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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RíO DE JANEIRO, 22 jun (TerraViva)  La cumbre Río+20 terminó este viernes 22 con ganadores y perdedores, pero principalmente con perdedores.

“La omisión de los derechos reproductivos es un paso atrás en relación a acuerdos previos”, dijo Gro Harlem Brundtland. Crédito: UN Photo/Mark Garten.

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) y Brasil, el país anfitrión, junto con las grandes empresas, dieron un giro positivo al resultado de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, más conocida como Río+20, por haberse realizado dos décadas después de la Cumbre de la Tierra.

Su resultado fue otro documento histórico que cambiará el mundo, según ellos.

Pero la mayoría de los representantes de la sociedad civil y feministas expresaron su desilusión e indignación por el texto final, titulado “El futuro que queremos”, que fue aprobado este viernes 22 por los líderes mundiales.

La comparación con la Agenda 21, aprobada en 1992, fue inevitable.

Anita Nayar, de la organización Alternativas de Desarrollo con Mujeres para una Nueva Era (DAWN, por sus siglas en inglés), con sede en Manila, dijo a IPS que en el acuerdo histórico adoptado en 1992 hubo unas 170 referencias a las cuestiones de género y un capítulo entero sobre las mujeres.

En la última versión de “El futuro que queremos” hay apenas unas 50, y estas han sido atenuadas y usadas como elementos de negociación por parte de los estados, declaró Nayar.

“Tampoco es un simple asunto de menciones a temas de género, sino más bien que algunos estados exhiben claramente una falta de voluntad a acordar acciones concretas y un debilitamiento general de compromisos internacionalmente acordados sobre la igualdad de género y el empoderamiento de las mujeres”, agregó.

Según ella, mientras en general los derechos humanos son afirmados en el contexto de la salud sexual y reproductiva, la omisión específica de los derechos reproductivos es flagrante.

Igualmente crítica fue Gro Harlem Brundtland, ex primera ministra de Noruega y presidenta de la comisión que lleva su nombre y que hace 25 años centró la atención mundial en el concepto de desarrollo sostenible.

“La declaración de Río+20 no hace lo suficiente para ubicar a la humanidad en un sendero sostenible, décadas después de haberse acordado que esto es esencial, tanto para las personas como para el planeta. Yo entiendo la frustración que hay en Río hoy”, señaló en un comunicado divulgado el jueves 21.

Brundtland, quien integra un grupo llamado The Elders (Los Ancianos), dijo: “Ya no podemos presumir que nuestras acciones colectivas no generarán puntos de inflexión, dado que los umbrales ambientales se han violado, corriendo el riesgo de daños irreversibles tanto para los ecosistemas como para las comunidades humanas. Estos son hechos, pero se han perdido en el documento final”.

“También es lamentable la omisión de los derechos reproductivos, que es un paso atrás en relación a acuerdos previos. Sin embargo, con este texto imperfecto, tenemos que avanzar. No hay alternativa”, añadió.

Las reacciones de organizaciones de la sociedad civil fueron mayoritariamente negativas.

Anil Naidoo, del Consejo de Canadienses -la mayor organización de ciudadanos de Canadá- arremetió contra el concepto de economía verde promovido en Río+20.

“No había visto tanta falsa cobertura verde desde el último Día de San Patricio. El documento ni se acerca al futuro que realmente queremos, y eso es porque fue escrito teniendo en mente los intereses de unos pocos en vez de los de muchos”, sostuvo.

Noelene Nabulivou, de Fiji Women’s Action for Change (Acción de las mujeres de Fiyi por el cambio), dijo a IPS: “Como activista del Pacífico veo claramente los impactos catastróficos del cambio climático, la pérdida de biodiversidad y el aumento del nivel del mar. Río+20 no le hace justicia a la inmediatez y severidad de este problema mundial”.

La uruguaya Nicole Bidegain, de la Oficina de Género y Educación del Consejo Internacional para la Educación de Personas Adultas (ICAE), dijo: “La economía verde simplemente refuerza el actual modelo de desarrollo, basado en la producción y el consumo excesivos. Se promueven los mismos mecanismos financieros que causaron múltiples crisis desde 2008”, sin tener en cuenta los impactos negativos sobre los derechos y el sustento de las mujeres.

Según Bidegain, el sector privado es priorizado sobre el público como fuente de financiamiento. “Esto es irónico, ya que el sector privado está involucrado en la maximización de las ganancias a corto plazo, no en las inversiones a largo plazo necesarias para la transición hacia un desarrollo sostenible genuino, centrado en las personas”, señaló.

Monica Novillo, de la boliviana Coordinadora de la Mujer, expresó: “Vine a Río+20 con altas expectativas de que los gobiernos agregaran la histórica resolución sobre salud y derechos sexuales y reproductivos para jóvenes y adolescentes, adoptada en la 45 Comisión de Población y Desarrollo”.

Brasil desempeñó un rol clave en la creación de este resultado, “así que yo esperaba que defendiera fuertemente estos derechos fundamentales en Río+20, contra una minoría de gobiernos conservadores”, dijo.

Aunque en Río+20 se reafirmaron las agendas de El Cairo y Beijing sobre población y mujeres, es tiempo de que estos acuerdos se implementen plenamente, agregó.

Gita Sen, de DAWN, lamentó que la cumbre prácticamente haya enterrado los derechos reproductivos.

“En este documento queda muy claro que hay una continua guerra contra los derechos humanos de las mujeres, lanzada por la Santa Sede (el Vaticano) junto con algunos gobiernos muy conservadores”, dijo a IPS.

(FIN)

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 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 (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 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.

BANGALORE, Jun 21 (TerraViva)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forest cover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(END)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) The European Union considers the Rio+20 final document as imperfect, but a good starting point for further work.

Karl Falkenberg, European Commission Director General for the Environment. Credit: Laurent Achedjian/Friends of Europe

Terraviva spoke to the EU’s lead negotiator in Rio, Karl Falkenberg, who is also director general for environment in the European Commission.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How do you find the final document presented by Brazil?

A: I think it’s a good document. It’s not a document that reflects completely the EU’s ambitions, but we understand that we have to make compromises and reflect in the document common positions. But very good messages are highlighted in those common positions, such as that if we want to successfully eradicate poverty, we have to do it by sustainable development, green economy, and creating decent jobs in line with the environmental limits of this planet.

In order to get there, we have described a number of concrete actions in various areas such as water, land use, energy, oceans, sustainable production and consumption, resource efficiency. We have covered all the three pillars of sustainable development: environmental, social and economic; out of that we will develop the SDGs (sustainable development goals) in the next year and a half.

This document is a start, it’s not the outcome, and we would have wanted to take it one step further, but that was not possible.

Q: “Green economy” was replaced with “green economy policies” to reflect global South fears that the North wants to dictate a vision.

A: There have been lots of misunderstandings, particularly about the green economy. The impression in the beginning was that we are saying what green economy is and that their economy is not green and ours is and they have to change their economies to be like ours.

But that’s a misunderstanding. Because we have to change our economy to make it green and developing countries have to change theirs. But we have also made it clear that there is not only one green economy: green economy means that we have to work within the environmental limitations of each of our countries with the resources that we have and we are very different so there are different forms of green economy. It’s just a name for sustainable economy in a way.

Q: What about the other criticism of green economy, that it implies a dangerous financialisation of nature?

A: I think there are still too many people who can only think in terms of working against each other, not with each other. In the green economy we will need companies, we need enterprises. There are very good companies, which take very decisive steps forward in working resources efficiently, offering decent work conditions, taking many responsibilities, and there are many who don’t.

Q: What to do about those? Are voluntary commitments from them enough?

A: Voluntary commitments have often not been effective, that’s why we are clearly calling for a role for governments. A similar framework at the international level is needed and that is why we want to continue to negotiate environmental conventions, on chemicals, waste and others and that is why upgrading UNEP (the U.N. Environment Programme) was so important here: the world has to give itself a strong, efficient institutional framework to handle environmental issues.

Q: Is putting a price on natural capital a good direction?

A: Yes, because policies need to be monitored and measured. What you can’t quantify, you can’t really monitor. The fact that we are moving in the direction of natural capital accounts and the necessary reporting for this by companies is a good way forward.

Q: How did you feel as EU negotiator in a world where the power balance has changed?

A: I was a trade negotiator before being an environmental one, so this is something that I have seen for the past 10-15 years. China, India, Brazil, Russia are clearly emerging powers which are economically very tough competitors to us. The old ideas that we would define developing countries not in terms of competitiveness but in terms of the number of poor is completely outdated.

So differentiation in favour of countries like Burkina Faso or Uganda or Bolivia is still very much reasonable, but differentiation in favour of the biggest polluters, like China, or for very competitive international traders like India and Brazil does not make sense.

