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.
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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.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) “With volunteers, we will drive sustainable development forward.” These were the words of Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, at the close of Rio+20 on Jun 22.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

Clark was speaking at an event where municipalities, businesses and development banks announced voluntary commitments made in Rio.

While critics accuse the Rio final declaration of being merely empty words, some of the main actors involved in the negotiations organised a press conference on the last day of the summit to showcase “actions for the road ahead” that were agreed upon here.

The actions are to be included in a “registry of commitments” attached to the final Rio declaration, whose implementation the U.N. will follow up on.

According to Sha Zukang, secretary-general of the Rio conference, “from the very beginning, Rio+20 was supposed to be about implementation, about action” and “voluntary commitments are a major part of this conference, complementing the outcomes of the official negotiations.”

He said that 692 registered commitments are included in the final Rio agreement, amounting to 513 billion dollars.

What do these commitments look like? Jose Maria Figueres, a former Costa Rican president and current chair of the non-profit Carbon War Room, explained that his organisation signed a memorandum of understanding with Aruba to help the country take action to phase out fossil fuels by 2020.

Additionally, Figueres’s organisation will work to mobilise one billion dollars to be invested in energy efficiency in buildings. Figueres gave no details on how the money would be raised or spent.

Addressing Zukang and referring to the outcome document of the Rio+20 conference, Figueres said, “Those who have failed you, Mr. Sha, are the governments, not the CEOs (chief executive officers), not the NGOs.”

(During this statement, two activists stepped in front of the panel screaming that the speakers “do not represent them”. They were immediately removed from the room by security forces.)

Another example of a voluntary commitment made in Rio was given by Bindu Lohani, president of the Asian Development Bank, who reminded media that eight development banks have committed to investing 175 billion dollars for sustainable transport in developing countries.

Clearly proud of this amount, Lohani added, “If you want to know more about this commitment, just Google 175 billion, it will show up.”

Other commitments included 45 chief financial officers announcing their companies will adhere to sustainable water management principles, 200 businesses committing to sustainable practices, more than 250 academic institutions from 50 countries announcing they would reshape their curricula to include sustainable development education, and over 200 cities promising to make plans for and invest in climate action.

Possibly in an effort to convince the audience that voluntary commitments do matter, Clark invited a Jamaican volunteer worker to speak about her achievements on the ground in social and environmental improvements.

Clark concluded, “Someone said that without volunteers, the world will stop. Here, with volunteers, we will drive sustainable development forward.”

The voluntary commitments by businesses, municipalities, development banks, governments and international organisations are one of the outcomes of Rio that has been praised by commentators. In the absence of a final document that is strong and detailed, some place hope in individual initiatives.

But considering that negotiators at Rio could not agree on a proposed annual 30-billion-dollar fund for sustainable development, the amount of 513 billion dollars in voluntary commitments appears optimistic, particularly given the lack of details around the various amounts of money put forward.

And the strong praise for voluntary action during this event rang a little hollow considering that none of the speakers made any reference to the Cupula dos Povos, where civil society, the home of volunteering, gathered during Rio+20 to exchange experiences, share practices and also plan for a better world.

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, 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) The EU’s “agriculture minister” tells TerraViva that in Europe, the push for food security made at Rio+20 will be continued with a future European development policy centred on this issue.

Dacian Ciolos. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Q: How do you evaluate the final Rio agreement?

A: Even if generally the European Union thinks that the final Rio document could have been better as regards agriculture and food security, I think the document is consistent enough.

Our objectives are in there, for example, the value of small-scale farming for global food security is properly recognised. Improving productivity of small farms both helps increase overall food production levels and contributes to poverty alleviation.

Technology and innovation transfer to small farmers has been acknowledged as important here in Rio and the EU’s development policy, particularly in relation to Africa, will reflect this. The document recognises the negative impacts of food price volatility on the livelihoods of smaller farmers and it has been agreed to improve transparency in food markets.

Q: Many voices say that Rio will not have any practical impact. What impact can Rio have when it comes to food security?

A: Food security cannot be dealt with unilaterally, by only one institution. It is also a problem that cannot be solved without looking at it simultaneously from the economic, environmental and social point of view.

The Rio agreement acknowledges this and it is a step towards finding the complex answer to the complex food security question. From now, when decisions will be made about financing or about social support measures, agriculture will be considered central.

In the next couple of years, we will need to think up an international framework that can address the issue of food security in its multidimensionality.

Q: What are the next steps you will take in Europe to follow up on Rio?

A: The European Commission is now working on applying our experience from the Common Agricultural Policy (i.e., the farming policy of the EU which offers financial support for European farmers and is now undergoing a “greening” process) to our development policy.

In the future development policy of the EU (2014-2020), we are focusing on two core dimensions: sustainable energy and food security. We intend to offer not only financing for these two areas but also offer knowledge.

Mind you, we do not want to provide models, but we rather want to support our partners in developing countries to elaborate their own development models. In Europe itself, the next farming policy will change to be more sustainable.

Q: Everyone speaks now about supporting small farmers to achieve food security. Is it enough to offer support to small farmers or do some other measures need to be taken to limit the negative impact that agri-business can have on sustainability?

A: Large-scale farming makes more sense than small-scale ones in some areas because of relief, climate and soil conditions, for example, when it comes to cereal and oil production. But what is important to watch is the behaviour of agri-business in the market: they should not be allowed to take over land artificially when proper land tenure and market management are lacking.

It is also important to ensure that investments in farming do not just go for those enterprises that bring short-term profits, which are agri-businesses, but also significantly towards the model that brings long-term gains, which according to me is smallholder farming.

Because private banks usually steer away from offering financing to small farmers, public policies should support investments in this sector. And public support is also needed for the organisation of small farms and simply for balancing the development of the agri-business sector and the smallholder one.

