous agreements. However – with this imperfect text, we have to move forward. There is no alternative,” she said.

The reactions from groups at the grassroots level were mostly negative.

“I haven’t seen this much fake green covering since last St Patrick’s day. The document does not come close to the future we really want and that’s because it was written with the interests of the few rather than the many in mind,”  said Nathan Thanki of Earth, one of the protesting youth leaders who occupied the plenary entrance at the Rio+20 site on Thursday.

Noelene Nabulivou, Women’s Action for Change, Fiji, told IPS, “As an activist from Pacific I see clearly the catastrophic impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and sea level rise. Rio+20 does not do justice to the immediacy and severity of this global problem.”

Nicole Bidegain of GEO-ICAE, Uruguay said, “The green economy simply reinforces the current model of development, based on overconsumption and production. The same financial mechanisms that caused multiple crises since 2008 are being promoted, but this time to commodify nature. There is enough evidence on the negative impacts of the financialisation of nature on women’s rights and livelihoods. “

She said the private sector as a source of finance is prioritised over public financing. “This is ironic as the private sector is concerned with maximising profit in the short term, not with long-term investments needed to transition to genuine people-centred sustainable development.”

Monica Novillo, Coordinadora de la Mujer, Bolivia, said, “I came to Rio+20 with high expectations that governments would build on the landmark resolution on sexual and reproductive health and rights for youth and adolescents adopted at the 45th Commission on Population Development.”

She said Brazil played a key role in creating this outcome, “so I expected that they would strongly defend these fundamental rights at Rio+20 against a minority of conservative governments.”

While the Cairo and Beijing agendas (on population and women) were reaffirmed at Rio+20, it is high time that these agreements are fully implemented, she added.

DAWN’s Gita Sen regretted that Rio+20 had virtually buried reproductive rights.

She told IPS, “Reproductive rights has been traded away. It is very clear in this outcome document that there is a continuing war on women’s human rights launched by the Holy See (Vatican) along with some very conservative governments.”

YEOSU, South Korea, Jun. 21 (TerraViva) Oceans, seas and coasts provide over 200 million jobs globally, while 4.3 billion people get 15 percent of their intake of animal protein from the seas. Travel and tourism, ports and energy production use oceans and seas to create jobs and economic and social benefits for millions of people.

Wendy Watson-Wright, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Over the last century a multitude of threats has eroded the ocean’s ability to sustain the benefits it can provide for present and future generations.  Poorly managed human activities have also eroded oceans’ resilience, particularly to climate change.

Sustainable management of marine ecosystems has not been accorded the priority it urgently deserves. At the Earth Summit currently underway in Rio de Janeiro, however, many hope these issues take centre-stage.

On the sidelines of Expo 2012, Yeosu, South Korea, whose theme this year is ‘The Living Ocean and Coast’, IPS correspondent Manipadma Jena asked Wendy Watson-Wright, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), what steps need to be taken to manage the challenges facing oceans and how much of this to expect at Rio+20.

Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: What is IOC’s view on the present state of ocean acidification and what are the mechanisms for controlling it?

A: Ocean acidification is definitely one of the most important issues facing the planet today. The oceans are now 30 percent more acidic than before the industrial revolution and as one of my colleagues says, ‘Oceans are already hot, sour and breathless’ – meaning, currently with climate change and absorption of carbon dioxide, the oceans are becoming warmer, more acidic and more hypoxic – with more dead zones in them now.

If we continue with business-as-usual oceans will be 150 percent more acidic by the year 2100. Already we are seeing the impact on marine organisms, their reproductive functions and mortality, which is most evident in the coral reefs.

While we need to stop emitting as much as we are currently, we also need to know more about acidification’s impact on sea organisms. We need more observation. We do have a global ocean observation system, but there is no observation network for ocean acidification which needs to be incorporated.

Q: We need more science, we need more research – how plentiful is funding for such activities?

A: Funding is forthcoming in those countries dependent upon the ocean, like the Small Island Countries – they do not have a lot of money, but are concerned and acting already. So are Monaco, Australia, Canada, the U.S. and Korea.

By hosting Expo 2012 (with the theme) ‘The Living Ocean and Coast’, (South) Korea is successfully directing world attention to the oceans.

As land creatures we tend to think primarily in terms of land; oceans remain out of sight, out of mind. In most national capital cities where decisions are made, oceans do not figure in day-to-day activities so funding is that much (harder) to come by.

Q:  What is UNESCO doing about increasing awareness levels on oceans at the policy-making level and particularly at Rio+20?

[related_articles]A:  At Rio+20 we are trying to heighten awareness that if we do not have sustainable development of the oceans we cannot have sustainable development of the planet. The only reason we are here on the planet is because of the ocean.

I think that (our) planet is misnamed: it should be called planet Ocean and not planet Earth.

Ahead of Rio +20, IOC – the ocean knowledge, data exchange and ocean services arm of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) – led an inter-agency paper, ‘Blueprint for Ocean and Coastal Sustainability’, translated into five languages including Korean. IOC has also been hosting side events, including talks in the European Parliament on oceans in the Rio context.

Q: Where do you see the Yeosu Declaration in the context of Rio+20?

A: The Yeosu Declaration will be adopted on Aug. 12, 2012, after Rio+20 and it is probably good timing. I am hopeful that Rio will come up with something very strong on oceans and then countries sign the Yeosu Declaration saying we must look after oceans if we are to look after humanity – it will bring more attention to the crisis currently facing (the world’s) oceans.

Q: In the midst of the debate on oceans, are we adequately addressing the issue of fisher communities?

A: In our work at UNESCO-IOC we try to involve the local people, particularly in capacity building on coastal issues, for example in the tsunami warning system.  We are also giving importance to getting the oceans into the school education system; we teach the children and they teach the rest when they grow up. But I think all of us could do much better.

Q: Where do we stand on the Blue Carbon issue?

A: We are at the very beginning. Outside the scientific community few know that coastal ecosystems like mangroves and sea grass are much more efficient at sequestering carbon; this knowledge needs to be brought in to the ocean science community, to policy makers and most importantly, to communities who look after these ecosystems. Blue carbon holds a lot of promise.

Q: What, currently, is your most passionate project within IOC?

A: Right now, working towards creating awareness at Rio+20 about the fact that the global oceans observation system is critical. In order to make good science, so necessary for good policy, we need good observation. This, and ocean acidification, marine litter – including the major concern on micro-plastic litter in the marine environment – are my other interest areas.

Q: Will Rio+20 reach a sufficient conclusion on the issue of oceans?

A: I am very hopeful; and there is a lot going on. The World Bank launched its very inclusive global partnership for oceans. The U.N. Secretary General will announce at Rio+20 the Oceans Compact (a strategic vision for stakeholders, including the U.N., to collaborate and accelerate progress towards the goal of Healthy Oceans for Prosperity).

The focus of Rio+20 is civil society. The Brazilian government has launched a wide-reaching web-based dialogue on all thematic including oceans. I am very interested to see the outcome of these (efforts).

(END)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 21 Junho (TerraViva) – O êxodo de populações da Somália para o Quênia ou Etiópia de finais de 2010 e ao longo de 2011 aponta para a discussão de uma nova preocupação mundial: os refugiados climáticos que se veem obrigados a deslocar-se para países vizinhos após serem atingidos por extremos do clima.

Este deslocamento em massa em alguns países africanos, em especial do leste do continente, é ocasionado por longos períodos de seca somado aos conflitos armados que existem na região.

Crianças refugiadas no leste da África. Crédito: Acnur

Este tema tem sido motivo de preocupação para o escritório do Alto Comissariado das Nações Unidas para Refugiados (ACNUR), que aproveitou a Conferência Rio+20 para lançar, nesta quinta-feira, dia 21 de junho, o relatório “Mudanças climáticas, vulnerabilidade e mobilidade humana”.

O estudo se baseia no relato de 150 refugiados do Leste da África e avalia as tendências globais para o deslocamento forçado e suas relações com mudanças climáticas e desastres naturais.

O relatório foi realizado pelo ACNUR em parceria com o Instituto para Meio Ambiente e Segurança Humana da Universidade das Nações Unidas com o apoio da London School of Economics e a Universidade de Bonn, na Alemanha.

Segundo o reitor da Universidade da ONU, Konrad Osterwalder, “o relatório dá destaque à importância para a necessidade de compreender as experiências reais de pessoas vulneráveis que sofrem com os estresses ambientais”.

O alto comissário para Refugiados, Antonio Guterres, reconheceu que o relatório vem a confirmar relatos de refugiados que sofrem com extremos climáticos há alguns anos.

“Os refugiados fazem de tudo para continuar vivendo em suas casas e em suas terras, mas quando as suas colheitas já não rendem, seus estoques de alimentos e cultivos já não garantem a subsistência, eles não tem outra alternativa que não se mudar”, afirmou Guterres.

Desde os anos 1950 que chove cada vez menos no leste da África. Crédito: Acnur

“Estou convencido que as mudanças no clima irão piorar ainda mais as crises de deslocamentos no mundo. É muito importante que o mundo ajude a reagir e a dar respostas a estes desafios”, anunciou em Guterres.

De acordo com o porta-voz do ACNUR no Brasil, Luiz Fernando Godinho, ainda não há uma definição técnica sobre o termo ‘refugiado climático’, mas admite que, de fato, cada vez mais pessoas se deslocam no mundo em decorrência de fenômenos associados ao clima. E à medida que avançam os impactos ambientais, o número de deslocados só tende a piorar.