So we have to rethink negotiations: we have to involve them much more and they have to take more responsibilities. This is what’s happening now and that’s why negotiations have become much more complicated.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) In the face of opposition from some developing countries, the European Union failed to get all it wanted from the final Rio+20 final agreement. Nevertheless, the Europeans decided to look at Rio as a good start.

“The agreement we have come to is not the best agreement in the world, but it is an agreement for a better world,” Danish Environment Minister Ida Auken told Terraviva.

“The EU came with a very ambitious agenda, and not all of our wishes have been fulfilled,” explained Auken, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

“However, the agreement marks progress on some points: the world has come to an understanding on the necessity of the green economy, which is new,” she said. “The first steps on the road towards global sustainability goals have been taken. New actors like cities, companies and civil society are being recognised as important to sustainable devepment.

“Concerning resources, the world has committed itself to reducing waste and to ensuring access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation.”

UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg conceded that, “Any text approved by 190 countries from different hemispheres will always involve compromises and dilution.

“But it is important to look at what direction it is pointing us to. And this text pushes us towards a world in which we treasure, measure and protect sustainable development like never before,” he said on June 20, the official start of the three-day conference.

All European decision-makers present in Rio admit a sense of disappointment with the results of the negotiations, but rally behind the common position that the agreement sets the world on the right path to sustainable development.

The main frustrations for the European Union have been the dilution of the commitment to the green economy, which at the moment has been replaced with more vague wording implying that countries keep some leverage over to what extent they choose to go down the green economy path; the postponement of the adoption of sustainable development goals until after 2015; and the rejection of the creation of a new body to handle the implementation of sustainable development commitments.

The final agreement envisages instead a redefined role for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

In Rio, the EU found itself facing big developing countries which rejected the green economy vision as an imposition by the global North on the development path of the South. Additionally, far from strengthening the EU position, the United States reportedly kept a rather low profile in the negotiations.

A less discussed aspect of the final document is the role envisaged for civil society in the implementation of the sustainable development vision.

“While the document recognises the role of civil society in implementing sustainable development, this role should have been made more specific and additional mechanisms for civil society involvement should have been created,” Staffan Nilsson, the president of the European Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC is an EU body meant to enable European civil society groups to make their voices heard by Brussels decision-makers), told Terraviva.

“If there are no actions from civil society, there is less direction for sustainable development,” Nilsson added.

At the same time, he noted that regardless of this weakness in the final document, Rio represents a strong example of civil society having numerous opportunities to make their voices heard and a good starting point for further positive work from both non-governmental and governmental actors on sustainable development.

“Pela primeira vez, organismos multilaterais oferecem ajuda para investir na área de mobilidade em países em desenvolvimento. É uma iniciativa pioneira que substitui a visão de desenvolvimento tradicional que investia em rodovias em prol de um desenvolvimento social e equitativo. A comunidade internacional nunca tinha se comprometido em investir recursos deste porte”, disse à IPS Ramon Cruz, gerente executivo do programa de sustentabilidade do Instituto para Políticas de Transporte e Desenvolvimento (ITDP, na sigla em inglês).

Os compromissos voluntários são resultado da campanha ‘Parceria sobre Transportes Sustentável de Baixo Carbono’ (SloCaT, em inglês), através de uma pareceria internacional que reúne o Programa das Nações Unidas para Assentamentos Humanos (ONU-HABITAT), organizações não governamentais como o ITDP, empresas e bancos de desenvolvimento multilateral (MDBs).
A campanha SLoCaT foi criada em 2009 para defender o transporte sustentável de baixo carbono. No total, foram assumidos 16 compromissos voluntários sobre o transporte sustentável por 13 organizações. Na lista das instituições financeiras estão o Banco Asiático de Desenvolvimento, o Banco Africano, assim como o Banco Interamericano, o Banco Mundial e o Banco Europeu de Reconstrução e Desenvolvimento.

Modelos inovadores de transporte podem ser mais sustentáveis. Crédito: IPS/TerraViva

“Só o Banco Asiático, na última década, realizou 80% de seus investimentos em rodovias e apenas 2% para transporte sustentável. A grande novidade é que estes bancos estão enfocando no transporte público e de massa ”, argumentou Ramon Cruz.
Segundo o gerente do ITDP, um dos grandes desafios para a economia verde é promover uma mobilidade integrada com sistemas de transporte intermodal com corredores de ônibus (BRT – Bus Rapid Transit) e sistemas intermodais de transporte interligando trens, metrô e ciclovias, especialmente nas economias emergentes.

“Esta é uma forma eficiente se um país quer reduzir as suas emissões de carbono e contribuir para evitar as mudanças climáticas. Pensar num mundo mais sustentável é preciso pensar nos centros urbanos”, destacou Cruz.

Nas cidades, a maior parte das viagens diárias de seus moradores é de 2 km e podem ser perfeitamente feitas em bicicleta. “As cidades devem incluir o pedestre. A gente quer uma cidade que o pedestre possa desfrutar”, salientou.

Ramon Cruz defende ainda que os centros urbanos tracem estratégias de mobilidade a partir de suas demandas e carências.
O rápido ritmo de urbanização do mundo inteiro está transformando o setor de transportes. Enquanto a América Latina é uma região altamente urbanizada, as cidades da África e especialmente da Ásia continuam a explodir em tamanho e em adensamento urbano.

A previsão, segundo a SloCaT, é de que somente China e Índia incluirão 500 milhões de pessoas à sua população urbana nos próximos 20 anos. Essa expansão exigirá sistemas de transportes que possam prevenir ou controlar os padrões de expansão desordenada e o congestionamento e garantir um acesso adequado a bens e serviços.

“Este enorme compromisso com relação aos transportes é uma importante contribuição para colocar em funcionamento esforços colaborativos de financiamento de longo prazo e podem ajudar a uma implementação eficaz e mensurável das metas de desenvolvimento sustentável”, afirmou Brice Lalonde, um dos dois coordenadores executivos da Conferência Rio+20. (TerraViva)
(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 20 junho (TerraViva) – A economista brasileira Amyra El Kalili começou a atuar no mercado financeiro quando as mulheres nem pensavam em chegar perto dos bancos. Uma das pioneiras no uso da expressão commodities ambientais, em 18 de junho deu uma palestra sobre Fraudes no Monitoramento do Financiamento Climático durante um seminário da agenda paralela da  Rio+20.  Filha de um beduíno palestino que chegou ao Brasil na década de 60,  tem duas certezas: a primeira é que palestinos e israelenses estão predestinados a conviverem lado a lado, por isso defende dois Estados para dois povos; e a segunda é que o meio ambiente chegou ao mercado e os instrumentos econômicos financeiros ambientais são mais do que necessários.

“Chamo isso de responsabilidade socioambiental do sistema financeiro”, explicou Amyra a Terraviva. Esse novo mercado deve considerar o impacto social, ambiental e de geração de ocupação e renda, e agregar todas as reinvidicações feitas na Cúpula dos Povos a seu planejamento financeiro. A crítica de Amyra é sobre como o sistema se apropriou do termo commodities ambientais. “Meio ambiente, recursos naturais estratégicos e bens comuns não pertencem ao Estado, são bens de uso difuso; o Estado é tutelador, e não pode, pela Constituição, vender ou doar”, salientou. Portanto, o minério não é do minerador, que tem uma concessão para explorar. Ninguém pode se adonar da água, é um direito humano.

Amyra El Kalili, crítica aos créditos de carbono. Crédito Clarinha Glock.

As commodities convencionais são produtos ou mercadorias, geralmente matérias-primas, produzidos em larga escala em nível mundial. Exigem tecnologias de ponta, maquinário pesado, monocultura intensiva e de exploração mineral. Falar de Mercado de Carbono significa que alguém aposta que vai ter poluição no futuro e está dizendo para o mercado se proteger, observou a economista. Para Amyra, a natureza jurídica do Mercado de Carbono não é clara. O que se quer, na verdade, é fazer com que as empresas deixem de ser poluidoras e passem para o mercado sustentável. De boa fé, os Mercados de Carbono deveriam ter prazos, pressupondo que a poluição vai acabar, o que não ocorre. E o Estado deveria ser capaz de fiscalizar, o que não acontece.

Já as commodities ambientais defendidas por Amyra são construídas com as comunidades e originárias dos recursos naturais em condições sustentáveis.  Amyra chegou a esse conceito quando passou a estudar o binômio água e energia, na década de 90, depois de ter mergulhado no sistema financeiro durante mais de 20 anos, parte deles na Bolsa de Mercadorias e Futuros (BM&F). “As commoditie ambientais têm que conservar o patrimônio natural e não degradá-lo ou mercantilizá-lo. O sistema financeiro deve ser o agente financiador para que as populações preservem o meio ambiente e tenham ocupação e geração de renda”, disse.        (TerraViva)

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) More than 300 lawmakers have signed the Rio+20 Legislators’ Protocol to keep an eye on politicians who make promises on sustainability commitments they never keep.