Q: How difficult it is politically to shift investments towards small farms?

A: It is a matter of political will. If you want to obtain medium and long-term results which make sense both socially and economically, then you are interested in supporting small farmers.

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.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) I disagree with the branding of Rio+20 as an abject “failure”. As a returnee from the 1992 Earth Summit, I have mixed views about the conference, some positive.

Don de Silva

Even former political leaders have joined the chorus of disappointment.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway, has said, “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.”

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland has said: “This is a ‘once in a generation’ moment when the world needs vision, commitment and above all, leadership. Sadly, the current document is a failure of leadership.”

Both world renowned and distinguished leaders raise important points. But blame and finger-pointing comes easy.

Are the civil society movements so blasé as to expect governments, many with scant respect for human rights or the environment, to suddenly come up with radical agreements and then cough up the billions to implement action?

Did they not look into what happened immediately after the creation of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1972? Or the follow-up to the 1992 Rio summit?

According to British government records unearthed by the New Scientist, the ambitious aims of UNEP were held in cheque by the activities of the Brussels group, which included Britain, the U.S., Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, while they piously preached about the environment.

The group was “an unofficial policy-making body to concert the views of the principal governments concerned”, according to a note of one of the group’s first meetings, held in 1971, written by a civil servant in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Instead of making generalised statements damning all countries, is it not possible for the members of the civil society groups and concerned leaders to name and shame those who have watered down texts, and strengthen the hand of negotiators who wanted to effect change?

At a fringe meeting, Gro Harlem Brundtland lamented the omission of women’s reproductive rights in the final document. It is surprising that the full force of the civil society movement was not mobilised to stop this from happening.

Holier-than-thou non-governmental organisations need to turn the searchlight inwards to see if they are really the paragons of virtue they claim to be. Getting two environmental NGOs to work together at times is a daunting task. Some are neither civil nor societies, and can be “some peoples’” movements.

At Rio+20, businesses came of age. An “extraordinary” group of leaders, calling themselves “Friends of Rio”, from across business, NGOs, trade unions and scientific institutions have banded together to find a new path towards sustainable development.

Their message is pretty clear: we cannot leave the future of the planet only to politicians.

Failure of leadership? The 2010 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP16), which took place in Copenhagen, was a political disaster. By contrast, Rio+20 has produced an agreement, a combined effort of the passionate and plain-speaking Sha Zukang, secretary general of Rio+20, and the Brazilian government.

Rio+20 has witnessed the emergence of a new leadership from countries like Brazil and China. Yes, polluters must pay for past and present inequities. But developing countries will have to wait forever if they think that the debt-ridden, austerity-laden Western nations will put up the money.

To argue about a lack of funds is laughable. In 2011, global military spending amounted to 1.74 trillion dollars. Disarmament is a necessary condition for sustainable development. This spending is not mentioned in the final text.

Some 50,000 protesters in Rio claimed that the green economy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This need not be the case. The shift to a green economy can be used to bring paradigm shifts in thinking and living, beyond anything that we have witnessed so far.

A relentless and sustained united action by thousands of environmental NGOs throughout the world – a green Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter – will and can move mountains.

Don de Silva is a journalist and environmentalist. He is co-ordinator of UNEP’s Regional Information Programmes and has worked with several NGOs to initiate and manage advocacy programmes for sustainable development. He can be contacted at dondes@changeways.net

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) “Thousands of farmers are waiting on the side of the road for land reform,” Milton Rondo Filho, Brazil’s minister for international cooperation for tackling hunger, told a meeting organised by Oxfam on “Inequalities and Sustainable Development – a BRICS Perspective” here this week.

Puttaraju, a farmer in southern Karnataka state in India, proudly shows off his prize crop, millet, which assures him of a steady harvest. Credit: Krishna Prasad/IPS

Biraj Patnaik, principal food advisor to the Indian Supreme Court, said that “India and Brazil could learn a lot from other.”

While Brazil had its successful Zero Hunger programme, India had the highest procurement of food grain for public distribution in the world. It also had greater expertise of in-kind transfers of food, and had adopted a rights-based approach to education and employment, while the right to food is being campaigned for.

Brazil has launched what is probably the biggest school feeding programme in the world, involving 47 million children every day, Filho said.

“This forms a virtual cycle, with children in the family and families within the community, if food is procured locally,” he observed.

In 2011, Brazil donated 700,000 tonnes of food grain to needy countries.

Inequality within India has deepened, said Patnaik, who was appointed by the Indian Supreme Court as a food commissioner. “If you leave out Africa, only 16 countries have a lower per capita income. Only five countries have a lower infant mortality.

“The International Food Policy Research Institute, in its World Hunger Report, ranked India 66 out of 88 countries. Mothers have to teach their children how to live with hunger,” he said.

Five hundred million small farmers all over the world – many of them women – provide food for two billion people, almost a third of humanity, Biraj Swain, leader of the Delhi-based Oxfam India Food Justice Campaign, told IPS. One in every five people in the world has no electricity and two out of every five cook on open fires.

The campaign is part of Oxfam’s programme in 40 countries, which seeks to protect small household farmers from the shock of rising prices of food after the financial crisis of 2008.

“For small farmers, it has been Rio minus 20, most retrograde,” Swain said. “There has not been reengagement but reversal. Less than three percent of global food supply can meet the calorie needs of all those who are now deprived of this basic right.”

India is the worst off among BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) when it comes to runaway inflation in food prices, she said. “The government is tinkering with fiscal policy, like interest rates. What needs to be done is to bridge the gap between the farm and kitchen.”