“O ACNUR fez um apelo na Rio+20 para que estejamos atentos para a existência de refugiados que se deslocam por força de mudanças extremas do clima. Não há por parte da comunidade internacional um conjunto de medidas e convenções para dar garantias a essas pessoas que se movem por desastres naturais”, disse Godinho à IPS.

Existem no mundo 15 milhões de refugiados, dos quais 10 milhões estão sob o mandato das Nações Unidas. No entanto, não é possível saber quantos destes foram deslocados por força de catástrofes naturais.

Apenas a Somália, o terceiro maior país em número de refugiados tem hoje 1.1 milhão de refugiados, três vezes mais que em 2004. O país sofre com conflitos armados, mas também com crises associadas à seca e à fome. (TerraViva/FIM)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Agriculture and food security are one area where experts say that even a more general level of agreement, as reached in the final Rio+20 declaration, constitutes progress.

Peruvian farmer Inocencia Chipana shows her coffee beans outside a cooperative warehouse. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

“The European Union considers that the Rio final agreement could have gone much further, (but) when it comes to agriculture and food security, I think the document is consistent enough in that the importance of small family farming for improving global food security is properly recognised,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos told TerraViva.

According to the commissioner, the main value of the Rio agreement for global food security is that it acknowledges that this is an issue that needs to be addressed from economic, environmental and social points of view and that international collective efforts are needed in this direction.

Other positive aspects in the agreement, according to Ciolos, are the acknowledgement that technology and innovation have to be made available to small farmers, not just to agri-businesses, and the need to cushion farmers from the negative effects of global food price volatility.

Ciolos’ relatively positive assessment of agriculture and food security in the Rio+20 final document is shared by Emile Frison, director general of Biodiversity International.

According to Frison, agriculture was one of the less controversial points in the negotiations but this should be taken as a good sign, meaning that countries have come to accept the urgency of addressing food security as a global problem.

“Malnutrition has finally been recognised as a major concern for the future,” Frison told TerraViva. “And it has been acknowledged that if we want to address the issue of malnutrition, we cannot solve it only by offering pills and supplements, but a more sustainable solution has to be found and this has to come through a more diverse agriculture that provides a more diverse diet and a better health.”

RÍO DE JANEIRO, 21 jun (TerraViva)  El resultado de Río+20 hasta ahora es un fiasco para las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG), que rechazaron el documento final negociado por los gobiernos.

El director general de Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, calificó de “completo fracaso” el resultado de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, conocida como Río+20, que se desarrolla entre el 20 y el 22 de este mes en esta ciudad, por su falta de metas concretas y plazos.

Greenpeace ha sido uno de los más duros críticos de las negociaciones en los últimos meses sobre la declaración final de la conferencia.

“Hay muchas vueltas y mucho teatro para intentar demostrar que el resultado es exitoso”, dijo Naidoo este jueves, un día antes de que la cumbre termine oficialmente.

“¿Hay puntos de referencia específicos? ¿Hay recursos específicos (comprometidos)?”, preguntó. “La realidad es que es un completo fracaso en ese sentido”.

Naidoo dijo que el fracaso de la conferencia no debía ser atribuido plenamente a Brasil, pero añadió que la nación organizadora debía aceptar parte de la culpa por haber presionado por un consenso sin importar su consistencia.

“Muchos gobiernos se quejaron de cuán fuerte Brasil estaba presionando para obtener un acuerdo a cualquier costo”, dijo, añadiendo que el resultado final fue un documento con pocas ambiciones.

También criticó a las naciones ricas por defender solo sus intereses.

Algunos funcionarios de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas que siguieron de cerca el proceso reconocieron que hubo presión sobre los negociadores.

Uno de ellos dijo a TerraViva que muchos países coincidían en que la declaración no ofrecía soluciones a las crisis más graves que afronta la humanidad, pero que no podían decirlo públicamente.

Naidoo subrayó que la declaración, al carecer de objetivos específicos, no frenará los problemas crecientes del cambio climático, la pérdida de biodiversidad y la deforestación.

“Lo mínimo aceptable son todas esas cosas fundamentales sobre el ambiente y el clima, que son problemas muy graves. Todas las señales indican que el tiempo se está agotando. En el contexto de compromisos específicos con recursos apropiados, declaramos el resultado un fracaso épico”, afirmó Naidoo.

Documento rechazado

Las ONG presentes en la conferencia de Río+20 se quejan de que solo fueron consultadas sobre el documento final a último minuto, cuando ya no podían incidir significativamente en él.

Al hablar durante la ceremonia de apertura del segmento oficial de la conferencia el miércoles 20, cuando se suponía que los jefes de Estado y de gobierno debían rubricar el documento presentado por Brasil, el representante de una organización señaló: “El texto ha perdido completamente contacto con la realidad, y las ONG en Río no lo avalan”.

El representante de la ONG (identificado por la prensa brasileña como Waek Hamidan, de Climate Action Network Europe) señaló que el texto era un fracaso porque no abordaba temas cruciales como la eliminación de subsidios a los combustibles fósiles y a la energía nuclear, ni establecía pasos concretos para frenar el deterioro de los mares internacionales.

El activista además pidió que, si el texto permanecía como hasta ahora, se eliminaran las menciones a la sociedad civil de la introducción.

Las ONG presentes en Río de Janeiro expresaron profunda decepción por el documento final, aunque no todas necesariamente están de acuerdo con la eliminación de las menciones a la sociedad civil en el documento.

Barbara Stocking, directora ejecutiva de Oxfam, dijo a TerraViva que su organización apoyaba la eliminación de la referencia a la sociedad civil en el texto.

“Básicamente, la sociedad civil no está de acuerdo con esa serie de declaraciones”, señaló Stocking.

“Los aspectos básicos están, pero no hay nada allí realmente por lo cual la sociedad civil haya luchado. No hubo un adecuado proceso para involucrar a la sociedad civil”, añadió.

“El diálogo recién comenzó en vísperas de la actual sección de alto nivel, y no hubo medios para poder incidir, pues el texto ya estaba cerrado”, afirmó.

Pero Sharon Burrow, secretaria general de la Confederación Sindical Internacional, tuvo una postura diferente.

“Apoyo la ambición, pero mi reto no es eliminarnos del texto, sino aclarar qué significa realmente codeterminación (participación en las decisiones) para avanzar”, dijo Burrow.

“Nosotros, la sociedad civil, los sindicatos, representamos al pueblo al igual que los políticos. Ellos nos presentaron un texto final poco antes de que comenzara la cumbre, y eso fue muy frustrante”, afirmó.

“No se trata una palabra en particular en el texto, sino del hecho de que si hablan seriamente de tomar decisiones compartidas deben decirnos cómo participaremos”, dijo por su parte Naidoo.  (FIN/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Over one billion people in the developing world could benefit from the Sustainable Energy for All initiative to bring electricity and clean-burning cookstoves to those without by 2030, U.N. officials said here June 21.

Some 2.7 billion people rely on traditional biomass such as wood or dung for cooking and heating. Credit: IPS

However, civil society is critical that the target communities are simply being treated as customers and not partners in this effort.

“Hundreds of millions will gain improved access to energy through grid extension and off-grid solutions, as well as scaled-up renewable energy sources,” said Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and head of UN-Energy.

Launched last fall, Sustainable Energy for All has three goals: ensure universal access to modern energy services; double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency; and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

Worldwide, approximately 2.7 billion people rely on traditional biomass such as wood or dung for cooking and heating. Some 1.3 billion have no access to electricity, and up to a billion more only have access to unreliable electricity networks. Most energy-poor communities are concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

“This initiative is being decided by an unaccountable hand-picked group dominated by representatives of multinational corporations and fossil fuel interests,” Nimmo Bassey, Nigerian environmentalist activist and chair of Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), told TerraViva.

Many of those involved have strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, including banks that finance and profit from new oil and gas development. The Bank of America is the world’s third largest coal financier, according a new FOEI report.

Other key players include Eskom, South Africa’s coal and electricity utility, Brazil’s largest power utility Electrobras, along with oil and gas companies Statoil and Duke Energy. Former CEOs of Shell and BP are also involved. The sole independent representative of civil society is the Barefoot College of India, says the report, “Reclaim the UN”.

FOEI and a broad coalition of 107 NGOs want energy access to be improved through community-controlled small-scale sustainable energy projects.

They are calling on the U.N. secretary-general to open up the process to affected and marginalised communities so they can be full participants.

Bassey and others are increasingly concerned that U.N. organisations are being dominated by corporate interests, particularly in the areas of energy, agriculture and food, water and the financialisation of nature.

“As it stands currently, ‘sustainable energy for all’ will fail spectacularly in its goal of tackling climate change and poverty,” he said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Danish artist Jen Galschiot is sending a strong message to delegates at the Rio+20 summit – one that some may not wish to hear.

Artist Jen Galschiot discusses his work. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

His metal sculptures, found outside the RioCentro summit complex, are elegant and diverse, but also aim to prick the conscience of world leaders gathered here. The most conspicuous one – the Statue of Liberty – holds a document with an ironic message: “The Freedom to Pollute”.

“We are not asking people to freely pollute the environment. But this sculpture symbolises the conflict between our demands for unbridled consumption and our concern for the planet that would imply that we restrict our excesses,” Galschiot told TerraViva.

Another eye-catching statue shows a pregnant woman hanging on a cross, titled “In the Name of God” – statement about the Catholic Church’s rejection of family planning and contraceptive use.