Legislators' summit opens at the Tiradentes Palace, Rio de Janeiro. Julio Godoy/IPS

The Legislators’ Protocol – the highlight of the first World Summit of Legislators held ahead of the Rio+20 conference – was signed by lawmakers from 85 countries calling for political commitment to achieve economic growth, sustainability and justice and no regression on environmental law commitments.

For African lawmakers, the protocol has set the stage for battles ahead to get home governments to account for environmental commitments, support best legislative practices and integrate natural capital in national accounts.

“We have a lot of organisations putting efforts on conservation but there has been a gap because most of these efforts have not seen political legitimacy which is through pieces of legislation to support them,” said Stephen Kampyongo, a legislator and member of the Zambian Parliamentary Conservation Caucus.

“We have to reinforce our role and hold our executive government accountable for commitments they make and scrutinising the commitments of our government and ensure they are implemented.”

Co-Chair of the Zambian parliamentary caucus, Mwanda Imenda, said deforestation was a problem that needed urgent address in her country. Lawmakers have to lobby for the government to act on protecting the environment.

“This will not be easy but as the summit urged, the battle has just began and we are ready,” Imenda told TerraViva.

South Africa has enacted a raft of environmental laws, making it a model for other African countries. Presenting a paper on the case of South Africa, parliamentarian Ruth Bhengu cited South Africa’s proactive National Environmental Management Act (NEMA), which was the framework law for the environment.

An amendment to this act created the environmental Management Inspectorate known as the “Green Scorpions” under which people can be charged for crimes against the environment.

“Reported convictions of environmental criminals have increased, although we remain concerned about the incidents of rhino poaching I our protected areas,” Bhengu said.

For Byarugaba Bakunda, from Uganda, the protocol would be a rallying point for government and parliamentarians to tackle nagging environmental issues of deforestation and drought in the country.

Each of the legislators who attended the summit collected a printed pledge to which they will add their names to affirm their renewed commitment to progressive environmental legislation, poverty alleviation and ensuring effective scrutiny of public policy on environmental laws.

Andre Misiekaba, a member of the National Assembly of Suriname in the Caribbean, said the signing of the Legislators’ Protocol gave the summit a unique mandate in raising awareness about sustainable development in global parliaments.

“We have made a strong statement to our governments and we must act on what have agreed on by putting in place legislation to save our world,” said Misiekaba.

Hasan Tuluy, vice president of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, described the Legislators’ Protocol as a milestone in enacting national laws based on the Rio agenda. He urged countries to adapt new synergies between the twin goals of economic development and environmental responsibility.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 19 de junho (TerraViva) Em meio a raiva, recriminações e acusações de “táticas de mão pesada”, os negociadores finalmente aprovaram um plano de ação global para o desenvolvimento sustentável, depois de longas maratonas de debates, em mais de seis dias cansativos.

Crianças afetadas pela seca formam fila para receber alimentos em Mogadíscio. Os pobres são os mais afetados pelas mudanças climáticas e outros problemas. Foto: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

A proposta de um fundo global de US$ 30 bilhões para o desenvolvimento sustentável, iniciada pelos países em desenvolvimento, foi derrubada antes mesmo de sair do chão. Os Estados Unidos e os 27 membros da União Europeia (UE) se recusaram a aprovar a proposta, deixando em dúvida sobre como um projeto ambicioso para o desenvolvimento sustentável, intitulado O Futuro que Queremos, deve ser financiado ao longo da próxima década.

“Sem compromissos de financiamento, o resultado da Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20, pode repetir documentos anteriores sobre o tema, anunciados com muito alarde e com um grande custo pelos líderes mundiais,” afirmou ao TerraViva o embaixador Palitha Kohona, representante permanente do Sri Lanka na Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU). O financiamento é essencial para a maioria dos países em desenvolvimento poderem implementar as elevadas aspirações expressas no documento final de 49 páginas.

“Se os países em desenvolvimento não estiverem incluídos, o documento final continuará a ser uma lista piedosa de sonhos não realizados. O futuro que todos nós queremos deve ser um futuro que todos nós podemos ter “, ressaltou Kohona, ex-chefe da Seção de Tratados da ONU, que tem acompanhado de perto as negociações tanto da Rio+20 como da politicamente desastrosa conferência sobre mudança climática em Copenhague em 2009. Mas nem tudo está perdido, de acordo com Martin Khor, diretor executivo do South Centre, um “think tank” para nações em desenvolvimento sediado em Genebra. “O documento é bastante justo e equilibrado, dado o atual estado negativo de cooperação internacional para o desenvolvimento”, ponderou.

Khor disse ao TerraViva que pelo menos o documento final reafirmou os princípios do Rio, incluindo as responsabilidades comuns mas diferenciadas, o que é precioso para os países em desenvolvimento, por representar a equidade na partilha dos custos da mudança para uma economia ecológica. “Até quase o último dia, parecia que alguns países desenvolvidos se recusariam até mesmo a reafirmar o que foi definido no Rio há 20 anos”, observou. É um triste estado de coisas, lamentou, que uma reafirmação da conferência anterior, que em épocas anteriores teria sido automática, agora seja considerado um sucesso da Rio+20. “A falha é que não há nenhum compromisso por parte do Norte industrializado para um novo financiamento ou para a transferência concreta de tecnologia”, acrescentou.

No entanto, o Grupo de 77 (G-77), bloco de países em desenvolvimento mais a China, conseguiu obter uma decisão para iniciar um processo na Assembléia Geral da ONU, para considerar um novo mecanismo financeiro e de tecnologia. Contudo, realmente vai ser uma luta dura configurá-los. “A crise econômica mundial lançou uma sombra sobre a Rio+20. No entanto, o G-77 obtive uma vitória ao ter a maioria de seus problemas aceitos no documento”, destacou Khor. “Acreditamos que o texto contém um alto volume de ação. E, se esta ação for implementada, e se as medidas de acompanhamento forem adotadas, ele vai realmente fazer uma diferença tremenda para gerar uma mudança global positiva”, indicou.

Claro, acrescentou Khor, este documento é o produto de intensas e prolongadas negociações. E, portanto, é um texto de compromisso. “Como todas as negociações, há alguns países que acham que o texto poderia ser mais ambicioso. Ou outros que sentem que suas próprias propostas poderiam ser melhor refletidas. Enquanto outros ainda podem preferir ter sua própria linguagem. Entretanto, vamos ser claros: negociações multilaterais exigem dar e receber”, opinou.

Meena Raman, especialista em negociação da Third World Network sediada na Malásia afirmou que “o documento final não tem a ambição necessária para salvar o planeta, ou os pobres, mas isso não nos levou para trás, sobretudo levando em conta os nossos receios iniciais de que a Rio+20 poderia ser a Rio-40”. “Esse resultado acanhado sinaliza uma falta de coragem política, liderança e compromisso dos países desenvolvidos e aqueles que fazem campanha para o futuro que realmente queremos teremos de redobrar os nossos esforços”, completou.

Kohona enfatizou que “não vai ser inteligente disfarçar má vontade com uma terminologia inteligente. Nós todos sabemos como os países doadores mobilizaram grandes fundos num prazo muito curto para lidar com a crise financeira pela qual eles próprios eram os responsáveis”. “O meio ambiente pode estar chegando a um nível de crise muito mais grave”, alertou. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

SEROPÉDICA, Brasil, 20 jun (TerraViva) Una hacienda agroecológica integrada funciona como centro de experimentación para científicos y técnicos brasileños, empeñados desde hace 20 años en demostrar que es posible obtener frutos de la tierra de forma barata, eficiente y sin perjudicar el ambiente ni la salud humana.

Bautizada como “Sistema Integrado de Investigación en Producción Agroecológica” (SIPA) y más conocida como “Haciendita agroecológica KM47”, el establecimiento rural ocupa60 hectáreasen el municipio de Seropédica, a47 kilómetrosde la ciudad de Río de Janeiro.

Investigadores dela Empresa Brasileñade Estudios Agropecuarios (Embrapa) y dela Universidad FluminenseRural de Río de Janeiro, entre otras instituciones gubernamentales, realizan desde 1993 estudios de campo en agroecología en ese sitio.

La producción integra la actividad agropecuaria sin utilizar químicos sintéticos, como agrotóxicos para los vegetales ni fármacos de ese tipo para los animales.

La base del sistema es la “diversificación de cultivos” y está destinado fundamentalmente a la agricultura familiar, que en Brasil emplea a 75 por ciento de la mano de obra del campo.

“La agricultura de base ecológica busca de alguna manera reproducir las condiciones del ambiente natural, y, en un ambiente natural, lo que proporciona el equilibrio dinámico es la biodiversidad de especies”, explicó a TerraViva el ingeniero agrónomo Ernani Jardim, de Embrapa.