Oxfam has put out what it terms “Killer Facts” regarding food security. At one level, economic disparities are great in Brazil, which is three times the size of India, while South Africa is the worst off.

One percent of Brazil’s population owns half the country’s wealth. Globally, the richest one-tenth of people own 57 percent, while the poorest one-fifth have to make do with less than two percent. However, 46 percent of Indian children are undernourished, compared to just four percent in Brazil.

“The lack of access to food in India is the worst in the world, most regressive. As many as seven out of every 10 farmers are net buyers of food. Food and fuel account for 80 percent of their expenditure,” she said.

She cited how her native state of Orissa in eastern India, which has been “bypassed by the Green (agricultural) Revolution”, subsidises electricity for industries while it has the lowest per capita energy consumption in India.

At Rio+20, “food infrastructure” was the most discussed item on the agenda on this sector. However, even if such infrastructure is increased, farmers do not necessarily get food, she said.

What is really required is the guarantee of a support price for farmers’ produce. In the northwestern state of Rajasthan in India, farmers have actually filed a criminal case against the federal government’s Food Corporation of India for neglecting to provide such a support price.

In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, which she describes as “ground zero” for food security in the entire world, the state government has said that it does not have bags to store and transport food grain.

“The government owes the nation the universalisation of food and nutrition rights, as indicated in the agenda of the Indian government’s Integrated Child Development Services scheme,” she said. “More than a Green Revolution, what most states in India require is a Brown Revolution, considering that we are in the semi-arid tropics.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) A new study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) presented at Rio+20 shows that overconsumption of food and the obesity it causes, especially in the industrialised countries, threaten not only individual health but the very sustainability of our planet.

The U.S. alone accounts for almost a third of the world’s weight due to obesity. Credit: Don Hankins/CC By 2.0

The study, titled “The weight of nations: an estimation of adult human biomass”, confirms that the population of the United States is the most overweight on Earth.

If the global population had the same age-sex biomass index (BMI) as the U.S., total world biomass would increase by 58 million tonnes – equivalent to an additional 935 million people.

This increase in biomass would lead to higher energy requirements, by 261 kilocalories per day per adult, equivalent to the energy requirements of 473 million adults. Following those extrapolations, the researchers estimate that the global biomass due to obesity would increase by 434 percent.

The study, which calculated the food energy required to sustain human biomass using formulae and other data by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, warns that the energy required to sustain the biomass due to obesity exacerbates the ecological implications of a steadily rising population.

Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology and public health at the LSHTM and author of the study, warned that obesity is as much a threat to the environment as overpopulation.

“People tend to think the main threat to the environment is the growing population in developing countries,” Roberts said. “But this measure of biomass is more relevant.

“In considering how many people the world can support, the question is not how many mouths we have to feed, but how much flesh we have to feed,” he added.

The study recalls that the energy requirement of species at each trophic level in an ecological pyramid is a function of the number of organisms and their average mass. In ecology, these factors are often considered together by estimating species biomass, the total mass of living organisms in an ecosystem.

The study estimates the average biomass globally at 62 kilogrammes. North Americans – Canadians and U.S. citizens – weigh an average of 80.7 kg. Europeans weigh an average of 70.1 kg. The study notes that despite only making up five percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for almost a third of the world’s weight due to obesity.

In contrast, Asia has 61 percent of the world’s population but only 13 percent of the world’s weight due to obesity.

“Increasing biomass will have important implications for global resource requirements, including food demand, and the overall ecological footprint of our species,” Roberts warned.

The study’s scenarios suggest that global trends of increasing biomass will have important resource implications and that unchecked, increasing BMI could have the same implications for world energy requirements equivalent to 473 million people.

This increased global demand for food arising from the increase in biomass is likely to contribute to higher food prices. Given the greater purchasing power of industrialised countries, which also have higher average biomass, the worst effects of increasing food prices will most likely be experienced by the world’s poor.

The paper regrets that the concept of biomass is rarely applied to the human species, although “the ecological implications of increasing biomass are significant and ought to be taken into account when
evaluating future trends and planning for future resource challenges.”

As Roberts put it, “Tackling population fatness may be critical to world food security and ecological sustainability.”

The scientist said that people today do not necessarily eat more than 50 years ago. The main problem, he said, is that “we do not move our bodies so much but we are biologically programmed to eat.” To offset this tendency to immobility, he suggested that urban planners conceive cities were it is easier to walk and cycle.

“Everyone accepts that population growth threatens global environmental sustainability – our study shows that population fatness is also a major threat,” Roberts pointed out. “Unless we tackle both population and fatness, our chances are slim.”

Meanwhile, in Riocentro, hours upon hours elapsed in dull deliberations and speeches by government officials that seemed as if they had been penned by the same ghost writer. Fresh air was exchanged for drab three-piece suits, perhaps explaining the lack of courage to forge a less grey future.

Rio+20 may pass into history as emblematic of the vast gulf between the cries in the streets and the uninspired language of the conference’s final outcome document.

But it is not the end of the road, not for the United Nations or for civil society.

The world body’s own secretary-general characterised the document as “timid”, and activist movements understand that much work remains unfinished.

For 2014, Sustainable Development Goals need to be defined – ones that are far more audacious than the “unanimous” document signed in Rio.

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, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Canadian grain and lentils farmer Nettie Wiebs does not support a green economy, a term she says has become a euphemism for corporate land grabbing that is putting smallholder farmers out of business.

Protesters denounce the new “green economy” at a march in Rio de Janeiro June 20. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The concept of a green economy is being touted as a path to a sustainable future at Rio+20 but La Via Campesina, a global organisation of smallholder farmers, is fed up with what it sees as greenwashing.