“The world is changing very fast, and population pressure is already affecting the climate and livelihoods. The more people there are in the world, the more forests are felled to create space for settlement, farming and grazing, the more the climate keeps changing,” said the artist.

“People need the freedom to choose the size of families they should have, in tandem with the available resources,” he added.

Galschiot’s sculptures, such as a series of figures titled “Climate Refugees”, paint a disturbing vision of a world plagued by hunger and want.

According to the United Nations, the number of people forced to move from their homes due to climate-related disasters could rise to 150 million worldwide in the next 40 years.

“It will be remembered that in 1992, the world’s heads of states made a promise to the world that they would form a global partnersdhip for sustainable development, and make the world a better place for the future generations. But 20 years on, all the promises have been broken. Billions of people are going without food, have no access to electricity, children are not going to school, and the list is endless,” he said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 21 Junho (TerraViva) – Apesar de a versão final da declaração da Rio+20 não incluir metas definidas para o desenvolvimento sustentável, as chamadas SDGs em inglês (Sustainable Development Goals), os países amazônicos se lançaram à missão de sair da Conferência das Nações Unidas no Rio de Janeiro com a definição de metas de desenvolvimento sustentável para a Amazônia, como o desmatamento zero para 2020.

O coordenador da Iniciativa Amazônia Viva da Rede WWF, Claudio Maretti, disse à IPS que a Organização do Tratado de Cooperação Amazônica (OTCA) tem o desafio de acordar entre os oito países amazônicos – Bolívia, Brasil, Colômbia, Equador, Guiana, Peru, Suriname e Venezuela – uma substituição às Metas do Milênio que expiram em 2015 sob o risco de a Amazônia viver um colapso ecológico.

Amazônia precisa de metas de desenvolvimento sustentável.

“O grande alerta da Amazônia está associado à utilização das riquezas de forma sustentável para evitar que entre em colapso. Para 2020, é possível termos desmatamento zero para que a Amazônia possa continuar a ser provedora de serviços para a humanidade. Ainda dá tempo”, afirmou Claudio Maretti.

Se mantida a tendência atual de desmatamento e incêndios florestais, a Amazônia terá cerca de um terço a menos de vegetação em 2030, segundo a WWF. Esse quadro pode ser ainda mais aprofundado em 50 anos, quando o maior bioma do planeta chegará, em 2080, com menos de 10% da floresta original, segundo projeções da Perspectiva Mundial sobre Diversidade Biológica (Global Biodiversity Outlook).

A Amazônia possui a maior floresta tropical úmida, representa 6% da superfície terrestre e ocupa 40% do território da América Latina e Caribe. Lá vivem 38,7 milhões de habitantes, além de 40 povos indígenas que falam quase 90 línguas diferentes.

Segundo garantiu a vice-ministra do Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Colômbia, Adriana Soto, após a Rio+20, aagenda conjunta de trabalho entre os países amazônicos será aprofundada.

“Trabalhamos com os países amazônicos no marco da OTCA onde todos aprendemos as experiências vividas em cada país e como manejar a pressão de expansão agropecuária na região e os problemas de mineração ilegal, uma dos maiores ameaças que temos no território colombiano”, disse à IPS Soto.

Segundo a representante do ministério colombiano, os principais fatores de desmatamento na Amazônia colombiana, são os incêndios florestais, o corte ilegal de madeira, a criação de gado e a mineração ilegal que é “similar em complexidade” ao narcotráfico que atua na região.

“No caso colombiano, boa parte da mineração ilegal financia grupos à margem da lei. Temos uma declaração dos povos amazônicos e é possível que tenhamos modelos de gestão que estamos organizando, como uso dos produtos das florestas para que seus habitantes tenham uma alternativa diferente a estes motores de desflorestação”, ressaltou Adriana Soto.

A Consolidação Amazônica (COAMA), iniciativa colombiana que há 20 anos defende a gestão dos territórios amazônicos pelos povos indígenas defende o estabelecimento próprio de objetivos para a região amazônica de acordo com às especificidades das culturas e em respeito  aos conhecimento tradicionais dos povos da floresta.

O antropólogo Martin Von Hildebrand da Fundação Gaia Amazonas, integrante da COAMA, defende a formulação de metas consensuadas com as populações indígenas.

“Defendemos o combate à fome, maior igualdade de gênero, acesso à educação e à saúde, mas as metas devem ser definidas escutando os próprios povos indígenas”, afirmou Von Hildebrand. (TerraViva)

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) The outcome of Rio+20 was dismissed as a “complete failure” for its lack of specific targets and deadlines by Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace.

“The bottom line is that on all fundamental things on environment and climate, things are extremely dire,” said Greenpeace head Kumi Naidoo. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Greenpeace has been one of the most vocal critics of the outcome of months of discussions on the final declaration at the Rio summit on sustainable development, which has increasingly come under fire by civil society as a sellout.

“There is a lot of spin and theatre to show that the outcome here has been a success,” Naidoo said June 21, one day before the summit officially ends.

“Are there specific benchmarks, are there specific resources (committed)?” he asked. “The reality is that there is a complete failure in that regard.”

Naidoo acknowledged that there were major disagreements among negotiating countries, but addsed that this will not be emphasised in official recaps of the summit. “They were under pressure to put on a nice face and say it was success.”

The Greenpeace head said that the full failure of the outcome should not be put entirely on Brazil, but added that the host nation should accept some blame for its efforts to secure a consensus, no matter how weak.

“Many governments have complained how hard Brazil was pushing to get any agreement at any cost,” he said, adding that the final result was a document with the lowest possible ambition. He also blamed richer nations for defending their own narrow interests.

Some U.N. officials who have been monitoring the negotiating process also said that there was pressure. One told TerraViva that many countries agree the declaration does not offer solutions to the dire crises currently faced by humanity, but were unlikely to say so publicly.

Naidoo stressed that a declaration lacking specific targets will fail to halt worsening problems like climate change, loss of biodiversity and deforestation.

“The bottom line is that on all fundamental things on environment and climate, things are extremely dire. All the signs are that time is running out. Within the context of lack of specific commitments with appropriate resources, we declare the outcome as an epic failure,” Naidoo said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 20 de junho (TerraViva) O clichê de que cúpulas gigantescas como a Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20, são “grandes demais para ter sucesso” também pode ser aplicado para as megalópoles dos nossos dias, tais como o Rio de Janeiro: elas são simplesmente grandes demais para se tornarem verdes e sustentáveis.

Barracos perto de cursos de água são uma visão comum em Manila. Foto: Kara Santos/IPS

E ainda assim, este é precisamente o compromisso assumido pelos prefeitos das 59 maiores cidades do mundo, reunidas no chamado grupo C-40. Em um evento paralelo durante a Rio+20, os prefeitos do grupo C-40 lembraram que os maiores centros urbanos do mundo têm “o potencial de reduzir as suas emissões anuais de gases de efeito estufa em mais de um bilhão de toneladas até 2030″, uma quantidade equivalente às emissões anuais de México e Canadá juntos. Agora, os prefeitos querem reduzir as emissões em 45% até 2030.

Atenção para a palavra “potencial” – onipresente nestes dias de admissões humildes de bem conhecidos dados científicos sobre catástrofes concretas, e promessas vagas para enfrentar os problemas em algum momento no futuro. Na verdade, megalópoles em todo o mundo, do Rio de Janeiro à Cidade do México, de Tóquio a Xangai, têm um vasto potencial para reduzir sua poluição, porque elas são grandes poluidoras em primeiro lugar. Uma megalópole por si só constitui um desperdício sem sentido de energia, humana ou não.

Para mudar isso, as cidades precisam lançar uma revolução improvável e possivelmente pouco popular, que poderia afetar praticamente todos os aspectos da vida, dos transportes e a gestão de resíduos, até a geração e o consumo de eletricidade, o abastecimento de alimentos e a gestão populacional. Para uma tal revolução ter sucesso, as cidades deveriam parar de atrair populações rurais em busca de uma vida melhor nos grandes centros urbanos. Se a revolução fosse bem-sucedida, as megalópoles se tornariam capitais de países de contos de fadas, algo improvável de se tornar realidade em nossas vidas.

Vamos começar com o transporte. É sabido que a atividade de transporte é responsável por 13% de todos os gases de efeito estufa gerados pelo homem, e por 23% do dióxido de carbono (CO2) do mundo, provenientes da combustão de combustíveis fósseis. A dependência do petróleo é de assustadores 95%, sendo o setor responsável por 60% do consumo total de petróleo. Para reduzir a sua quota de poluição, as cidades teriam de oferecer transporte público eficiente e, simultaneamente, desencorajar o uso de automóveis particulares, aumentando substancialmente a tributação e os preços dos combustíveis, e limitando o acesso aos centros urbanos.

As cidades teriam de incentivar o uso de bicicletas, aumentar significativamente a eficiência de motores de combustão para reduzir os gases de escape e garantir a segurança para os usuários do transporte público, especialmente nos países em desenvolvimento. Hoje, o crime é um importante fator desestimulante para os cidadãos, particularmente as mulheres, usarem o transporte público.

Seria um eufemismo chamar esse conjunto de metas algo difícil de alcançar, caro, e muito provavelmente impopular. Mas isso é só o começo da lista de coisas a fazer para administrações e planejadores urbanos.