“Cuando se reduce esa diversidad se abre la posibilidad del desequilibrio, del surgimiento de una plaga, de una enfermedad, o de una condición ambiental que provoca el desequilibrio”, agregó.

La biodiversidad y el manejo del agua y del suelo de manera sustentable transformaron el paisaje de pastizales del pasado en un vergel de 50 especies de plantas cultivadas, como frutales, hortalizas, cereales y forrajeras, además de adobos naturales.

La hacienda, que surge como un paraíso en un área degradada como los es la “Baixada Fluminense” (Bajada Fluminense), alterna espacios preservados dela Mata Atlántica, una zona de agrofloresta y una huerta botánica.

El adobo es obtenido a partir del estiércol de las vacas que, a su vez, producen leche orgánica. Pero también se produce con vegetales. En una hectárea se consiguió un ingreso bruto por año equivalente a 30.000 dólares, explicó Alessandra Carvalho, también de Embrapa.

En tanto que para evitar plagas se enfatiza en la prevención. Se utilizan especies resistentes, se escogen las  mejores épocas de producción, se controla el agua de riego para evitar hongos y se diversifican los cultivos.

También se usan los llamados enemigos naturales, como es un cantero de cilantro, por ejemplo, que es una trampa para atraer insectos nocivos. En casos extremos, las plagas se combaten con extractos botánicos o sustancias permitidas en la agricultura orgánica.

La cobertura de residuos vegetales tiene como fin alejar hierbas invasoras y evitar la erosión del suelo.

La estación lechera también es orgánica. En vez de fármacos químicos se utiliza la homeopatía, y se mantienen los corrales con ventilación y sol. El objetivo es el “bienestar del animal”, porque al no ser maltratado se enferme menos, ejemplificó la veterinaria Mónica Florio, dela Empresade Investigación Agropecuaria del Estado de Río de Janeiro (Pesagro).

Según la médica, en solo un año se mejoró la salud de las vacas y se controlaron las infecciones parasitarias y los problemas reproductivos.

La producción fue “excelente”, al ubicarse entre 13 y14 litrospor animal. Y sin costo de ración, porque el alimento es pasto o forraje de la agrohacienda.

En otra estación, el investigador Daniel Caravalho, dela Universidad FluminenseRural de Río de Janeiro, desarrolla sistemas de energía solar e irrigación con tecnologías simples que usan desde caños de bambú hasta piezas viejas de máquinas lavarropas.

Una mesa con bocadillos, tortas y jugos preparados con hortalizas, leche y frutos orgánicos, es el mejor resumen de la agrohacienda.

“¿Es apenas ecológicamente correcto o también rico?”, pregunto a TerraViva la periodista argentina Laura Chertkoff.

“Ecológicamente correcto y muy rico”, aseguró.

(FIN/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 20 junho (TerraViva) – Diretores do setor financeiro de todo o mundo assumiram o compromisso de incorporar o conceito do “capital natural” em seus produtos e serviços, para defender um patrimônio que, segundo interpretam, tem que ter um preço para impedir maior devastação.

A Declaração do Capital Natural foi assinada por 37 máximos representantes de instituições bancárias, de seguros e de investimentos de 13 países, durante o Fórum Corporativo Sustentável, promovido pelas Nações Unidas como uma das atividades paralelas à Rio+20.

A declaração sobre o capital natural é promovida pela Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), pela Iniciativa Financeira do Programa das Nações Unidas para o Meio Ambiente e pela Global Canopy Programme.

O objetivo é entender e fazer entender que “ativos” como a água, o ar, o solo e as florestas são um “capital fundamental”, e como eles afetam os negócios das empresas, explicou a TerraViva Roberta Simonetti, coordenadora do Programa de Financiamento Sustentável da FGV.

Em uma segunda instância as instituições se propõem a implantar uma metodologia para incorporar estes ativos nos produtos e serviços. Depois será preciso estabelecer como refletir o impacto nos informes de risco e, finalmente, como contabilizá-lo, detalhou.

Roberta Simonetti, da FGV: é preciso incorporar o valor do capital natural

Simonetti recordou que o termo “capital natural” foi “emprestado” do mundo econômico, afirmando que, da mesma forma que um investidor quer preservar seu patrimônio e viver do ganho que este lhe gera, o desafio é não depredar recursos naturais para obter um benefício disso. “O que propomos é construir coletivamente uma metodologia que ainda não foi criada. Contudo, ao aderir à declaração reconheço a importância do capital natural, reconheço que tentarei entender os riscos, como me impactam, como informá-lo e como calculá-lo”, resumiu Simonetti.

Simonetti destacou que há empresas que já avaliam ecologicamente seus negócios, por seu próprio interesse empresarial. “O ideal seria que todos fôssemos altruístas, que reconhecêssemos que estamos usando mais do que devemos, dilapidando o patrimônio do planeta, que aceitássemos que não queremos aumentar a produção”. Porém, existem interesses diversos e isso não é possível, ponderou.

Por outro lado, prevalece o conceito empresarial. A especialista deu o exemplo de uma empresa de bebidas em uma região onde não há disponibilidade hídrica, e por isso não pode continuar seu negócio

A única alternativa para continuá-lo será pensar em como colaborar para manter os mananciais e o patrimônio hídrico, indicou. No entanto, organizações sociais participantes da Cúpula dos Povos criticam este modelo.

Especialistas como Larissa Packer, da organização Terra de Direitos, temem que, ao se atribuir um valor financeiro a um recurso natural, em lugar de cumprir sua função de conservar a natureza, se estimule a depredação porque, segundo essa lógica, quanto mais escasso um bem mais ele vale.

Simonetti, por seu lado, considerou “mal-entendido” esse conceito. “Não é vender a natureza. É entender que, como um serviço ecossistêmico, tem um valor e que, por exemplo, se um fazendeiro conservar a floresta, tem que ter uma compensação para sobreviver sem cortá-la”, argumentou a especialista da FGV.

Em entrevista à TerraViva, Marcelo Cardoso, vice-presidente da Natura, uma multinacional brasileira de cosméticos, pioneira na produção sustentável no país, considera necessário e importante a discussão, mas tem reparos.

Conhecimentos tradicionais precisam fazer parte do preço. Crédito: Fabíola Ortiz.

“Como os recursos naturais são um bem comum, me parece fundamental a valorização dos serviços ambientais e dos ecossistemas. Entretanto, me parece que ainda temos que discutir limites e marcos legais”, alertou. Nesse sentido, Cardoso entende a preocupação das organizações sociais sobre esses ativos.

“Existem sistemas como água, como a questão dos resíduos, que se não colocarmos limites claros à utilização, à necessidade de buscar ciclos fechados, à necessidade de sistemas fechados de água, e se só for feita uma avaliação sobre os serviços ambientais e seu uso, terminaremos criando mais devastação e destruição do que o que queremos construir”, ressaltou.

Ricardo Villaveces, da Confederação Cafeeira da Colômbia, que também participou do Fórum, afirmou à TerraViva que aprova a decisão. “Na medida em que os ativos ambientais tenham valor, tudo o que vamos cuidar vamos conservar mas também vamos nos beneficiar deles, porque parte da questão é que é preciso obter uma renda pelos serviços ambientais”, enfatizou. . (TerraViva)

(FIM/2012)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) The cliché that mammoth summits like Rio+20 are “too big to succeed” can also be applied to the megacities of our day such as Rio de Janeiro: they are simply too big to become green and sustainable.

Shanties near waterways are a common sight in Manila. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

And yet that’s precisely the commitment made by the mayors of the 59 largest cities of the world, reunited in the so-called C-40 group.

At a side event during the U.N. conference on sustainable development here, the mayors of the C-40 group recalled that the largest urban centres of the world have “the potential to reduce their annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) by over one billion tonnes by 2030″, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of Mexico and Canada combined.

Now the mayors want to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030.

Mind the word “potential” – omnipresent in these days of meek admissions of well-known, concrete catastrophic scientific data and vague promises to tackle the problems some time in the future.

Indeed, megalopolises across the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Mexico City to Tokyo to Shanghai, have vast potential to reduce pollution because they are big polluters in the first place.

A megalopolis per se constitutes a senseless waste of energy, human and otherwise. To change that, cities need to launch an improbable, most likely rather unpopular revolution that would affect practically all aspects of life, from transport to waste management to the generation and consumption of electricity, to food supply and population management.

If such a revolution is to succeed, cities must cease to lure rural populations searching for better lives in large urban centres. If such a revolution is to succeed, megalopolises would be capitals of fairytale countries, unlikely to come true in our lifetimes.

Let’s begin with transport. It is well known that transport activity is responsible for 13 percent of all anthropogenic GHGE, and for 23 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Transport’s dependency on oil is a staggering 95 percent, and it accounts for 60 percent of all oil consumption.