“Our analysis of the green economy solution is that it is a false solution and in reality it is a legitimisation of land grabs, water grabs and seed grabs from their rightful populations, the smallholder farmers,” Wiebs told TerraViva.

“We utterly reject the idea of a green economy based on the agribusiness model of corporate interests because a vast majority of people in the world are badly served by it. We’re in a deep struggle to defend healthy food production and a living environment for all of humanity. It is our livelihood and their lunch.”

Wiebs, who runs a family farm east of Vancouver, said despite living in a highly industrialised country, corporate investment in agriculture is displacing smallholder farmers like her. She said a recent census in Canada noted that the small farm population is rapidly shrinking and its collapse was linked to corporate investment in agriculture “solutions”.

“We are in this food crisis because of agribusiness which makes prices very volatile, speculation in commodity markets, increases hunger and gives control over food production processes to a small group of actors whose key objective is to profit,” Wiebs said.

Luc Gnacadja, the executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, views the term “land grabs” as overly negative, arguing that land transactions are business transactions that empower farmers as well as from investors.

“Land grabbing is a kind of business and in every business there are crooks,” Gnacudja told Terraviva. “It is the responsibility of government to keep crooks in check, regulate and incentivise best practises.”

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.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) What does birth control have to do with reducing global emissions? Everything, women around the world would say, because they know how closely linked reproductive health is to poverty, food security, climate change and more.

A woman’s work is never done. Taken in a low-income settlement in Karachi, Pakistan. Photo by Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

This message was precisely what female leaders at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development were saying, but not many were listening, least of all the Vatican.

“The only way to respond to increasing human numbers and dwindling resources is through the empowerment of women,” said Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and former director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“It is through giving women access to education, knowledge, to paid income, independence and of course access to reproductive health services, reproductive rights, access to family planning,” she stressed.

Female leaders have long been telling the world that sustainable development is not just about deforestation, climate change and carbon emissions. It’s about understanding that sustainable development will not be possible without gender equality and that sexual and reproductive rights are human rights.

This concept is nothing new. At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, there was unanimous agreement that sustainable development cannot be realised without gender equality.

So it’s frustrating for people like Rebecca Lefton, a policy analyst focusing on international climate change and women at the Center for American Progress, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, to be fighting over something that was recognised 20 years ago.

Lefton has followed the negotiations for several months, and to her dismay, has found that many references to women’s reproductive rights and gender equality have been scrapped from the Rio summit’s text.

“Women’s rights and gender equality were affirmed, but not as strongly as they could be,” she told TerraViva. “I don’t think the text would be reopened to be revised or tweaked,” she added.

Brundtland sounded more optimistic. “It looked quite bad some weeks ago in the preparing process for this meeting….In the last week or two this has improved,” she said, citing “key passages on women as central partners in decision-making”.

The United States, Norway and several women’s rights organisations were fighting to keep the language strong, but the Holy See (the Vatican) led the opposition to remove passages ensuring women’s reproductive rights.

“The result is that the final text has no reference to reproductive rights and commits to promotion rather than ensuring equal access of women to health care, education, basic services and economic opportunities,” said Lefton.

“It’s quite frustrating to find the Vatican exerting so much power over what the majority of women want but don’t have access to,” she told TerraViva, adding that the Vatican equates reproductive rights and health with abortion – an inaccurate comparison, at best.

Female heads of state and government gathered at the Rio+20 women leaders’ summit nevertheless remained undaunted and pledged that the document they signed would not be lost in the “forest of declarations on gender issues”. They urged governments, civil society and the private sector to prioritise gender equality and female empowerment in their sustainable development efforts.

“We know from research that advancing gender equality is not just good for women, it is good for all of us. When women enjoy equal rights and opportunities, poverty, hunger and poor health decline and economic growth rises,” said Michelle Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women.

Cate Owren, executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), criticised the removal of references to reproductive rights from the Rio outcome document.

“Political compromises for the sake of an agreement should not have cost us our rights – nor our planet,” she said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) After nearly 50 years as an international wire service, the Rome-based Inter Press Service (IPS) is branching out into WebTV, keeping pace with the latest advances in digital technology.

Announcing the launch of IPS WebTV at RioCentro June 21. Credit: Ana Libisch/IPS

Utilising its current resources and manpower, the new WebTV will draw on more than 400 journalists in 140 countries, many of them with substantial expertise already in the visual media, according to IPS Director-General Mario Lubetkin.

The pilot phase will be launched in early 2013 with daily broadcasts through the web originating from its studios in Rome.

Lubetkin told Terra Viva that the IPS network of journalists, mostly from or based in the global South, will bring a new visual dimension to reporting on issues relating primarily to development, rights, energy, food, civil society, gender empowerment, the environment – and the growing emergence of the South on the multicultural world stage.

“IPS WebTV will be much more than a visual cousin of the print product,” Lubetkin said.

The formal launch, presided over by the President of the U.N. General Assembly Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, took place on the sidelines of the Rio+20 summit of world leaders here.

Also speaking at the launch were Sergio Alli representing the government of Brazil, Omar Resende Peres, president of the IPS Television Board, Carlos Tiburcio, chair of the IPS Core Group of Donors, and René Castro, minister of environment, energy and telecommunications of Costa Rica.

“I am confident that the IPS WebTV that we are launching today would contribute in a meaningful way towards advancing our continuing efforts for global solidarity and cooperation to a higher and more mutually beneficial level,” Al-Nasser said.

“As a media institution primarily focusing on development issues and providing a perspective of the South, (IPS) is making a major contribution towards presenting a balanced view with diversity of perspectives and highlighting the needs of the most vulnerable in the global agenda.”

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.