Embora o aquecimento não seja um problema grave nas cidades tropicais, ele o é em países com invernos frios. Nesses locais, otimizar o isolamento térmico dos edifícios é uma obrigação, e também é ter sistemas de condicionamento de ar mais eficientes durante os verões quentes. Isto requer enormes investimentos privados, que precisam do apoio de agências estatais de crédito, e cortes de impostos para torná-los atraentes para os cidadãos. Edifícios-modelo com emissões zero já existem em alguns países industrializados – mas eles são modelos, ainda estão muito longe de se tornarem o padrão da política habitacional.

Além disso, as cidades terão de depender cada vez mais em fontes renováveis – sol, vento, biomassa. Elas devem desencorajar resíduos, especialmente plástico, alumínio e outros compostos não degradáveis. Quando os resíduos são inevitáveis, eles deve ser reciclados. Cidades terão de usar fontes locais e regionais de alimentos para reduzir ainda mais as emissões dos transportes. E assim por diante …

Como já mencionado, a cidade sustentável do futuro não apenas deveria desencorajar a migração vinda do campo, como também teria que incentivar o retorno para as áreas rurais para reduzir a sua própria população. Em outras palavras, a cidade sustentável do futuro teria que espelhar o país sustentável do futuro, que oferece oportunidades para populações em áreas rurais, cruzadas por mais por ferrovias do que por rodovias, o país verde e socialmente justo de nossos sonhos.

Esse país não está logo ali na esquina, e certamente não se tornará possível por meio dessas conferências gigantescas, como a Rio+20. Esse país, os cidadãos terão de construir por conta própria. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM 2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Chewang Norphel is an unlikely hero. He’s a modest, small, quiet, thoughtful man, who doesn’t check his own image every time he walks by a mirror. A couple of years ago, some of his neighbours even thought that he was crazy.

The Tso Rolpa glacial lake in central Nepal has grown due to the faster melting of snow with global warming. Credit: Kishor Rimal/IPS

But now, Norphel, an Indian civil engineer working for the department of Rural Development (DRD) of Jammu Kashmir in Ladakh, in the Himalayas, is greeted by the very same people who dismissed him as a benefactor.

During his long stint at the DRD, Norphel came to realise that the water flowing from the Himalayan glaciers down the mountains was changing its patterns and had become erratic. In a region where it almost never rains, and where the population depends 100 percent on glacier water to irrigate wheat and vegetable plantations, these new erratic flow patterns were dramatic.

In the late 1980s, Norphel designed artificial glaciers on the sides of the mountains near Ladakh, which would be exposed to direct sunlight. Tanks placed just off the rivers’ beds, connected to them by channels, would serve as reservoirs of fresh water during spring and summer, and then freeze during the winter, to release again when needed.

At first, neighbours thought the engineers had gone mad.

But when spring and summer came, and the reservoirs melted down and provided a sure, steady flow of water for agriculture, Norphel’s genius was finally recognised. Now he is known as “the ice man”, and greeted with gratitude by local farmers.

Norphel’s story is one of the most vivid examples of how people are coping with climate change in the Himalayas, and at the same time making sustainable development possible.

It is told in the documentary film “Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown”, which was presented June 20 in Rio de Janeiro, as a side event to the U.N. summit on sustainable development, also known as Rio+20.

“I’m happy that my idea was accepted by people, and is helping them now,” Norphel says in the film.

Human-made climate change and global warming are putting the lives of millions of people in Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and China at risk – people who themselves emit almost no greenhouse gases but cannot afford cost-intensive solutions.

The impacts of the Himalayan meltdown are multiple. While the wheat fields of Ladakh suffer from erratic glacial water flows in spring and summer, other regions are confronted with the possibility that the meldown may cause a devastating flood.

This is the case of a new lake called Thortormi in the kingdom of Bhutan, on the southern slopes of Table Mountain near the border with Tibet. It formed from water flowing down from the melting Thortormi glacier, which until some months ago was held in place only by a moraine dam, made up of rocky debris and mud.

Local populations fear that the newborn lake could burst its boundaries, destroy the moraine, and provoke what scientists call glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOF, deadly tsunamis flowing down the mountain. Such a tsunami already happened in 1994, killing at least 21 people and destroying crops and villages.

With the financial and technical support of international organisations such as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), among others, local populations transformed the moraine into a proper dam.

To that end, some 350 local people, including women and teenagers, worked under extremely difficult conditions to transport tools, stones, and other construction material up the mountain 5,000 metres above. “Himalayan Meltdown” shows the group working knee-deep in glacial water carrying stones and mud to upgrade the dam.

Lake Thortormi is one of the 24 Bhutanese glacial lakes considered unstable. The country has 2,674 such glacial lakes.

In the film, Pradeep Mool, an engineer with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), based in Kathmandu, Nepal, said that, “Thanks to satellite imagery, it’s possible to identify the most dangerous glaciers. But it’s impossible to say when or where a catastrophe will happen.”

BANGALORE, Jun 21 (TerraViva)

Heads of state and governments are meeting in Rio de Janeiro this week to decide how to renew their pledges made during the first Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992.

The Chikka Sampige tree is revered by the Soligas tribe in the Billigiri Ranga Temple Tiger Reserve as the sister of the 1000 year old Dodda Sampige tree. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

The Indian government, with its impressive dossier of legislation on conservation and biodiversity, is at the forefront of negotiations on sustainable development, but a closer look at the country’s involvement in a largely failed attempt to safeguard the earth’s fragile ecosystems suggests that the entire global model is deeply flawed.

The Rio summit 20 years ago appeared to be a valiant effort to involve stakeholders in environmental conservation, poverty eradication, and climate change mitigation through equitable legal responsibilities.

But concepts like the Green Economy and the Convention on Biodiversity agreed upon in 1992 turned out to a clever disguise for profit making at the expense of the environment.

Anil Agarwal, founder-director of the Indian environmental think tank, Centre for Science and Environment, proclaimed back in 1992 that environmental conservation was interwoven with the development paradigm: only if impoverished people are allowed to harness forest resources for their livelihoods can poverty be banished, he averred. Poverty and profits thus became two sides of the same coin in Rio in 1992, and ‘biodiversity’ was another commodity up for grabs.

India followed up on the first Earth summit by enacting the Biodiversity Act and the Forest Rights Act, which gave forest dwelling ecological refugees and third generation indigenous people the right to harvest forest resources for livelihood purposes and granted the right of residence in forests.

Protected Areas like wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, tiger reserves and biosphere reserves were obliged to accommodate forest dwellers.

Following the Stockholm conference of 1972, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi pledged to resuscitate the Royal Bengal tiger’s gene pool, habitat, and wildlife through Project Tiger – an ambitious conservation agenda.

But less than three decades after those promises, 22 tigers were massacred in the premier Sariska Tiger Reserve in India, where impoverished farmers, lacking employment opportunities in forests, avenged the loss of their cattle by conniving with poachers to kill every single tiger in the protected area.

Though tiger reserves have increased in number from 28 to 43 after the Sariska slaughter, “Coexistence (between forest dwellers and wildlife) is a myth and conflict is inevitable,” said Praveen Bhargav of Wildlife First in Bangalore.

“Development is necessary. Resources have to be utilised. But both development and resource utilisation has to be done on a sustainable basis with an eco-friendly model,” said Dr. Suresh Patil, deputy director of the Anthropological Survey of India in Kolkata.

To date, this has not been the case in India.

“The Biodiversity Act (2002) is no more than an emaciated version of the global compact. The Act neither informs nor influences the working of the Forest Act, Forest Conservation Act, Wildlife Protection Act and the Forest Rights Act, legislation that covers over 95 percent of biodiversity in India,” M.K. Ramesh, Professor of Environmental Law at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore told IPS.

National and state level Biodiversity Boards have turned out to be toothless. A case in point was the Biodiversity Board of the state of Karnataka dropping a proposal to notify an island in the Arabian Sea as a sanctuary, despite its rich biodiversity, because the Indian Navy uses the wildlife on this Island for target practise in the name of defence preparedness.

“In short, the lofty ideals (of biodiversity conservation) were lost in translation and the Convention turned out to be an entity sans eyes and sans teeth  – a mere cadaver,” Ramesh lamented.

Now, the same mistakes made in 1992 appear on the brink of being re-enacted. The ‘solutions’ now on the table at Rio involve the same attitude towards biodiversity, conservation and climate change that first put the earth and its natural resources up for sale.

In fact, Ramesh dismissed the concept of carbon credits as no more than “pollution (or) carbon coupons”.

Forest cover

A major question for conservationists is how can poverty rates be reduced if forests, the main source of many people’s livelihoods, are not protected? If forest cover is lost will it not affect monsoons, agriculture, standard of living and food security?

Since the year 2000, India’s forest cover has increased by a mere 1.05 percent, bringing India’s total forest cover to 21.05 percent, according to statistics provided by the office of the Director General of the Forest Survey of India, 12.95 percent short of the requisite for the Indian land mass.

Kudremukh’s cloud forests, located in the Western Ghats, are home to some of the most endangered wildlife in India: tiger, leopard, Malabar civet cat, wild dogs, black panther, sloth bears, elephants, jackals, four types of deer, lion-tailed macaques, langur monkeys, gaur, porcupines, and three varieties of mongoose.

In addition, the area is home to the Indian hare, wild boars, king cobras, Indian pythons, pit vipers, the Malabar Trogon, the Great Pied Hornbill, the Malabar Whistling Thrush, peacock and the Imperial Pigeon.