To reduce their share of such pollution, cities would have to offer efficient public transportation, and simultaneously discourage the use of private automobiles by substantially increasing taxation and fuel prices, and limiting access to urban centres.

Cities would have to encourage the use of bicycles, significantly boost the efficiency of combustion engines to reduce exhaust fumes, and guarantee safety for users of public transport, especially in developing countries. Today, crime is a major discouraging factor for well-to-do citizens, particularly women, to use public transport.

To call such a set of goals difficult to achieve, expensive, and most likely unpopular would be an understatement. But that’s only the beginning of the to-do list for city planners and administrations.

Although heating is not a pressing problem for tropical cities, it is in countries with cold winters. In such places, optimising the thermic isolation of buildings is a must – as it is to have more efficient air conditioning systems during hot summers.

This requires enormous private investments, which would need support by credit state agencies, and tax cuts to make them attractive to citizens. Zero-emission model buildings are already in place in some industrialised countries – but they are models, still a far cry from becoming standard housing policy.

Furthermore, cities would have to rely ever more on renewable sources – sun, wind, bio-mass. They must discourage waste, especially plastic, aluminium, and other non-degradable compounds. When waste is unavoidable, it must be recycled.

Cities would have to rely on local and regional food sources to further reduce transport emissions. And so on…

As already mentioned, the sustainable city of the future must not only discourage migration from the countryside, it would have to encourage migration back to rural areas to reduce its own population.

In other words, the sustainable city of the future would have to mirror the sustainable country of the future, one that offers opportunities to populations in rural areas, one crisscrossed more by railroads than by highways, the green, socially equitable country of our dreams.

That country is not around the corner, and it certainly won’t be made possible by such mammoth conferences such as Rio+20. That country, the citizens will have to build themselves.

RÍO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20, 2012 (IPS) – Assigning nature a monetary value and incorporating it into gross domestic product (GDP) are key aspects of a global policy of sustainable development, according to legislators and scientists gathered at the first world summit organised by GLOBE international, an association of parliamentarians concerned with environmental policies.

GLOBE plenary session at the Tiradentes Palace in Río de Janeiro. Credit: Julio Godoy/IPS

The summit took place Jun. 15-17 in the Tiradentes Palace, the original seat of the Brazilian congress.

“Developing ‘Natural Capital Accounts’ is a critical step towards reshaping existing policy and national accounting frameworks to accurately reflect the relationship between the economy and the environment,” Barry Gardiner, a Labour party member of the British parliament and vice president of GLOBE, told this reporter.

Gardiner added that under the present GDP system, many activities harmful to the environment are counted as growth and therefore considered positive to the economy. “You then see your GDP is rising, but it would be an unsustainable growth, because actually you are destroying your natural capital,” he explained.

“With the adoption of the System for Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) last February, there is now an internationally agreed framework to account for these interactions and to measure material natural resources like minerals, timber and fisheries,” Gardiner said.

The SEEA, approved by the U.N. statistical commission after years of research, contains the first set of internationally comparable statistics on the environment and its relationship with the economy.

Environmental national accounting can be a useful tool for governments to bolster their bargaining position vis-a-vis multinational companies exploiting resources in their countries, said Glenn-Marie Lange, managing director of the policy and economics team at the World Bank’s environment department and advisor to the U.N. team that put together SEEA.

“If you know the extraction cost of a given resource, and the market price of it, you can improve your negotiation position so as to obtain a larger share of the benefits for your country,” she said.

“SEEA can also help local communities to demand benefits to be better distributed, and get their fair share of them,” Lange said.

Lange said that the SEEA is being piloted in several countries. “It is far from perfect, but we are improving it. The second volume of SEEA is (in) the pipeline.”

In its final protocol, the legislators attending the GLOBE summit agreed to “push for the inclusion of natural capital in our respective countries’ national accounts” and to “advance legislation that integrates the national capital approach into policy analysis and decision making”.

Yet this agreement was ultimately weakened by such restrictive provisions as the phrase “as nationally appropriate”, now ubiquitous in international agreements.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 20 junho (IPS) – A Monsanto, a Vale e a indústria de agrotóxicos foram os alvos principais dos cerca de 2.000 manifestantes que ocuparam algumas ruas do centro do Rio de Janeiro, na noite de terça-feira. “A Monsanto mata gente, mata rio/ Agronegócio, a mentira do Brasil” foi um dos gritos do protesto. O ato, convocado por movimentos sociais participantes da Cúpula dos Povos, teve uma maioria de camponeses e agricultores familiares provenientes de todo o Brasil e do exterior.

A canadense Judith Marshall, sindicalista de Toronto, trouxe denúncias do seu país e de Moçambique, onde morou por oito anos após a independência daquele país africano em 1975, contra os abusos da Vale. O ex-presidente da empresa, Roger Agnelli, chegou a ser conselheiro do governo moçambicano para assuntos internacionais e no Canadá a Vale enfrenta processos judiciais por práticas inseguras que teriam provocado várias mortes, informou.

Manifestante em protesto contra empresas multinacionais. Crédito: Mário Osava

Agricultor assentado da reforma agrária em Atalaia, no estado de Alagoas, Joelson Melquiades, protestou contra os agrotóxicos com uma mascara de proteção da boca e nariz, como muitos dos manifestantes. Sua roça de macaxeira, feijão, inhame e hortaliças, seguindo as orientações da agroecologia, sofrem a contaminação dos venenos agrícolas. Por isso ele e seus vizinhos condenam a monocultura da cana de açúcar presente nos arredores. Economia verde, em discussão na conferencia oficial da Rio+20 é “pura enganação”, sentenciou.

Shell, Syngenta, Bayer, Bunge, Nestlé, Petrobrás e até mesmo Natura, a indústria de cosméticos que aproveita insumos naturais, e se considera “verde”, foram duramente criticada por “explorar o trabalho feminino, o saber tradicional e bens comuns”, por oradores.

O movimento de oposição à hidrelétrica Belo Monte, no Xingu, esteve presente com sete ativistas e desalojados. A Norte Energia, consórcio que toca a construção, “falou em indenização e reassentamento em 90 dias”, mas nada aconteceu, acusou Elisvaldo Gomes, um agricultor de Assurini, onde a família possui 50 hectares. Agora promete providencias para dentro de dois anos, sem indicar terras nem condições dos novos estabelecimentos rurais.

Sua colega da delegação de Altamira, Ana Laida Barbosa, que trabalha no Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI), se queixa da “criminalização” com que Belo Monte reage contra “qualquer manifestação contraria”.

A passeata foi curta. Vindos do Aterro do Flamengo, onde se realiza a Cúpula dos Povos, os manifestantes se organizaram em frente ao Consulado dos Estados Unidos e se concentraram na rua seguinte, a Santa Luzia, no centro da cidade.

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 19 (TerraViva) Giving farmers an opportunity to own plots can turn around under-utilised land and make it highly productive, according to a senior agro-forestry expert at the ongoing United Nations’ negotiations on sustainable development.

Kenyan farmer Judith Mwikali Musau has successfully introduced the use of grafted plants for crop and fruit harvesting. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

In a side event organised by the government of Japan at the Rio+20 conference in Brazil to review the Satoyama Initiative, Prof. Tony Simons, director general of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) told delegates that land ownership was an important missing link for fostering the desired green economy.

The Satoyama Initiative was launched jointly in 2010 by Japan’s Ministry of Environment and the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) in partnership with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Its goal was to build the relationship between human beings and nature by promoting reclamation of natural resources to change landscapes.

“Studies have shown that people with total land ownership can easily engage in sustainable farming and agroforestry, hence conserving biodiversity and other natural resources, (more) than those who are leasing it for a short period of time,” Simons said.

He cited a survey conducted by ICRAF in Kenya, where satellite images of adjudicated land and un-adjudicated land were analysed to compare the nature of investments within areas with land tenure and those without.

The 2011 survey analysed 22,000 images from different parts of the country that are viable for agricultural production.

“The findings of the study showed enormous differences between the two landscapes. Where there was land tenure, there were (more) massive investments on the ground than in places without land tenure. This means that the future green landscape lies in areas where people have land tenure,” he said.

The green economy has been held out as way to keep young people in the countryside, thus generating employment and at the same time decongesting cities.

Environmental experts at the forum observed that through sustainable use of biological resources, farmers can easily sustain biodiversity – which also promotes green economy objectives.

“This will therefore facilitate indigenous people to enjoy a stable supply of various natural benefits and as well be sure of a sustainable green future,” said the ICRAF chief.

In many parts of Africa, land is owned by communities, a fact that some research shows has a detrimental impact on the green economy.

“Legislators must put in place appropriate policies to enable individuals to own land if we have to achieve the desired green economy, and suitable landscapes,” said Simons.

Kazuki Hoshindo, advisor to the Japanese minister for environment, said that another option is to employ a strategy of public-private partnerships, to work closely with the indigenous communities.