SEROPEDICA, Brazil, Jun 21 (TerraViva) – An agroecological farm outside of Rio de Janeiro is a testing ground for scientists and agronomists in Brazil, who have worked there for two decades to show that it is possible to produce a wide range of natural agricultural products in a cheap, efficient way that harms neither the environment nor human health.

Everything produced on the Haciendita KM 47 is “ecologically correct and very tasty.” Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/TerraViva

The Integrated Agroecological Production System, better known as the “Haciendita agroecologica KM 47” or “Kilometre 47 agroecological farm”, covers 60 hectares of land in the municipality of Seropedica, 47 km from Rio de Janeiro.

Researchers from EMBRAPA, the government’s agricultural research agency, the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and other government institutions have been carrying out field studies in agroecology on the farm since 1993.

The farm integrates chemical-free agricultural and livestock production, based on crop diversification, and the main target beneficiaries of the research are family farmers, who account for 75 percent of the labour force in the Brazilian countryside.

“Ecological agriculture seeks to some extent to reproduce the conditions of the natural environment, and in a natural environment, what ensures dynamic equilibrium is the biodiversity of species,” EMBRAPA agronomist Ernani Jardim told TerraViva.

“When that diversity is reduced, it opens the door to the emergence of some pest or disease or environmental condition that causes an imbalance,” he added.

Biodiversity and sustainable water and soil management have transformed the landscape of grasslands here into an oasis where 50 kinds of plants are grown, including fruit trees, vegetables, cereals and forage crops.

The farm, a green paradise in a degraded portion of the Baixada Fluminense or Fluminense Lowlands – a region sometimes considered to be part of the Rio de Janeiro greater metropolitan area – also has sections devoted to the severely threatened Mata Atlântica or Atlantic Forest ecosystem, and a botanical garden.

Organic fertiliser is also made here, using vegetable waste and manure from cows that produce organic milk.

Net earnings of 30,000 dollars a year were obtained from just one hectare, said Alessandra Carvalho, another EMBRAPA researcher.

Prevention is emphasised in the fight against pests and diseases. Pest-resistant species are planted, the best production periods are chosen for planting, crops are diversified, and the water used for irrigation is monitored to avoid fungus.

“Natural enemies” are also used, such as traps for harmful insects, botanical extracts, or, in extreme cases, substances that are permitted in organic agriculture.

Mulch is used to repel pests and prevent erosion and weeds.

The dairy station is also organic. Homeopathic remedies are used instead of antibiotics and parasiticides, and the barns have good ventilation and receive sunlight. The aim is “the animal’s welfare,” because if livestock are treated well they fall sick less frequently, said Mónica Florio, a veterinarian with the agricultural company of the state of Rio de Janeiro, PESAGRO.

The veterinarian said that in just one year, the health of the cows improved, and parasitic infections and reproductive problems were brought under control.

Production was “excellent” – between 13 and 14 litres per animal, she added. And it was not necessary to buy animal feed, because the cows are fed on grass or forage grown on the farm.

On another section of the farm, Daniel Caravalho, a researcher at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, is developing solar energy and irrigation systems based on simple technologies that use anything from bamboo to old washing machine parts.

A table with snacks and juice prepared using organic vegetables, fruit and milk is the best way to sum up the ecofarm’s success.

“Is it just ecologically correct, or is it tasty as well?” Argentine journalist Laura Chertkoff asked TerraViva, to which this journalist responded: “Ecologically correct and very tasty.”

* This story was originally published by IPS TerraViva.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (IPS) As the global population threatens to explode – from the current seven billion to over nine billion by mid-century – the sharp increase in humans not only means overcrowded cities but also increasing demands on food, water, energy and shelter, foreshadowing devastating implications for a sustainable future.

Efforts to promote sustainable development that do not address population dynamics will continue to fail. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

The 21st century is a critical period for people and the planet, with demographic and consumption trends posing tremendous challenges in a finite world, warns a new report released at the Rio+20 summit on June 21 by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

Appropriately titled “Population Matters for Sustainable Development,” the report underlines the relevance of population dynamics in the sustainable development agenda “which has been lost over the past decades”.

It puts forward concrete human-centred and rights-based policies to address issues facing the world at large in the 21st century.

In an interview with TerraViva, UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin said improving the wellbeing of humanity now and into the future requires above all a genuine and immediate shift towards sustainable production and balanced consumption – the hallmark of the green economy.

“Everywhere, but especially in emerging economies, millions more people are becoming richer consumers of goods and services, thus adding to pressures on natural resources. Sustainable patterns of consumption – enabled in part by appropriate technologies – are therefore urgently needed,” he said.

Dr. Osotimehin said new global population dynamics present many challenges but also offer opportunities to secure a sustainable future. Demographic shifts, such as the trend towards living in cities, can reduce strains on the environment by reducing consumption of resources.

“Slowing population growth can have a positive impact on environmental sustainability in the long run. It will also offer nations more time to adapt to changes in the environment. However, this can occur only if women have the right, the power and the means to decide freely how many children to have and when,” he said.

The report says more than two-thirds of the governments of the 48 least developed countries (LDCs) have expressed major concerns with high population growth, high fertility and rapid urbanisation.

In order to bring the population agenda back into the sustainable development discussion, there is a need to recognise that population dynamics have a significant influence on sustainable development; efforts to promote sustainable development that do not address population dynamics have and will continue to fail; and population dynamics are not destiny.

But change is possible through a set of policies which respect human rights and freedoms and contribute to a reduction in fertility, notably access to sexual and reproductive health care, education beyond the primary level, and the empowerment of women.

Dr. Osotimehin said governments also need to integrate population trends and future projections into their development strategies and policies. “Investments that are built on – and take advantage of – demographic trends can help transform populations into rich human capital that can propel sustainable development,” he said.