Three rivers – the Tunga, Bhadra and Netravati – originate from just one cave in the Kudremukh forests.

Yet, despite all that is known about this wildlife-rich forest, it still took an Indian Supreme Court ruling to close down the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company’s mines in 2005.

Seven years after the ruling, the forest has still not been notified as a tiger reserve despite signs that tiger presence is steadily increasing.

Former employees of the mining company are eager to relocate away from the forest in search of new employment opportunities, creating ideal conditions for designating the Kudremukh National Park as a Tiger Reserve – but political will is seriously lacking.

“The human footprint in tiger terrain alienates the tigers’ prey base (or faunal spectrum),” said Dr. Y.V. Jhala, senior Carnivore Biologist at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

“Biodiversity loss can be minimised by strictly regulating habitat degradation, fragmentation and loss. Species extinction can be prevented by devising and rigorously implementing species conservation plans including conservation breeding, wherever required,” Dr. V.B. Mathur, dean of the WII, told IPS.

Aquatic habitat in India is also a site of political neglect, with severely depleting fish stocks impacting fisherfolk across the country.

T. V. Ramachandra, limnologist at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, told IPS, “Fragmentation of forests in the catchment of aquatic ecosystems, dumping of urban solid wastes, disposal of untreated domestic sewage and industrial effluents contaminate the water bodies.

“These have led to the disappearance of native biodiversity as is evident from disappearance of fish fauna. Streams in the catchment areas have become seasonal due to drastic land cover changes, fragmentation of forests and invasion of weeds,” he added.

Rio+20 should have been an opportunity for captains of industry to combine the economic growth paradigm with proper urban planning, adequate employment opportunities in rural areas, and protection of biodiversity reserves.

Instead it appears to be “the expensive political circus” that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned against during the 2002 Johannesburg summit, which also failed to reach binding agreements on environmental protection.

If the current paradigm persists, the human carbon footprint will erase the tiger’s footprint on the forest floors of Indian reserves and elsewhere.

(END)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is putting science to work in boosting food production through a global research portfolio worth five billion dollars launched at the Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARDD) earlier this week.

CEO of the CGIAR Consortium Frank Rijsberman. Credit: CGIAR

Food security and sustainable agriculture have been identified as priority issues here at the Jun. 20-22 Rio+20 Summit.

New chief executive officer of the CGIAR Consortium, Frank Rijsberman, says science and the environment should be best friends to achieve a food secure future. He told TerraViva that CGIAR’s research programme targets collaboration with a diverse range of partners to ensure that research translates into results on the ground.

The research portfolio, covering a five-year period, focuses on increasing the productivity of small-scale farmers, who provide up to 80 percent of the food supply in developing countries.

An essential part of sustainable agriculture, smallholder farmers are CGIAR’s top priority because when they have access to new agricultural technologies and crop varieties resulting from research, they are able to get more out of their land, labour and livestock.

The ambitious CGIAR research agenda, Rijsberman says, aims to reduce rural poverty, and improve the food security, health and nutrition of hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people. In addition, the consortium has committed itself to ensuring sustainable management of natural resources.

Fifteen new programmes build on CGIAR’s accomplishments over the past 40 years, including research on natural resource management that has helped to conserve water, renew soil fertility, and reduce erosion and greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously increasing farmers’ yields.

Rijsberman said millions more hectares of land would be under cultivation today at the expense of primary forests and fragile environments had it not been for CGIAR’s crop improvement research.

Emphasising that investing in agricultural research was a critical first step to kick-start the innovation engine for a sustainable, food secure future, Rijsberman explained to TerraViva reporter Busani Bafana the ambitious research programme which will bring together investors and the implementers.

Q: Who are the targets of the research portfolios?

A: The portfolio of 15 CGIAR research programmes organises the publicly-funded research of the CGIAR Consortium and its partners in order to meet the challenges related to food insecurity, rural poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation.

It targets both donors and investors in public agricultural research, by presenting to them an attractive investment portfolio, and the implementers of agricultural research, by organising and coordinating their efforts.

The research targets Africa, Asia and Latin America – with at least half of the projects in Africa.

Q: What specific research gaps does CGIAR seek to fill through the allocation of these funds?

A: Private sector research primarily focuses on the needs of commercial farmers, not the smallholders in developing countries that have different crops, different diseases and different problems accessing markets. CGIAR focuses on the needs of the 500 million smallholder farmers, mostly women, with less than two hectares of land, who provide most of the food in developing countries.

Q: Will CGIAR centres compete to access the funds?

A: The research programmes in this portfolio have been approved by our collective investors (through the CGIAR Fund Council). Funding will be allocated based on performance agreements between the CGIAR consortium and the centres leading the programmes.

Q: Can you briefly comment on the link between sustainable development and agriculture?

A: In response to the food price spikes in 2008, 2010 and 2011 (that pushed some 44 million people into poverty), farmers are trying to produce more food and they are ploughing under new and marginal lands more rapidly than even during the Green Revolution.

Unless agricultural research manages to help raise crop yields sustainably – getting more crop per ha of land – millions more hectares will be ploughed under. That is why agriculture and environment are new best friends, working together for a food secure future while safeguarding the planet.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (Terra Viva) U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon provided a frightening scenario of the not-too-distant future to over 100 world leaders present at the opening Wednesday of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon bangs the gavel to mark the official opening of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

He singled out three dangerous trends: too much political strife, grave economic troubles, and widening social inequalities.

Ban put UNCSD, also known as Rio+20, in its grim context when he noted that 20 years ago during the 1992 Earth Summit, there were five-and-a-half billion people in the world.

“Now there are more than seven billion. And by 2030, we will need 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water just to continue to live as we do today.”

Beyond a shadow of doubt, he warned “we have entered a new era … a new geological epoch, even, where human activity is fundamentally altering the Earth’s dynamics.”

Our global footprint has overstepped our planet’s boundaries, he cautioned.

On Tuesday, delegates from 191 countries approved a blueprint for sustainable development, titled “The Future We Want,” which will eventually be endorsed by world leaders on Friday.

But the question remained, how is this blueprint to be implemented without new funds and in the absence of an institutional framework?

At a press conference earlier in the day, Ban admitted he would have preferred a more ambitious action plan for the future.

“I know that some member states hoped to have a bolder and more ambitious outcome document. I also hope that we should have a more ambitious outcome document,” he admitted.

“But you should also understand that the negotiations have been very, very difficult and very slow because of all the conflicting interests and ideas.

“Some have presented (many) far-reaching and bold actions, while some countries also had their own views and interests. So you should understand that this is the outcome of such a long and very delicate process of negotiation.”

Addressing world leaders, Ban said, “Let us follow up on Rio+20 with commitment and action. Now is the time for action.

“Let us not ask our children and grandchildren to convene a Rio+40 or Rio+60. Now is the time to rise above narrow national interests – to look beyond the vested interests of this group or that. It is time to act with broader and long-term vision. Here at Rio+20, we can seize the future we want.”

RIO DE JANERIO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) Even before the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development opened here, one effect of the summit was already reverberating through the streets of Rio.

The public transport system in countries like Sri Lanka needs to work more efficiently if it is to be made sustainable. Credit: Indika Sriyan/IPS

As some 50,000 delegates, activists and others tried to get to various meetings and events, at many locations, like along the famous Copacabana beachfront, traffic slowed to a snail’s pace. Even government officials travelling to the opening of the conference complained of the traffic on social media.

Experts here say that Rio’s summit-related traffic woes are yet another example of decades of planning that prioritised cars over efficient public transport networks.

This mentality has propelled the transport sector to be the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. The combined cost of congestion, air pollution, road accidents and transport-related climate change could be as high five to 10 percent of GDP per year.

“It is everywhere. We see it at home, we see it when we travel, and we see it in Rio,” Michael Replogle, global policy director and founder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a U.S.-based organistaion that promotes sustainable transport systems, told Terra Viva.

To address this problem, eight of the world’s leading development banks, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have pledged 175 billion dollars in loans and grants for sustainable public transport systems to cut down on congestion and emissions over the next decade.

“It signals a shift in the priorities (of the banks) towards supporting sustainable public transport networks,” Replogle said.

Cornie Huizenga, convener of the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport, told TerraViva that organisations promoting sustainable transport had lobbied hard in Rio to get the topic into the Rio declaration. Now that it has been included, they also got 18 voluntary commitments to improve sustainable transport systems.

“The next step was the money, that is where the banks came in. Now this funding will be available for countries who want to invest in sustainable public transport systems,” Huizenga said.

Both experts agreed that Asian and Latin American countries would have to take the lead in shifting to sustainable public transport systems for the move to have a significant global impact.

In the next two decades, half a billion people will be added to the urban populations in India and China. Proper planning of urban transport systems is vital to avoid this explosive growth, which will only add to congestion and emissions, they warned.

Replogle said that there were already signs that some Asian countries like India and China had realised the importance of an efficient public transport system.

U.N. officials said that the new commitments were likely to help poorer countries with scarce resources to at least try to make the shift.

“These unprecedented commitments have the promise to save hundreds of thousands of lives by cleaning the air and making roads safer, cutting congestion in hundreds of cities. They will create more efficient passenger and freight transportation, spurring sustainable urban economic growth,” said Joan Clos, executive director of UN-HABITAT, announcing the commitments.

In the run-up to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 17) in Durban, South Africa last December, the World Bank Connect4Climate social media campaign launched a photo and video contest on climate change.