“In Japan, for example, the private sector activities towards a green economy have been expanding, thus making very good progress. The private sector has a promising potential in technology, marketing, cost consciousness and social responsibility,” he told scientists at the Rio+20 forum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her insistence brought results.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 19 (TerraViva) Amidst recrimination, anger and charges of “strong arm tactics”, negotiators eventually endorsed a global plan of action for sustainable development following marathon sessions lasting over six weary days.

Children displaced by drought line up to receive food in Mogadishu. The poor are hardest hit by climate change and other problems. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

A proposal for a 30-billion-dollar global fund for sustainable development – initiated by developing countries – was shot down even before it could get off the ground.

The United States and the 27-member European Union (EU) refused to approve the proposal, leaving in doubt how an ambitious blueprint for sustainable development, titled “The Future We Want,” is to be financed over the next decade.

“Without funding commitments, the Rio+20 outcome is likely to go the same way as previous documents of this nature, adopted with much fanfare and at great cost by world leaders,” Ambassador Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the United Nations, told Terra Viva.

The funding is essential for most developing countries if they are to implement the lofty aspirations expressed in the 49-page outcome document.

“If developing countries are not brought on board, the outcome document will remain a pious list of unfulfilled dreams. The future that we all want must be a future that we all can have,” said Kohona, a former chief of the U.N. Treaty Section, who has been closely monitoring negotiations both at Rio+20 and the politically-disastrous 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen.

But all is not lost, according to Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, a Geneva-based think tank of developing nations.

“The document is quite fair and balanced, given the current negative state of international cooperation for development,” he said.

Khor told TerraViva that at least the final document reaffirmed the Rio principles, including the common but differentiated responsibilities, which is precious for developing countries as it spells equity in sharing the costs of shifting to an environmentally friendly economy.

“Until almost the last day it seemed like some developed countries would refuse to even reaffirm what was committed at Rio 20 years ago,” Khor said.

It is a sad state of affairs, he said, that a reaffirmation of Rio, which in previous times would have been automatic, would now be considered a success of Rio+20.

“A weakness is that there is no commitment by the North for new funding or for concrete technology transfer,” he added.

However, the 132 member Group of 77 (G77) developing countries, plus China, managed to get a decision to start a U.N. General Assembly process to consider a new financial and a new technology mechanism. But it will be a tough fight to actually set these up.

“The global economic crisis has thrown a long shadow over Rio+20. Nevertheless, the G77 and China won a victory in having most of their issues accepted in the document,” Khor said.

Secretary-General of the Rio+20 summit Sha Zukang admitted the hurdles that had to be cleared before reaching final agreement.

“We think the text contains a lot of action. And, if this action is implemented, and if follow-up measures are taken, it will indeed make a tremendous difference in generating positive global change.”

Of course, he added, this document is the product of intensive protracted negotiations. And therefore, it is a compromise text.

“Like all negotiations, there will be some countries that feel the text could be more ambitious. Or, others who feel their own proposals could be better reflected. While still others might prefer to have their own language. But, let’s be clear: multilateral negotiations require give and take.”

Meena Raman, a negotiation expert at the Malaysia-based Third World Network said, “The outcome document does not have the ambition needed to save the planet or the poor but it has not taken us backwards, particularly given our initial fears that Rio+20 might be Rio-40.”

“This minimal outcome signals a lack of political courage, leadership and commitment from developed countries, and those campaigning for the future we really want will have to redouble our efforts.”

Ambassador Kohona said, “It is not going to be clever to disguise disinclination with clever terminology. We all know how donor countries mobilised massive funds at very short notice to deal with the financial crisis for which they themselves were responsible.”

“The environment may be approaching a much more serious crisis level,” he warned.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 19 jun (TerraViva)  El mundo se comprometió hasta ahora a restaurar solo 18 millones de hectáreas de bosques para 2020, lo que corresponde a apenas 12 por ciento de la meta de 150 millones de hectáreas acordada en el Desafío de Bonn, del año pasado.

La deforestación de los bosques venezolanos merma la absorción de CO2. Crédito: Fidel Márquez/IPS

Así se informó el lunes 18 en Río de Janeiro durante una conferencia organizada por la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN), que hizo un llamado mundial a que más países se comprometan a reforestar y recuperar las áreas verdes del mundo.

Existen actualmente 2.000 millones de hectáreas en el planeta que deben ser restauradas, alertó el director de Soluciones Basadas en la Naturaleza de UICN, Stewart Maginnis.

“Queremos ver acciones reales. Tenemos que enfocar esta meta para los próximos 10 años de 150 millones de hectáreas. Ya tenemos un poco más de 10 por ciento de compromisos firmados. Este es el primer paso. Ya hemos conversado con otros gobiernos, y creo que de aquí vamos a avanzar hasta fines de este año”, aseguró Maginnis a TerraViva.

Al ser una adhesión voluntaria, no habrá ningún tipo de sanción para los países adherentes. No obstante, Maginnis reconoció que había “mucho entusiasmo” por parte de los países que participarán de Río+20.

La Conferenciade las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, Río+20, se realizará del 20 al 22 de este mes en esta ciudad.

Según el propio presidente de la UICN, Ashok Khosla, las ventajas de reforestar son muchas, con grande impacto positivo en los ecosistemas y en la biodiversidad.

“La meta para 2020 puede ser alcanzada, a pesar de ser ambiciosa. Se necesitarán inversiones de 18.000 millones de dólares por año”, dijo Khosla.

El Servicio Forestal del Departamento de Agricultura de Estados Unidos anunció que restaurará 15 millones de hectáreas.

Por su parte, el gobierno de Ruanda asumió el compromiso de recuperar dos millones.

En tanto Brasil, a través del pacto Restauración de la Mata Atlántica, coalición de agencias gubernamentales, organizaciones no gubernamentales y el sector privado, anunció su intención de recuperar un millón de hectáreas.

Según evaluaciones de la UICN, la restauración de 150 millones de hectáreas inyectaría 80.000 millones de dólares en la economía mundial y sería capaz de reducir 17 por ciento las emisiones de efecto invernadero, causantes del recalentamiento planetario.

Según el presidente de la Red Mexicana de Organizaciones Campesinas Forestales, Gustavo Sánchez, integrante además de la Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques, solo la región de América Central tiene 20 millones de hectáreas de áreas verdes que deben se recuperadas.

“Hay muchos ejemplos de fracaso de reforestación con fines propagandísticos. Es necesario diseñar una política de ciclo de cultivos de bosques. Plantar un árbol es apenas uno de los pasos”, dijo Sánchez a TerraViva.

“Lo siguiente es definir un modelo de cómo va a ser hecha esa restauración. Nosotros proponemos una reforestación productiva con un objetivo ecológico sostenible”, añadió.

El representante de la Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques defendió también la creación de un fondo para la gestión sostenible regional, aunque admitió que no había una articulación adecuada entre los gobiernos.

“Pero a nivel nacional, cada uno ya puede comenzar a incentivar (la creación) de un fondo para garantizar líneas de crédito”.

Campaña “Plante un compromiso”

Para conseguir apoyo público al Desafío de Bonn, la activista Bianca Jagger hizo un llamado global a favor de la campaña “Plante un compromiso” (en inglés, Plant a Pledge).

“Es la mayor iniciativa de restauración de bosques que el mundo haya visto. No se debe continuar con la degradación de los ecosistemas. Cuando alcancemos las metas, vamos a ver impactos tangibles para las futuras generaciones”, dijo Jagger, como embajadora de la campaña.

“Este es apenas el comienzo. Todavía tenemos que convencer a los políticos de todo el mundo”,  precisó.

“Debemos reducir la brecha que existe entre los gobiernos, la adopción de compromisos y las emisiones de carbono”, agregó.

Según el informe de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO) sobre el estado de los bosques del mundo (State of the World’s Forests 2012 – SOFO), las áreas verdes son la mejor forma de almacenar carbono.

Los bosques del mundo son capaces de almacenar 289 gigatoneladas de carbono, y por tanto pueden servir de herramienta para mitigar el cambio climático. Las áreas verdes además albergan dos tercios de la biodiversidad terrestre.

Maginnis también subrayó que los negociadores del documento final de Río+20 debían reconocer la importancia de restaurar los bosques del mundo e incluirla en el texto final.

“Quedamos decepcionados porque la restauración de los bosques estaba en el texto original y fui reiterado. Lo que está escrito en el documento de hoy no incluye acciones agroforestales que mejoren la conservación del suelo”, dijo.

“Queremos que los negociadores reconozcan la importancia de la restauración de las áreas verdes. Este tema debe volver a la agenda”, agregó. (FIN /12)

RÍO DE JANEIRO, 19 jun (TerraViva) Anunciada como una innovación para promover la participación de internautas y de la población civil en los debates y como parte de la programación oficial de Río+20, la propuesta de los Diálogos para el Desarrollo Sostenible también genera dudas sobre el futuro de sus recomendaciones.