“Planning for projected changes in population size for trends such as migration, ageing and urbanisation is an indispensable precondition for sustainable rural, urban and national development strategies, as well as meaningful efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) Members of unions and the Landless Movement (MST) dominated the parade of nations, covering with red the Avenida Rio Branco, in the center of Rio de Janeiro, with at least 50,000 people protesting against the green economy.

The Central Workers Union (CUT) brought about 8,000 protesters, according to its national secretary of communications Rosani Bertoti, a family farmer from Xanxerê, in the west of Santa Catarina. “80 buses came only from the state of Rio de Janeiro,” he said.

Green economy is just a facade, “it solves nothing” in respect to what matters to workers: decent employment, collective bargaining rights, autonomous organization, equal wages for men and women and the end the slave labor, she declared, minimizing critics from activists who accuse the CUT of joining forces with the government.

The General Workers Union (UGT) and the Central of Workers of Brazil (CTB) also mobilized many affiliates, but the largest group was without doubt the rural workers of MST, with thousands of flags and red caps.

A new cycle of robbery is what the green economy announces and the perpetrators of environmental destruction “have first and last name,” the multinational companies such as Bunge, Monsanto, Syngenta and Shell, spoke João Pedro Stédile, one of the coordinators of the MST. “Since 1989 did not such a crowd take to the streets to say enough is enough”, a sign that “people are starting to walk with their own legs,” he concluded.

He criticized president Dilma Rousseff for offering 20 billion reais (10 billion U.S. dollars) to the International Monetary Fund “to save European banks”, instead of allocating this money to education and health of Brazilians.

Divina Rodrigues, 48 years and four children, came with another 150 peasants of Alto do Parnaiba in western Minas Gerais, where many have been living in tents for several years waiting for land reform. She herself lived for four years in one of nine camps in the region, with 30 other families. The People’s Summit is important to encourage the fight that goes on, she said.

At least six cars with loudspeakers divided auditory attention of protesters along the Avenida Rio Branco with some percussion groups, as the drumbeat of the World Movement of Women and a small percussion section of a samba school that accompanied the “tank of bread,” a miniature tank covered with flatbread, to advocate redirecting military expenditures to sustainable development projects.

The slogans and speeches repeated the condemnation of “green capitalism”, the commoditization of nature, life and women, American imperialism and transnational corporations. “The water has no owner” reflected the fears expressed in various discussions that the green economy will lead to a widespread privatization of water resources.

A group jumped on the street screaming “who does not jump is a ruralist”, protesting against the agribusiness sector that wants to relax the Forest Code, while another group repeated a typical thought of military paranoia: “In the Brazilian Amazon there is no room for foreign NGOs.”

Amid the mass of workers mobilized by unions, a wide variety of activists, nationalities and ways of manifestation colored the march organized by the People’s Summit, the gathering of civil society in the Rio+20 Conference.

The Chilean educator David Órdenes led youth from Latin American countries that are part of the Collective Cultural Diversity. Children and adolescents are mobilized in defense of common goods of nature, cultural and biological diversity threatened by neoliberalism, he explained to TerraViva.

A group of 30 activists came from El Salvador to exchange experiences with other countries and protest against the green economy that is nothing more than the “recycling of capitalism,” said Angel Ibarra, who believes in a “revolution of the people.” ALBA, Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Union of South American Nations, the indigenous struggles and the defense of the Cuban revolution are a sample of how the process is moving forward, though slowly, he said.

Women from various African countries, displaying placards saying “Africa is not for sale”, the Mujeres de la Matria Latinoamericana (Mumala) of Argentina, who struggle against all gender violence, a Haitian who condemned the presence of UN peacekeepers as “a military occupation to recolonise Haiti”, and a representative of the Paraguayan peasant movement speaking of “mourning” in his country for the murder of at least 18 farmers, formed the Babel of militant paraders.

Numerous public servants, asking for the valorization of their work, and university strikers emphasized the character of the union march, which added a new enemy to capitalism and imperialism: the green economy.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) – NGOs present at the Rio+20 conference complain that they were only consulted on the official document at the last minute, when they could no longer make a significant impact.

Representatives of WWF, Greenpeace and Oxfam criticise the final text and exclusion of NGOs from negotiations Thursday, June 21. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the official segment of the Rio+20 conference June 20, when heads of state were supposed to rubber-stamp the final document presented by Brazil, a representative of NGO groups present here said that “the text is completely out of touch with reality and NGOs at Rio do not endorse this document.”

The NGO representative (identified as Waek Hamidan from Climate Action Network Europe by Brazilian media) said that the text was a failure because it did not address crucial issues such as ending support for fossil fuels and nuclear power, or taking clear steps to address high seas destruction.

He asked that, if the text remains as it was presented Tuesday, mentions of civil society being part of drafting it be removed from the introduction to the document.

NGOs present in Rio have all expressed deep disappointment with the final document, though they do not all necessarily agree with the call to strike out mentions of the text being elaborated together with civil society.

Barbara Stocking, chief executive officer at Oxfam, told TerraViva on June 22 that her organisation supports eliminating the civil society reference from the final text.

“Basically, civil society does not stand with that set of declarations,” Stocking said. “The basics are there, but there is nothing in it really that civil society has been strongly pushing for. There was no proper process of how civil society could be engaged.

“The dialogues took place just in advance of the actual high-level part of it but there has been no real means to bring that in because the actual text was closed by the time that was finished.”

But Sharon Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation, took a different approach. “I support the ambition and the views, but my challenge is not to remove us from the text but to clarify what co-determination (co-decision) really means when we move forward,” Burrow said.

“We, civil society, trade unions, represent the people and so do politicians. They presented us with a final text on the eve of the summit, that was most frustrating. But it’s not about a word in the text, it’s about the fact that if they’re serious about co-decision, they have to tell us how we will be involved, tell us what is the timeline.”

Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, told TerraViva that leaving civil society in the text or not is a theoretical question at this point, as no further changes will be made and the majority of civil society finds the document clearly inadequate and lacking in ambition.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Imagine a space in which humanity can reconcile the often conflicting imperatives of population and a healthy natural environment.

Imagining sustainable development as a doughnut. Credit: Courtesy of Kate Raworth

Imagine this space shaped as a doughnut, providing a perspective on sustainable development that pursues environmental sustainability and social justice together.

Kate Raworth from Oxfam Great Britain introduced her novel research during a side event organised by Oxfam and the Expo Milano 2015 at Rio+20.

“Achieving sustainable development for nine billion people has to be high on the list of humanity’s great uncharted journeys,” Raworth told TerraViva.

“If we go over the limits of environmental ceiling there is unacceptable environmental degradation, but if we go under the floor of social boundaries, then we have unacceptable human deprivation. The space in the middle, within the boundaries, is the only just and safe space for all.”

The Expo 2015, scheduled to run three years from now in Milan, Italy, will focus on food and nutrition. Titled “Feeding the planet, energy for life”, the Expo aims at stimulating a global discussion on the challenges linked to food production and food security, safety, availability and nutrition.

“We have to make peace with the earth, and defend it so that all the peoples can have access to its land, water, forests and seeds, and biodiversity,” said renowned Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who was invited by ActionAid, a civil society partner of Expo Milan, to give her views on equity and sustainability.

Rio+20 is a crucial summit for Earth’s future, she said, “But food security must remain on top of the agenda even after Rio.”

Anaclaudia Rossbach, director of the Interecao NGO, a Brazilian partner of the Association of Volunteers in International Service (AVSI) that promotes sustainable development through citizen participation, told TerraViva, “What traditionally happens is that governments take decisions top down and communities have less opportunities to participate, or if there is some space for them, it is always in a consultative way.

“If communities understand what’s possible to build in their territory, then transformations are possible. If they don’t know, if they don’t look abroad, they will be excluded from development forever.”

In July, Expo Milan will announce its financial support for the participation of civil society representatives from 10 developing countries to the upcoming international participants’ meeting Oct. 10-12. The meeting will be held every year until 2015, and convenes all the countries, institutions and organisations that are shaping the Expo 2015.

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, Jun 21 (TerraViva) He was on a flight to the biggest international summit on environment in a decade when Kenyan indigenous rights activist Peter Kitelo’s attention was suddenly drawn to a government advertisement.

Indigenous tribes like these on the remote Indonesian island of Lombok are increasingly threatened by development. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

It called for national and international investors to put funds into “forest development”. Kitelo could not escape the irony. Here he was, on route to the Rio+20 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, and he was looking at yet another assault on the livelihoods and very existence of indigenous communities.

“Sustainable development is not really sustaining my people,” Kitelo told TerraViva in Rio.

He said that forest communities like his and in other East African countries such as Uganda and Tanzania are discriminated against by central governments and policy-makers who determine the future of their native lands.

“We are being left out, no one talks to the right people in our communities,” he said.

When plans are laid for land development, they are advertised in newspapers and other media, to which native tribes hardly have access. Only when the plans are reaching their final stage will officials come and hold short meetings in villages, which Kitelo says are more an effort to satisfy donor requirements than a genuine effort at engagement.

“Then, even before we know it, our land is not ours anymore,” he said.

Kitelo cited the example of forest development for tourism. The concept talks about preserving the forests, but in the process prevents his people from using the forest. “The whole concept of forest conservation does not allow human interaction, but that is what my people have been doing for generations,” he said.

The Kenyan experience is hardly unique. All over the world, indigenous communities complain that they are being left out of the decision-making processes on their own land.

Laura George, from the Amerindian Peoples’ Association of Guyana, told TerraViva that when new land laws were to be introduced in June 2009, there were no consultations with the indigenous people at all. A year later, a final document was produced.

Government officials attending the Rio conference held a side event and claimed that indigenous populations were in fact consulted.

“When I informed them they weren’t, the officials were not happy, but that is the truth,” George told TerraViva.

This type of discrimination can lead to indigenous communities losing their way of life completely.

“While governments are coming to Rio to talk about sustainable development, in my country, Peru, the pressure is growing day by day from policies of the national government that seek to open up our remote forest territories to transnational companies through road infrastructure projects,” said Robert Guimaraes Vasquez of the Shipibo people in the Peruvian Amazon.

Activists said that even in Rio, indigenous groups faced discrimination, with logistics preventing them from gathering together.

“One group is here, another group is 40 km away. How can we form a common front? We are so far apart here,” George said.

Still, conferences like Rio+20 do offer at least small avenues where indigenous groups can bring their problems to a wider and influential audience.

George and Kitelo both told TerraViva that if governments remain deaf to their concerns, they will seek action within international bodies.

“That could be our last resort,” George said.

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.”

It’s 1992. Baby Vusumzi lives with his mother, Mavis, in a small house in a black township called Thornhill, one of the places blacks were moved to during apartheid. Vusumzi’s father has just died of pneumonia and Mavis’ work as a cleaner all they have to survive.

In the new South Africa, 12 years after apartheid, over 40 people a day are being murdered in places like this. “The people are all right till pay day, then all hell breaks loose,” says 10-year old Vusumzi.

Mavis at Vusumzi’s grave

“They often get drunk and have their wage packets stolen. Some of the poor people steal because they’re very hungry.” Asked how he would improve things, he says, “I would stop grown-ups from raping children.”