People from the ages of 13 to 35 were asked to share their personal climate change stories focused on Africa around six key themes: Agriculture, Energy, Forests, Gender, Health, Water. Through photos and videos of 60 seconds or less, young people entering the Connect4Climate competition were able to tell and give vibrant evidence of how climate change is affecting their lives and communities.

Winners were announced at COP17 in Durban and awarded at the WB offices in Africa and in Washington. Check out the Connect4Climate website to see all the selected pictures and videos, and learn more about the people who captured them! http://www.connect4climate.org/

RIO DE JANEIRO, 19 de junho (TerraViva) Três países industrializados – Estados Unidos, Canadá e Japão – e a Rússia bloquearam um avanço substancial na proteção dos oceanos na Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20, no Rio de Janeiro, de acordo com ativistas ambientais.

O projeto final da declaração conjunta a ser aprovada pela sessão plenária da Rio+20 expressa um compromisso geral para “proteger e restaurar a saúde, produtividade e resistência dos oceanos”, mas deixam de abordar diretamente as questões mais prementes da conservação marinha. Estas incluem um regime de governança eficiente para o alto mar, por meio da criação de áreas marinhas protegidas, da redução da pesca de espécies ameaçadas, e da proteção das de alto mar contra a chamada biofertilização, proposta por alguns cientistas como forma de impedir ou reduzir a acidificação da água do mar causada pela mudança climática.

Neste recife em Bonaire, o coral verde-oliva está vivo, mas o coral cinza malhado está morto. Crédito: Living Oceans Foundation/IPS

Outra questão vital é a garantia de acesso e a distribuição dos benefícios dos recursos marinhos entre as nações. Os cientistas concordam que a biodiversidade marinha está severamente ameaçada devido à mudança climática, que está aumentando a acidificação da água do mar, a pesca predatória, principalmente pelos países industrializados, e a poluição em geral.

De acordo com Susan Brown, diretora de política global e regional do Fundo Mundial para a Natureza (WWF), “quatro países são culpados pelo mundo não avançar na proteção dos oceanos.” Estes quatro países – Estados Unidos, Canadá, Japão e Rússia – “bloquearam todas as tentativas para alcançar um acordo ambicioso em matéria de proteção dos oceanos. Estamos profundamente desapontados”, afirmou Brown ao TerraViva.

Outros especialistas concordam com as opiniões de Brown. Susan Lieberman, vice-diretora de política internacional do Pew Environment Group, disse que a declaração final da Rio+20 “reconhece que há inúmeras questões urgentes a resolver para garantir a saúde dos oceanos, (mas) ao mesmo tempo é pedido um par de anos para começar a fazer algo. É uma vergonha”, acrescentou.

Susanne Fuller, da Alliance High Seas, lamentou que “nenhum compromisso real foi assumido no Rio de Janeiro para proteger os oceanos”.O que a Rio+20 decidiu “é uma promessa de que vai esperar três anos para decidir se deve ou não agir. Nós não temos tempo para esse absurdo “, enfatizou.

Outros cientistas participantes na Rio +20 falaram sobre a situação preocupante dos oceanos. Axel Rogers, professor de biologia marinha na Universidade de Oxford, relatou ao TerraViva sobre sua pesquisa recente no sul do Pacífico. “Eu vi devastação além da imaginação. Arrastos de águas profundas com redes finas estão simplesmente destruindo toda a vida e o solo marinho. Existem grandes áreas do sul do Oceano Pacífico que já estão privadas de qualquer vida”, alertou.

Até mesmo os líderes de instituições internacionais expressaram seu desapontamento com o acordo alcançado no Rio de Janeiro, no que se relaciona com a proteção dos mares. Monique Barbut, ex-diretora-executiva da Global Environment Facility, maior instituição financeira pública para projetos ambientais, contou que tinha “reservas” sobre o acordo, especialmente em relação à proteção dos oceanos.

Em muitos casos, destacou, “só uma moratória imediata da pesca e embargo sobre o consumo” permitiria a recuperação de espécies marinhas ameaçadas, como o atum de barbatana azul do Mediterrâneo. E tal moratória imediata é simplesmente impossível – vários países-membros da União Europeia, em especial França e Espanha, nunca aprovariam essa ação. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 18 de junho (TerraViva) Cúpulas gigantes como a Rio+20 podem facilmente degenerar em papo-furado e cenário para discursos inúteis.

No entanto, esses eventos também funcionam como vitrines de pequenos projetos que já melhoram a vida cotidiana das pessoas em algum lugar do nosso planeta azul. Este é o caso de vários projetos que usam fontes renováveis de energia no leste da África, que estão permitindo que as pessoas em pequenas comunidades substituam os insalubres lampiões de parafina, evitando acidentes e permitindo o abandono de métodos ineficientes e demorados para recarregar seus telefones celulares.

Lâmpadas movidas a energia solar para a África. Foto: Cortesia da Cereso

Em Uganda e no Quênia, uma pessoa tem estado profundamente envolvida com essa questão – um engenheiro de sistemas brasileiro, que migrou para a África oriental há 15 anos, apenas para perceber que o que ele tinha aprendido em casa era inútil do outro lado do mundo. “Eu logo percebi que teria de adaptar o meu conhecimento para as condições locais, se eu quisesse ser útil ali, e o que as pessoas precisavam não era uma logística eficiente, mas energia renovável”, disse ao TerraViva Izael Pereira da Silva, vice-chanceler para assuntos acadêmicos da Universidade de Strathmore em Nairóbi, no Quênia.

Além de suas responsabilidades acadêmicas, Pereira da Silva é um agente de desenvolvimento criativo, que fez a introdução e expansão de fontes de energia renováveis na África oriental, o trabalho de sua vida. Agora, ele voltou ao seu país natal para participar da Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20, e mostrar que a África não precisa ser o continente “escuro”. “Quando você voa sobre a África à noite, você não vê pontos de luz”, contou.

“Há alguns pontos brilhantes, na África do Sul. Mas na maior parte, o continente está às escuras. Isto pode ser alterado facilmente, com a geração de enormes quantidades de energia elétrica utilizando apenas fontes de energia renováveis, com emissões de carbono zero ou muito baixas”, destacou Pereira da Silva. Ele explicou que o Rio Congo sozinho tem a capacidade de gerar cerca de 150 mil gigawatts, usando várias pequenas centrais hidrelétricas, evitando assim as represas gigantes altamente ineficientes da terrível era Mobutu Sese-Seko. Tal capacidade seria suficiente para fornecer eletricidade para todo o continente.

“No entanto, os países africanos devem interligar e atualizar suas redes nacionais, para diversificar suas fontes de energia, usando a energia hidrelétrica, sol, vento e bioenergia”, opinou o engenheiro. “Dessa forma, o continente não seria dependente de uma fonte, para eliminar o risco de falhas em grande escala”, apontou. O engenheiro brasileiro disse que, “em 15 anos na África, eu quase nunca vi um dia inteiro sem sol. O continente deve usar essa fonte – a tecnologia de energia solar está madura, tanto na forma solar-térmica como fotovoltaica”.

Pereira da Silva mencionou o projeto Desertec, que visa a instalar grandes usinas térmicas a energia solar nos países do Magrebe e do norte da África, para atender todas as demandas de energia elétrica regionais, e ainda exportar uma parte substancial para a Europa. “Essas plantas também podem ser instaladas em toda a África. Parques de turbinas de vento também”, observou. Entretanto, antes de sonhar com um futuro brilhante para todo o continente africano, o brasileiro começou em pequena escala.

“As pessoas em Uganda e no Quênia usam lampiões de querosene e parafina para iluminar suas casas, quando poderiam usar lâmpadas movidas a energia solar”, sugeriu o engenheiro. Esses lampiões são de fato insalubres, ineficientes e extremamente caros. Segundo a Organização Mundial de Saúde, ocorrem mais de 300 mil mortes a cada ano por causa de queimaduras causadas por esses lampiões. Milhões morrem de câncer e outras doenças causadas pela fumaça emitida pelos lampiões. Além disso, as pessoas pobres gastam cerca de US$ 17 bilhões em querosene e parafina a cada ano para iluminar suas casas com lampiões.

Para substituir os lampiões, nós distribuímos para algumas comunidades em Uganda pequenos painéis solares, de dois watts de capacidade. Eles são o suficiente para iluminar uma casa por cinco horas, e ainda têm capacidade suficiente para carregar um telefone celular”, explicou Pereira da Silva. Sem esses painéis solares, os usuários teriam de se deslocar até a próxima vila, conectar seus telefones celulares na rede elétrica local, e esperar horas até que os dispositivos fossem recarregados.

Pereira da Silva também ajudou a conceber fornos solares, para cozinhar. “Nós também distribuímos 500 mil lâmpadas econômicas, para poupar eletricidade e reduzir as falhas da rede. As lâmpadas custaram US$ 1,6 milhão e permitiram uma economia de 30 gigawatts. Em 28 horas, o investimento foi pago pela economia de energia”, declarou. Para que esses projetos sejam bem-sucedidos, é necessário envolver as autoridades governamentais, o setor privado e entidades de pesquisa, tais como faculdades de engenharia, e as comunidades locais. “O tripé formado por Estado, empresas e universidades ajuda a iluminar a vida das pessoas comuns”, ressaltou. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 18 de junho (TerraViva) Não é mais novidade que o estado ambiental da Terra é catastrófico. Contudo, entender alguns números que descrevem esta catástrofe ainda provoca um choque – por exemplo, que 30% da biodiversidade desapareceu desde 1970, e que 60% desse declínio ocorreu nas áreas tropicais do planeta.