Klaus Töpfer y Bertha Becker en los Diálogos para el Desarrollo Sostenible. Crédito: Clarinha Glock/IPS.

“Siempre hay una repercusión”, admitió a TerraViva el profesor Elimar Pinheiro do Nascimento, del Centro de Desarrollo Sostenible de la Universidad de Brasilia, que estuvo presente en el segundo día de los Diálogos.

“Lo que puede cuestionarse es la naturaleza de las discusiones”, dijo, agregando que, aunque se implementen todas las medidas, todavía se estará muy por debajo de lo necesario.

Según Nascimento, hubo mejoras desde la Cumbre de la Tierra en 1992 hasta ahora, en la víspera del inicio de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible o Río+20, que se extenderá hasta este viernes 22 en esta ciudad brasileña.

Por ejemplo, se necesita menos energía para producir. Pero, como las cantidades producidas son mucho mayores, en definitiva se utiliza más materia prima y, por lo tanto, hay una mayor degradación del ambiente, explicó.

Si las medidas definidas en los Diálogos se llevaran a la práctica pero al mismo tiempo aumentara la degradación, los impactos sobre la vida de todos también serían más profundos, sostuvo.

En caso de seguir las cosas como hasta ahora, “tendemos a vivir peor”, dijo. “Por lo menos una parte significativa de la población va a enfrentar más guerras, emigraciones y escasez de alimentos. Para tener una vida mejor, se precisa mucho más”, insistió.

“Los países del Norte (industrializado) no pueden crecer más, tienen que estacionar sus economías, y los países del Sur también tienen que cambiar su proceso de desarrollo”, enfatizó.

Nascimento destacó la importancia de que los ciudadanos busquen formas diferentes de consumir y de que reconsideren la rápida obsolescencia de los productos. Aunque el peor escenario se montará de aquí a 50 años, es preferible adoptar actitudes más fuertes hoy, y no apenas paliativos, dijo.

Todavía menos optimista sobre los resultados de los Diálogos propuestos por el gobierno dentro de la programación oficial de Río+20 se muestra Rosa Alegria, coordinadora del Núcleo de Estudios del Futuro, vinculado a la Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) de São Paulo, quien también es parte del proyecto Millennium de la Red Mundial de Investigación y del Consejo Deliberativo de los Diálogos para la Economía Verde.

Alegria participó en la construcción del proceso desde que se planteó la idea por primera vez. Incorporada por las autoridades, la propuesta generó controversia sobre el formato a adoptar. “Lo que iba a ser de la sociedad pasó a ser algo diseñado por el gobierno”, recordó.

“Lo que veo aquí es un formato tradicional, conservador, que no insta a la participación y que intimida, porque es muy formal y burocrático”, criticó.

De todos modos, reconoció que los presentes en el Pabellón 5 de Riocentro aportaron preguntas al debate.

“Pero resumir un diálogo a 10 preguntas reduce el pensamiento. El proceso creativo se vio perjudicado. No parece un diálogo, parece un foro. Aparte, la integración de la sociedad debería ser más espontánea, y la Cumbre de los Pueblos no debería haberse hecho por separado”, opinó Alegria.

Sus dudas se concentran ahora en el destino final que tendrán las recomendaciones. “Si ni siquiera está pronto el documento final, ¿cómo van a conseguir incluir eso?”, preguntó.

Alegria sugirió que los resultados de los diálogos se aborden como un camino paralelo, en una especie de seguimiento o postratado de un nuevo modelo económico y una oportunidad de dilucidar la economía verde.

Porque, a su entender, la sociedad todavía no entiende qué es esa tal “economía verde”, concepto que en ningún momento se discutió y definió clara y objetivamente.

Río+20 “podría ser la oportunidad de definir ese concepto”, observó. En una entrevista colectiva realizada el domingo 17, el embajador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo anunció que un grupo se reuniría ese día para tratar de crear esa definición.

Desde el punto de vista de los panelistas invitados, los Diálogos son todo un éxito.

“Son un reflejo de lo moral y científicamente necesario. Lo que estos documentos muestran es lo que el mundo cree que es necesario hacer”, dijo Manish Bapna, presidente del Instituto de Recursos Mundiales, que participó en el debate sobre desarrollo sostenible para el combate contra la pobreza.

En su panel hubo consenso en cuanto a la urgencia de promover la educación y difundir un concepto compartido de responsabilidad sobre la sostenibilidad.

El plenario sugirió que se asegure la capacitación de la población para promover esa sostenibilidad, con el Estado garantizando los servicios básicos y, finalmente, los panelistas acordaron la necesidad de enfatizar el empoderamiento de las comunidades locales, promoviendo el acceso a la información y la participación.

Maria Cecília Wey de Brito, secretaria general del capítulo brasileño del Fondo Mundial para la Naturaleza (WWF), también hizo críticas. Pero, independientemente del proceso, consideró importante estar presente en el Diálogo sobre Bosques para sugerir incluir en la lista de prioridades la meta de deforestación cero hasta 2020. Su insistencia dio resultado.

La recomendación fue incluida inmediatamente, junto con el énfasis en la recuperación y reforestación de 150 millones de hectáreas (fue la más votada por los internautas), igual que el reconocimiento de la importancia de la ciencia, la tecnología y el conocimiento tradicional para el desarrollo sostenible.

Bertha Becker, profesora de la Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro, destacó la necesidad de generar recursos para las poblaciones que habitan estas áreas.

“La Amazonia occidental se está transformando en una frontera de inmigración de la pobreza”, dado que la reforma agraria creó asentamientos en esa zona, “y también están yendo para allá haitianos, africanos e indios”, señaló.

De ahí la necesidad de crear nuevas formas de producción sostenible y de equipar las ciudades para ofrecer los servicios básicos a esta población, dijo Becker.

Klaus Töpfer, fundador y director ejecutivo del Instituto de Estudios Avanzados sobre Sostenibilidad, cree que, por los debates que han generado, las conclusiones de todos los paneles son importantes no solo para Brasil, sino también para todo el mundo.

“No podemos garantizar que sean integradas al documento principal de Río+20, pero estarán en el papel”, dijo.

(FIN)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 19 de junho (TerraViva) Não é certo que os países em desenvolvimento condicionaram a inclusão da economia verde no documento final da Rio+20 a definições sobre financiamento, disse ao TerraViva a chefe da delegação da Venezuela, Claudia Salerno Caldera. “Isto é um boato sem base”, afirmou.
No dia 14, o Grupo dos 77 (G-77) países em desenvolvimento mais a China se retirou da mesa que discutia economia verde, alegando que as nações ricas criavam obstáculos a qualquer avanço referente aos “meios de implantação”, isto é, à transferência de tecnologia e o financiamento para enfrentar a transformação dos padrões de produção e consumo. No dia seguinte as discussões caíram em ponto morto em vários outros temas e, no dia 16, o Brasil apresentou um documento consolidado em busca de consenso antes da chegada dos chefes de Estado e de governo para a cúpula da Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20, que acontece entre 20 e 22 deste mês.

Claudia Salerno Caldera, chefe da delegação da Venezuela. Crédito: IISD

Os países em desenvolvimento “iniciaram a negociação sobre economia verde e sobre as mudanças necessárias”, e isso avançava “maravilhosamente bem” até que a discussão chegou aos meios de implementação, explicou Salerno. Como é possível “que nós, com as lutas contra a pobreza que temos, estejamos mais dispostos a essa transformação do que os que se supõem têm melhores condições?”, questionou.

As propostas para reverdecer a economia que o Norte industrializado havia colocado sobre a mesa em janeiro iam no sentido de criar novas barreiras ao comércio, “e lutamos desde então e conseguimos ajustá-las”, detalhou a representante venezuelana. O acordo “não podia destruir 20 anos de negociações na Organização Mundial do Comércio e tudo o que foi adotado em matéria ambiental” porque você tem uma crise, ressaltou, se referindo à União Europeia (UE). Entretanto, “o debate foi retomado” e o capítulo de economia verde “é hoje um dos que têm maior quantidade de textos já acordados”, contou Salerno. Por que não há um só parágrafo sobre meios de implantação? Porque os países ricos “não querem nada”, acrescentou.

Os Estados aceitaram “limitar a natureza prescritiva da ideia de economia verde e em seu lugar colocar políticas de economia verde”, reconhecendo que os países “devem manter a capacidade de definir como adaptá-lo às circunstâncias específicas”, afirmou Alex Rafalowicz, assessor legal da não governamental Rede do Terceiro Mundo, que acompanha de perto os debates.