Vusumzi is one of the children who was followed by tve since 1992. For 20 years, tve has filmed the lives of 11 children, born in 10 countries across the planet at the time of the Rio Earth Summit, to see if the promises of a cleaner, healthier, bettereducated and less dangerous world would be fulfilled in their lifetimes.

“Now there’s a new Earth Summit in Rio, we’ve returned to each child to discover what happened to them,” director Bruno Sorrentino told TerraViva.

Half an hour’s drive from Vusumzi’s house, Sorrentino finds another world. A fertile lowland, home to white-owned farms. It is where Justin was born, at a time of upheaval in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Apartheid has only just ended and white farmers viewed as settlers by radical black movements are being attacked. Justin’s father and his wife Amanda sleep with a revolver under the mattress, and the radio to call the police in case of trouble.

When apartheid came to an end, many things started to change. People’s attitudes have changed, Justin’s family says. “People want to get together and make the country work and the political situation work instead of being antagonistic towards each other and saying the other one is the ‘big bad daddy’, you know? They’re working together to try and make a better place.”

When Justin was born in 1992, only white children attended school. But that belongs to the past. “Like, a friend doesn’t have to be the proper colour for you,” says Justin. “He can be any, as long as he’s a true friend. Always help you…play with you. Yeah, doesn’t matter what colour he is for me.”

Vusumzi and Justin grow up in a South Africa marked by separate development, where division is not so much about race but wealth. Once in university at the age of 19, Justin feels like he has the future in his hands. “When I left my name behind in Queenstown I left all the insecurities I had, all the things I wasn’t confident about in myself…. (now) I feel like I have found myself. I’m still learning, and growing, but for the most part, I know who I am. And I know where I want to be. And I know what I need to do to develop, to grow. I’m an ambitious young adult.

Vusumzi was not lucky enough to even attempt a different life. When he was 17, his mother had to leave home to try to find work in another town. While she was away, Vusumzi was stabbed by a drunk boy in a street attack.

Three years later, Mavis is in front of Vusumzi’s killer. She wants to forgive him. “For 20 years, we have followed the lives of these 11 children born at the first time world leaders had got together to promise future generations a better world. It’s been an incredible adventure,” Sorrentino told TerraViva.

Education turns out to be a fil rouge, a common thread in all of these children stories.

“When I started I had no idea of what the stories would be in the end. We chose the parents, not the babies…But yes, education has become a really strong theme as being seen as the universal way out. There’s nothing new in this but it’s interesting to see how strong it is.” The three-episode film telling the stories of 10 children, and the too short story of Vusumzi, is part of the multimedia ReframingRio project and was presented Monday, Jun. 18 in Rio. More can found on the tve website.

The focus of discussions was the condemnation of “green capitalism”, the commodification of nature,  attacks on women’s rights, U.S. imperialism and transnational corporations.

The slogan “No One Owns Water”  reflects fears that the green economy will result in widespread  privatisation of water resources.

The avenue came alive with banners and bright red caps, in contrast to the green that tinted official government negotiations at Rio+20.

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)

A War Cry Against the Merchants of Nature

The grey city streets and a few sparse trees contrast dramatically with the colourful traditional clothing, feathered headdresses and face and body paint of a group of indigenous people from the northern Brazilian state of Acre. But if the destruction of their home, the Amazon rainforest, is not halted, it will not be long before this desolate urban landscape takes over their own lands.

“The Brazilian government wants to sell our nature and our lands, our forest. It is causing the disappearance of the rivers, the animals, and the people of the rainforest,” indigenous leader Jaminawá Junikuin told TerraViva.

The Widows of Rio

 Amid the vibrant colours of a multiethnic demonstration, one group of women stands out with their black dresses and dark glasses. They weep inconsolably over a closed coffin. Who died? “Environmental policy,” they answer in unison.

The women are Brazilian government employees who decided to use black humour to condemn what they consider to be not merely a death, but a violent murder. “The killer waseconomic power, that formula for development that Brazil and other countries apply at the cost of the environment, and which has destroyed environmental policies, traditional communities, forests and artisanal fishing,” they declared.

The Race of the Xavante People

A group of 20 Xavante indigenous men, running in the opposite direction from the marchers and carrying logs, frightened a few unsuspecting city dwellers. But much greater is the fear of these natives of the western state of Mato Grosso as they watch their forests disappearing at a faster pace than their traditional “log races”.

An elder from the village of Marãiwatsédé, Luis Tserewamriwe Tserenhitomo, told TerraViva that large landowners are “stealing our lands.”

Francisco Tserewamriwe Tserenhitomo, a younger Xavante, explained that the landowners have brought diseases to their communities, and are planting soybeans where they used to plant corn and other subsistence crops.

A Tank That Wages War on Hunger

A tank covered in bread advances menacingly among the protestors. But its gun is aimed at a noble target: ending world hunger.

The “bread tank” is an edible, mobile sculpture created by the nongovernmental World Future Council to

back its Disarmament for Sustainable Development campaign. It was presented to the press in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Santa Marta on Jun. 19, and thenaccompanied the Global Day of Action

March in Rio to highlight the need to invest in food instead of weapons.

The world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, IUCN is a democratic membership union with more than 1,000 government and NGO member organizations, and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists and experts in some 160 countries.

The IUCN World Conservation Congress is the world’s largest and most important conservation event. Held every four years, the Congress aims to improve how we manage our natural environment for human, social
and economic development.

The 2012 World Conservation Congress will be held from 6 to 15 September 2012 in Jeju, Republic of Korea. Leaders from government, the public sector, non-governmental organizations, business, UN agencies and social organizations will discuss, debate and decide solutions for the world’s most pressing environment and development issues.

For more information on the World Conservation Congress go to
http://www.iucnworldconservationcongress.org/