O biólogo inglês Jonathan Baillie no Rio de Janeiro. Julio Godoy/IPS

Jonathan Baillie, um biólogo britânico, membro da Sociedade Zoológica de Londres, e chefe do programa Edge para a conservação das espécies, tem esses números alarmantes na ponta da língua. Baillie, que está no Rio de Janeiro como consultor científico para a organização Globe de legisladores ambientais, disse ao TerraViva que esses números servem como indicador do estado dramático da situação ambiental do mundo.

P: Você pinta um quadro bastante sombrio do ambiente global.

R: A humanidade está se movendo na direção absolutamente errada. Nosso modelo de produção e consumo é insustentável, e a Terra não pode mais lidar com ele. Hoje é preciso um ano e meio para que a Terra absorva o dióxido de carbono produzido e regenere os recursos renováveis que as pessoas usam em um ano. Se continuarmos a consumir os recursos do planeta nessa mesma taxa global, em 2030 vamos precisar de dois planetas para sustentar a população mundial.

P: Que soluções o senhor vê para lidar com esta insustentabilidade?

R: Tenho medo de que apenas uma grande catástrofe, que afetasse diretamente e em massa a vida das pessoas, nos obrigaria a fazer as mudanças necessárias para acabar com este declínio. O que precisamos é ter em conta o capital natural nos sistemas nacionais de contabilidade e a utilização de tecnologias limpas, para transformar comportamentos e padrões de produção e consumo.

P: Os novos números da concentração de dióxido de carbono na atmosfera sugerem que podemos ter chegado a um ponto sem retorno.

R: Uma medida recente da concentração de CO2 no Ártico registra 400 partes por milhão. Este é um pico, um marco ruim, mas é ainda um valor pontual. Durante o ano, esse valor oscila, e chega a um ponto mais baixo. Contudo, esse número significa que a acidificação dos oceanos atinge com frequência um índice que, se permanecer constante, conduziria à destruição de ecossistemas marinhos vitais.

P: Mas não é só a biodiversidade marinha que está em risco.

R: Não, em absoluto. Mais de 20% dos mamíferos estão ameaçados de extinção. Uma parcela semelhante de invertebrados também sofre o risco de extinção. No entanto, as espécies mais ameaçadas são as de anfíbios – cerca de 32% de todas as espécies de anfíbios estão listadas como ameaçadas globalmente. Quase a metade de todas as espécies conhecidas de anfíbios estão em declínio.

P: Então, quais são as soluções que você vê como capazes de reverter essa situação preocupante?

R: É absolutamente necessário incorporar o valor do capital natural nos sistemas de contas nacionais, para levar em conta os ecossistemas e seu uso no cálculo do PIB. É absolutamente necessário usar tecnologias limpas, tais como fontes renováveis de energia, para substituir as fontes antigas e poluentes.

P: O que o senhor quer dizer por capital natural?

R: Por exemplo, estimativas aproximadas dos custos causados pelo desmatamento chegam a US$ 4,5 trilhões por ano. Tais valores, que incluem a captura de carbono pelas florestas, o valor das florestas para lazer e similares, não são levados em conta no cálculo do produto interno bruto.

P: Por tecnologias limpas o senhor quer dizer a chamada bioengenharia, para tentar reduzir a acidificação das águas oceânicas?

R: Não, em absoluto. Nós certamente precisamos tentar todas as tecnologias disponíveis, mas a manipulação artificial da química da água marinha certamente não é uma solução.

P: O senhor é pessimista sobre o futuro da Terra?

R: Eu acredito que somente a ação das gerações mais jovens pode forçar os governos a finalmente cumprirem seus próprios compromissos. As gerações mais jovens vão suportar as consequências das atuais omissões e políticas equivocadas. Por isto, elas têm que forçosamente exigir dos governos que tomem medidas na direção certa, para interromper a destruição da biodiversidade e de outros recursos naturais. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 19 (TerraViva) The world’s countries have committed themselves so far to restoring just 18 million hectares of forests by 2020, barely 12 percent of the goal of 150 million hectares agreed by the Bonn Challenge in 2011.

Deforestation in Venezuela is reducing absorption of CO2. Credit: Fidel Márquez/IPS

The announcement was made on Monday, Jun. 18 at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which made a global appeal for more countries to join the voluntary campaign and pledge to reforest and restore green areas.

Two billion hectares on the planet are currently in need of restoration, said Stewart Maginnis, IUCN director of Nature Based Solutions.

“What we are trying to see is real action. Let us achieve this target of 150 billion hectares in a good quality. We have already 10 percent of the commitments. I believe we will see a significant move by the end of the year,” Maginnis told IPS.

Because of the voluntary nature of the campaign for commitments, countries that join it or decline to do so will not be subject to any penalties. However, Maginnis said “there is a lot of enthusiasm, countries want to move forward.”

According to IUCN President Ashok Khosla, forest restoration has major positive impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity.

The goal for 2020 is ambitious but achievable, Khosla said, adding that it would require an investment of 18 billion dollars a year.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forestry Service alone has announced it will restore 15 million hectares.

The government of Rwanda has also promised to restore two million hectares.

Brazil’s Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, a coalition of government agencies, NGOs and private sector partners, announced a plan to recover one million hectares in the country.

According to the IUCN, restoration of 150 million hectares would inject 80 billion dollars into the global economy, and would cut the greenhouse gas “emissions reduction gap,” which exacerbates climate change, by up to 17 percent.

Gustavo Sánchez, head of the Mexican Network of Campesino Forestry Organisations (Red MOCAF) and a member of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB), said that in Central America alone there are 20 million hectares of green areas that need to be restored.

“There are many examples of unsuccessful reforestation projects, used for propaganda purposes. A policy of forest cultivation cycles must be designed; planting a tree is just one step,” Sánchez told IPS.

“The next thing is to plan how the restoration is to be done. We propose productive reforestation with sustainable ecological goals,” he said.

Sánchez said he supported the idea of a regional sustainable development fund in Central America, although he admitted the governments are not adequately integrated. “But at national level, each country can create a fund to guarantee lines of credit,” he said.

Activist Bianca Jagger, mobilising public support for the Bonn Challenge, made a global appeal for the Plant a Pledge campaign, an online campaign for individuals to take part in a global petition to be delivered to the U.N. climate change talks in Qatar, in November.

“This is the largest forest restoration initiative the world has ever seen. We cannot continue to degrade ecosystems. When we reach the goals, we will see tangible impacts for future generations. This is only the beginning: we still have to persuade politicians all over the world,” said Jagger, the campaign ambassador.

“We must bridge the gap between governments, the adoption of commitments and carbon emissions,” she added.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) report “State of the World’s Forests 2012″, green areas are the best way to store carbon.

The world’s forests store 289 gigatonnes of carbon in their biomass alone, and therefore can be used as a tool to mitigate climate change. Green areas also harbour two-thirds of the earth’s biodiversity, the report says.

Maginnis stressed that negotiators of the Rio+20 outcome document must recognise the importance of restoring the world’s forests, and indicate this in the final text.

“We were disappointed that forest restoration was withdrawn from the original text. The document as it stands today does not include agroforestry actions that would improve soil conservation,” he said.

“We want the negotiators to recognise the importance of restoring green areas. This issue must be put back on the agenda,” said Maginnis.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 19 (TerraViva) Announced as an innovative way to encourage the participation of Internet users and the public in general in the debates at Rio+20, the proposal for Sustainable Development Dialogues also raised doubts about the impact its recommendations would have.

Klaus Töpfer and Bertha Becker at Sustainable Development Dialogues. Credit: Clarinha Glock/IPS

“There are always repercussions,” Professor Elimar Pinheiro do Nascimento of the Sustainable Development Centre at the University of Brasilia, who attended the second day of the Dialogues, told TerraViva.

“What can be questioned is the nature of the discussions,” he said, adding that even if all of the measures arising from the Jul. 16-19 Dialogues were implemented, they would still fall far short of what was needed.

Nascimento said there have been improvements since the Earth Summit held 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, which is now hosting the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development or Rio+20, which runs through Friday Jun. 22.

He said, for example, that production requires less energy now. But he added that since much larger quantities are produced, more raw materials are used, which means destruction to the environment is greater.

If things continue to go as they are now, “our lives will tend to grow worse and worse,” he said. “At least a significant part of the population will face more wars, emigration, and food shortages. Much more has to be done in order for people to have a better life.”

“The countries of the (industrialised) North cannot grow any more, their economies have to plateau. And the countries of the (developing) South also have to change their development paths,” he said.

Nascimento stressed that it was important for people to find new forms of consumption, and for the rate of obsolescence of products to slow down. Although the worst scenario will be seen in perhaps 50 years, stronger measures and attitudes should be adopted today, rather than mild band-aid measures, he insisted.

Rosa Alegria, coordinator of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo Núcleo de Estudos do Futuro, was even less optimistic about the results of the Dialogues proposed by the Brazilian government as part of the official Rio+20 agenda.

On the summit website, the Dialogues were described as an attempt “to engage in an open and action-oriented debate on key topics related to sustainable development. There will be no participation of Governments or U.N. agencies. Three recommendations emanating from each of the Dialogues will be conveyed directly to the Heads of State and Government present at the Summit.”

Alegria took part in the construction of the Dialogues process since the idea first emerged.