Cabe aos governos decidir “se a crise e a conjuntura podem impedir o político de ter uma visão de 20 anos”, apontou Salerno. “Todo o mundo tem uma crise diferente. A Europa clama pela sua e vive colocando-a sobre a mesa como justificativa”, acrescentou. O anúncio, na semana passada, de um fundo de US$ 30 bilhões “já é um acordo e não vamos revisá-lo. Se eles (Estados Unidos e UE) voltarem atrás no que os próprios países desenvolvidos colocaram como a grande bandeira política da cúpula sobre mudança climática de Copenhague, então estaremos muito mal. Contudo, inclusive isso já vimos”, enfatizou.

As delegações de Venezuela, Bolívia, Equador, Cuba e Nicarágua, que coordenam suas posturas na Aliança Bolivariana para os Povos de Nossa América (Alba), no dia 16 falaram duramente sobre os retrocessos em financiamento. De fato, “O G-77 se retirou dos debates sobre economia verde porque a Alba e a Bolívia observaram que os meios de implantação estão seguindo por um caminho tão equivocado e absurdo que aparece como fonte de financiamento a caridade privada”, afirmou ao TerraViva o chefe de negociações sobre mudança climática da Bolívia, René Orellana.

“Não sabemos se estão brincando com a gente ou se efetivamente querem desmantelar a cooperação internacional”, comentou Orellana. “Onde diz que as obrigações válidas em numerosos tratados internacionais ficam suspensas em tempos difíceis?”, questionou. Seu país “tem esperança no processo da Rio+20”, disse, mas “queremos ver um documento que expresse o direito ao desenvolvimento, os direitos da Mãe Terra, a harmonia com a natureza e um enfoque que resolva nossa pobreza”.

Bolívia, Venezuela e outros países latino-americanos produtores de hidrocarbonos estão diante do dilema de uma economia baseada em uma produção suja. “Temos uma dependência muito importante desses recursos não renováveis, e pela vulnerabilidade não podemos sair do dia para a noite dessa dependência, salvo se tivermos transferência de tecnologia, a condição para migrar de uma energia não renovável para uma renovável”, explicou Orellana.

Porém, “nossa contribuição para as emissões de gases-estufa é de 0,03%. E, de repente, querem que assumamos uma enorme responsabilidade na redução de emissões, nós, países que não somos os culpados pela mudança climática. Se o fizermos de uma dia para outro, deixaremos nossos Estados sem possibilidade de renda”, ressaltou Orellana. (FIN/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 19 Junho (TerraViva) – O ano de 1992 foi o momento em que o mundo parou para discutir sobre desenvolvimento sustentável, mas nenhum acordo foi assinado em prol da preservação das florestas. Agora, duas décadas após, ambientalistas, alianças internacionais e organizações não governamentais se reúnem na Rio+20 para defender que os povos das florestas são os maiores protagonistas da preservação das áreas verdes no mundo.

O direito de comunidades tradicionais, indígenas e camponeses de acessar e gerir de forma sustentável os recursos das florestas está diretamente associado ao combate ao desmatamento, assegurou à IPS Jefffrey Hatcher, diretor do programa global da Iniciativa para os Direitos e Recursos (RRI, em inglês Rights and Resources Initiative).

“Pesquisas mostram desde 1992, que as comunidades que tem garantidos seus direitos de acesso à terra onde habitam, previnem o desmatamento em suas áreas e ainda recuperam a mata de forma muito mais eficiente. Há uma relação direta entre garantia desses direitos e redução das emissões pelo desmatamento e aumento o sequestro de carbono”, argumentou.

Populações tradicionais tem um papel importante na proteção das florestas. Crédito: RRI

Duncan Macqueen, coordenador do grupo de recursos naturais do Instituto Internacional para o Ambiente e Desenvolvimento (IIED em inglês International Institute for Environment and Development), defende que o documento final da Rio+20 deveria incluir  uma “meta ambiciosa” para entregar o controle das floretas aos povos locais.

A RRI lançou, durante a Rio+20, o relatório “Quais direitos?” (What Rights?), uma análise comparativa da legislação nacional de países em desenvolvimento a respeito dos direitos de posse de comunidades tradicionais, indígenas e povos da floresta.

O estudo fez um levantamento de 27 países no mundo em todos os continentes que representam 75% das florestas no mundo e observou que 59 leis foram aprovadas desde 1992.

Em muitos países, a Rio92 teve uma influência direta na aprovação de legislações no sentido de garantir direitos de posse aos povos tradicionais, como no caso do Nepal.

Nos anos 80, Nepal tinha o pior índice de desmatamento no mundo. A partir do momento em que o governou optou por dar o controle de 25% das áreas verdes às comunidades tradicionais, o cenário reverteu-se expressivamente em um período de 10 anos.

As florestas cobrem 30% da área do planeta e mais de 1 bilhão de pessoas tiram seu sustento delas.

Nas últimas duas décadas, avanços foram observados na criação de leis e no reconhecimento dos direitos de comunidades e populações locais que vivem nas florestas, enfatizou Hatcher do RRI.

No entanto, os avanços foram diferenciados em cada região. A América Latina concentra o maior número de leis responsáveis por garantir a maior parte dos direitos às comunidades tradicionais à terra. O destaque vai para o Brasil, México, Colômbia, Bolívia e Peru.

“As comunidades que vivem nas florestas tem mais possibilidade de atuar nos recursos e explorá-los de forma comercial de modo sustentável”, destacou o diretor da RRI.

Porém, na África, o panorama é o inverso. Os governos africanos ainda detém o poder de 97% das florestas do continente.

“Apenas 2% das áreas verdes são de posse de comunidades tradicionais. As leis no continente africano não são implementadas, em alguns casos por questões técnicas, ou por falta de vontade política de implementá-las, ou ainda pela falta de recursos financeiros”, explicou.

O país que está na lista dos piores no quesito garantia de propriedade das comunidades locais é a República Democrática do Congo. O código florestal do país de 2000 permite dar o titulo da terra às comunidades que vivem em florestas, mas a regulação para implementar ainda não foi aprovada pelo Congresso nacional e segue tramitando há 10 anos.

E dessa forma, há muitas ameaças de corte ilegal de madeira, mineração, expansão de fronteiras agrícolas e concessões de títulos ilegais.

“O presidente da RDC já anunciou que esta é uma das prioridades de seu governo. Em julho, devem fazer uma conferência nacional sobre o tema para avançar e criar um mapa para viabilizar essas ações. É um bom sinal”, avalia Hatcher.

Outro país que apresenta legislação contrária às populações tradicionais é a Indonésia, na Ásia, onde não há qualquer reconhecimento dos direitos das comunidades locais que vivem na floresta. “A situação do país é similar a do Congo”, salienta.

G3 das florestas

Investir no controle das florestas pelos povos tradicionais onde lá vivem também é uma reivindicação do G3, grupo formado por três alianças internacionais que juntas compõem um quarto das florestas no mundo.

A gestão das florestas por povos tradicionais, sejam eles camponeses, indígenas ou comunidades, complementa às necessidades de preservação dos recursos hídricos, da biodiversidade, além de ajudar a reduzir a pobreza e ainda a melhorar qualidade dos que dependem das florestas para viver.

É o que defendem a Aliança Global das Comunidades Florestais (Global Alliance of Community Forestry), a Aliança Internacional dos Povos Indígenas e Tribais das Florestas Tropicais (International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forest) e ainda a Aliança Internacional pelas Florestas Familiares (International Family Forestry Alliance) – que se autodenominam o G3 das florestas no livro “Investindo no controle local das florestas para a proteção das pessoas e do planeta”, lançado na Rio+20.

“Esta é a solução que propomos, dar direito aos que vivem nelas. Esta não é uma ideia teórica, há bons exemplos já sendo postos em prática”, disse à IPS Peter deMarsh, da aliança pelas florestas familiares.

Duncan Macqueen, coordenador do grupo de recursos naturais do Instituto Internacional para o Ambiente e Desenvolvimento (IIED em inglês International Institute for Environment and Development), defende que o documento final da Rio+20 deveria conter uma “meta ambiciosa” para entregar o controle das floretas aos povos locais.

“Para restaurar as floretas do mundo é necessário investir no empoderamento local das florestas. Achamos que esta recomendação deveria estar no documento final, mas dificilmente será colocada. O texto é negociado entre governos e nenhum quer se comprometer a uma meta tão ambiciosa em relação a florestas. Seria muito difícil que eles chegassem a um acordo sobre este tema”, admite Macqueen à IPS.

Já de acordo com Lennart Ackzell, representante também do G3, o controle local das florestas por comunidades é uma “ferramenta indispensável para o desenvolvimento da economia verde que tanto se discute na Rio+20”.

Sem este empoderamento, impera  a falta de propriedade, o não incentivo para o cuidado e a preservação e a terra fica à mercê da corrupção e da ocupação ilegal, criticou Ackzell. (IPS/TerraViva)

(FIM/2012)