Once it was accepted by the government, the proposal was at the centre of a heated debate on what format should be adopted. “What was going to be a civil society thing became something designed by the government,” she said.

“What I see here is a traditional, conservative format that does not encourage participation but instead intimidates because it is very formal and bureaucratic,” she said.

She recognised, however, that those present at the Dialogues held in Pavilion 5 of the Riocentro – the conference venue – raised questions that have been useful in the debate.

“But reducing the dialogue to 10 questions limits thinking. It hurts the creative process. It wasn’t like a dialogue, it was more like a forum. Besides, integrating society in the process should be more spontaneous, and the People’s Summit should not have been held as a separate event,” Alegria said.

Her doubts are now focused on the final fate of the recommendations to come out of the Dialogues. “If the final document isn’t even ready, how will they get this included?” she wondered.

Alegria suggested that the results of the Dialogues be addressed as a parallel path, in a sort of follow-up or post-treaty process of a new economic model and an opportunity to clarify what the green economy should be.

In her view, society does not yet understand what green economy means, because the concept has never been clearly and objectively discussed and defined.

Rio+20 “could be the opportunity to define this concept,” she said. In a collective interview on Sunday Jun. 17, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, under secretary at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, announced that a group would meet to try to define the green economy.

From the point of view of the panellists invited to the Dialogues, the process was a success.

The Dialogues are a reflection of what is morally and scientifically necessary, said Manish Bapna, acting president of the World Resources Institute, who took part in the Dialogues’ debate on sustainable development to fight poverty. He added that the documents show what the world believes it is necessary to do.

His panel reached agreement with regard to the urgent need to foster education and raise awareness on a shared sense of responsibility for sustainable consumption and production.

The plenary session of the Dialogues suggested educating the public to promote sustainability, with the state guaranteeing basic services. And the panellists agreed on the need to emphasise empowerment of local communities, promoting participation and access to information.

Maria Cecilia Wey de Brito, secretary general of WWF-Brazil, also voiced criticism. But she said that, independently of the process, it was important to be present at the Dialogue on Forests to suggest the inclusion of the “zero net deforestation by 2020” goal on the list of priorities.

Her insistence brought results.

The recommendation was immediately included, along with the emphasis on recovery and reforestation of 150 million hectares – which earned the most votes from web surfers – and the recognition of the importance of science, technology and traditional knowledge for sustainable development.

Professor Bertha Becker of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro stressed the need to generate sources of income for the local population in the rainforest.

“The western Amazon is becoming a frontier for immigration of poverty,” because the land reform process has given rise to settlements in that part of the country, “and Haitians, Africans and Indians are heading there,” she said.

That raises the need to create new forms of sustainable production and equip cities for offering basic services to the local population, Becker said.

Klaus Töpfer, founder and executive director of the Institute for Advanced. Sustainability Studies (IASS), said the conclusions of the Dialogues panels were important not only for Brazil, but for the whole world, because of the debates they generated.

He said that although there was no guarantee that they would be incorporated in the main Rio+20 outcome, they would at least be put down on paper.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 19 (TerraViva) – Three industrialised countries – the U.S., Canada and Japan – and Russia blocked a substantial advancement in the protection of the oceans at the U.N. conference on sustainable development here, according to environmental activists.

At this Bonaire reef, the olive-green coral is alive, but the mottled-gray coral is dead. Credit: Living Oceans Foundation/IPS

The final draft of the joint declaration to be approved by the plenary session of the Rio+20 conference expresses a general commitment to “protect and restore the health, productivity, and resilience of oceans”, but fails to directly address the most pressing issues of marine conservation.

These include an efficient governance regime for the high seas through the creation of marine protected areas, the reduction of fishing of endangered species, and the protection of the high seas from so-called bio-fertilisation, proposed by some scientists as way of stopping or reducing acidification of ocean water caused by climate change.

Another vital issue is guaranteed access and distribution of the benefits of marine resources among nations.

Scientists agree that marine biodiversity is severely threatened due to climate change, which is increasing acidification of seawater, overfishing, mostly by industrialised countries, and general pollution.

According to Susan Brown, director for global and regional policy at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), “four countries are to blame that the world did not advance in protecting the oceans.”

These four countries – the U.S., Canada, Japan and Russia – “blocked all attempts to reach an ambitious agreement on ocean protection”.

“We’re extremely disappointed,” Brown told TerraViva.

Other experts shared Brown’s views.

Susan Lieberman, deputy director for international policy at the Pew Environment Group, said that the final declaration of Rio+20 “recognises that there are numerous pressing issues to resolve to guarantee the health of oceans, (but) at the same time asks for a couple of years to start doing something.”

“It’s a shame,” Lieberman added.

Susanne Fuller of the High Seas Alliance lamented that “no real commitment was made in Rio to protect the oceans.”

What the U.N. conference on sustainable development agreed upon “is to promise that it will see in three years time to decide whether or not to take action. We don’t have time for this nonsense,” she said.

Other scientists participating in Rio+20 elaborated on the worrisome state of the oceans. Axel Rogers, professor of marine biology at the University of Oxford, told TerraViva of recent personal research in the South Pacific.

“I have seen devastation beyond imagination,” he said. “Deep-sea trawlers using fine nets are simply destroying all marine soil and life. There are huge areas of the South Pacific ocean that are already deprived of any life.”

Even leaders of international institutions expressed their disappointment with the agreement reached in Rio on the protection of the seas.

Monique Barbut, retiring chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility, the largest public financial institution for environmental projects, said she had a “reserved” opinion on the agreement, especially on ocean protection.

In many cases, she said, “only a zero moratorium on fishing and embargo on consumption” would allow endangered marine species, such as the Mediterranean bluefin tuna, to recuperate.

And such a zero moratorium is simply impossible – several member countries of the European Union, in particular France and Spain, would never approve it.

RIO DE JANEIRO,  Jun 19 (TerraViva) – “Very disappointing.” That was the term business and non-governmental organisations used to describe the formal intergovernmental negotiations at the Rio+20 Earth Summit Tuesday.

With overwhelming scientific evidence showing that the Earth’s ability to support human life is at serious risk, the Rio+20 summit is being held to help chart a safe course that will steer away from disaster and bring a better future people around the globe.

After two years, negotiators from more than 190 nations agreed Tuesday to a 49-page “The Future We Want” document intended to be the roadmap for this transformation. This document will be presented to heads of state in Rio de Janeiro at the opening of the high-level portion of the Summit on Wednesday. They will review and discuss how they will implement the agreement until the summit’s conclusion on Friday.

U.N. officials said it was highly unlikely any changes will be made.

Yet the document leaves out a 30-billion-dollar fund proposed by a group of developing countries known as the G77 to finance the transition to a green economy. Nor does it define tangible Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will be substituted for the Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015.

A poster on a wall at Rio Centro. Civil society groups say they are "very disappointed" with formal negotiations at the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Credit: Stephen Leahy/IPS

“This is extremely disappointing….There is no vision, no money and really no commitments here,” said Lasse Gustavsson, head of the Rio+20 delegation from WWF International, which works to stop environmental degradation worldwide.

“Rio+20 should have been about life, about the future of our children, of our grandchildren. It should have been about forest, rivers, lakes, oceans that we are all depending on for our food, water and energy security,” Gustavsson told TerraViva.

Instead, two years of work have resulted in merely a long document that commits to virtually nothing but more meetings, he said.

Rio+20 has been a stark contrast to the exciting “we will change the world” atmosphere at the first Earth Summit in 1992, said Robert Engleman of the Worldwatch Institute, an international environmental think tank.

However, Rio+20 introduces the concept of Sustainable Development Goals that could be significant if they are turned into real actionable goals with timetables. While the document is mostly re-confirming past commitments in a very passive way, there is  new confirmation of the importance of traditional seed saving, and to consider strengthening  the U.N Environment Programme, Engleman told TerraViva.

“This document is a great disappointment. There’s no ambition and little reference to the planetary boundaries we face,” said Kiara Worth, representing the U.N.’s Major Group on Children and Youth at Rio+20.

“The voices of civil society and future generations is going unheard. We ought to call this Rio minus 20 because we are going backwards,” Worth told TerraViva.

“The scientific evidence is clear. We are going to need a major effort global in science and technology to meet the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced,” said Steven Wilson of the International Council for Science, a non-governmental organisation representing national scientific bodies and international scientific unions.

“I don’t understand why there is no section in the document on science – this sends a very unfortunate message.”

“We have a fundamentally flawed economic system, and we in civil society had hoped governments of the world would recognise this reality, but they haven’t,” said Jeffery Huffines of Civicus, World Alliance for Citizen Participation, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Civil society is looking for a balanced economy that respects planetary boundaries and seeks to expand the welfare of all people within a safe operating space for the planet, Huffines told TerraViva.

Instead, there are 49 pages of concepts without any commitments or means of going forward with these concepts. The role of civil society participation has been limited. “We need more democratic decision-making, not less,” he added.

“Speaking personally, as an American citizen, it is quite clear our electoral system has been bought by the corporate sector, by Wall Street. And that’s why our elected politicians are not going to challenge the current economic system. It’s up to civil society to challenge this,” said Huffines.

Others were more cautious in their criticism, such as Meena Raman, a negotiation expert with Third World Network, an international network of organisations and individuals involved environment and development issues.

“The outcome document does not have the ambition needed to save the planet or the poor, but it has not taken us backwards, particularly given our initial fears that Rio+20 might be Rio-40,” Raman said.