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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) “Rio what?” asks Saba Khan, 25, married and the mother of two young daughters, only able to catch the first part of the name of the city where the summit on sustainable development is taking place.

Women march through the streets of Rio on Jun. 18. The banner reads "fight" in Portuguese. Credit: Clarinha Glock/IPS

Having studied until tenth grade, Khan, who works as a housemaid in the posh Clifton area of Karachi, Pakistan, has no idea where Rio de Janeiro is or why world leaders are meeting there.

But her excitement and optimism cannot be quelled when she finds out that there will be many women participating in the Jun. 20-22 conference, women who have actually made a difference to the world.

“When women with brains get together, something great is bound to happen,” Khan says with conviction.

“They will come up with solutions for us,” she says. “A woman leader, who is also a mother, will understand how difficult it is to leave a sick child and come to work – not a man.

“In fact, half our problems can be solved if women become leaders,” she adds, and asks a little diffidently: “But will they (men) let women talk?”

Women did talk at Rio+20, but whether their voices were heard is another question.

Uzma Tahir of ActionAid-Pakistan said the original draft outcome document was neither south-friendly, nor youth-friendly.

“It’s not even women-friendly or people-centred!” she added.

Two decades ago, change was in the air. In 1991, U.S. congresswoman Bella Abzug and the Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai formed the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), a movement to influence Earth Summit discussions the following year.

In the world women’s congress they organised, they came up with the Women’s Action Agenda 21, a document calling for women’s rights in areas of governance, environment, land rights, food security and reproductive health. This powerful document helped get gender equality into both Rio’s Agenda 21 outcome document and the Rio Declaration.

While the days of optimism have faded for many attending the summit, even before it officially ends Friday, Suzanne Maxx, a participant who was at Rio 20 years ago and found it “an extraordinary journey” then “full of hope”, she has not given up any of her idealism.

“The hope may have diminished somewhat, as we are moving in a trajectory towards destruction, but I hold the light; that is why I am here. That is my call,” she said.

Perhaps it is time to also listen to women like Khan, who say there is something else that needs to be done – a change in men’s attitude in general.

“It’s men who deny education to their daughters or stop them from seeking a job. They have this misplaced concept of their honour getting sullied if women step out of their homes,” says Khan with exasperation.

Faced with a double burden, Pakistani women are disproportionately affected by forced joblessness, low wages if they do work, and almost no public services. At the same time, they are still expected to perform all the chores at home, where violence is part and parcel of a married life and legislation against discrimination put on the back-burner.

Indeed, Pakistan is not an easy place for anyone these days to live in, but it is particularly hard for women. But then neither is the United States, as Maxx will tell you.

“As an entrepreneur, I can tell you the capital available to men to start a business with is not available to women,” she said, adding, “It’s a global systemic problem where women are not on an equal footing when it comes to having choice to good health, equal opportunities, education or wages.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) A majority of the 150-member Cooperative for the Conservation of the Environment (COOCEN) in Kigali, Rwanda are empowered women, who must balance raising children, managing homes and providing food.

Chief Beatrice Ubeku, CEO and Founder, Women Care Association of Nigeria. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

The women earn at least 50 dollars a month from making briquettes, an alternative source of fuel to the firewood and charcoal blamed for worsening climate change and deforestation. While seemingly small, the extra income has made a big difference in their lives, they say.

Vestine Uwimana, a mother of five, says being one of the 110 employees of the cooperative has helped support her family, providing food and paying school fees for her children. In addition, she enjoys a better livelihood and has money in the bank.

“I now have access to a bank account, my colleagues and I can save money,” said Uwimana. “I have subscribed to a pension scheme and health and disability insurance.”

COOCEN was launched in 1992 and today produces around 1,500 tonnes of briquettes per year as an alternative to firewood. It is one of more than 2,700 projects in over 160 countries that have benefitted from the Small Grants Programme (SGP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Uniting 182 countries in partnership with international institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the private sector, GEF, formed on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, is currently the largest public funder of projects to improve the global environment.

Through its SGP, GEF has given 10.5 billion dollars in grants to 14,000 projects and leveraged 51 billion dollars in co-financing directly to civil society and community-based organisations since 1991.

Convinced that the equal participation of women in environmentally sustainable initiatives must not be a token gesture, GEF has developed a gender policy to track how the beneficiaries of its SGP have made real, positive changes in women’s lives.

The Policy on Gender Mainstreaming calls on the GEF and its partner agencies to standardise gender into GEF operations, including efforts to analyse and address in GEF projects the specific needs and roles of both women and men.

GEF chief executive officer and chairperson Monique Barbut said while it was easy for organisations to pay lip service to gender, GEF has gone a step further to include gender as one of the issues under the Results Based Management System governing the multilateral institution.

“This means in very single GEF project, agencies that are developing GEF projects have experts who are going to tell us what exactly they are targeting in terms of gender and we measure it at the end of the project,” said Barbut.

“There is no one gender policy, because if you are working on biodiversity or energy the problems are not the same, and so we now have put a target towards the gender issue in all projects,” she said.

According to the text for the Rio+20 summit released on Jun. 19, negotiators recognised gender equality and women’s empowerment as important for sustainable development and a common future.

They further recognised that although progress has been made on gender equality in some areas, women’s potential to engage, contribute and benefit from sustainable development has not been fully realised due to social, economic, and political inequalities.

Barbut told TerraViva that while it would be good for Rio+20 to come up with a strong commitment on gender, current negotiations were far from producing concrete results.

Keylah Tavares, a member of the Brazilian Organising Committee responsible for sustainable projects, told TerraViva that having worked with GEF-supported projects in Brazil, the gender policy will help ensure that more women participate in sustainable development initiatives.

Chief Beatrice Ubeku, founder and CEO of the Women Care Association of Nigeria, who works in capacity-building projects focusing on solar lighting for women, said gender policies ensure women equally work for a sustainable future.

“The gender policy developed by GEF is a plus for women because their role in sustainable development is being recognised and it is the way forward for gender equality,” Ubeku told TerraViva.

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, junho 18 (TerraViva) – Enfeitada com um colar de penas e carregando um cartaz escrito à mão, Rosenilda Candido, 38 anos, indígena do grupo Terena, mostrou por que veio da aldeia Bananal, em Aquidauana, no Mato Grosso do Sul, ao Rio de Janeiro para integrar-se à Cúpula dos Povos.

Representando a Articulação das Mulheres Brasileiras, chegou tímida à Marcha das Mulheres realizada durante a manhã de ontem (18), mas com um discurso fortalecido pelos debates.

A lista de reivindicações de Rosenilda era semelhante a de outras milhares que fizeram a caminhada saindo do Museu de Arte Moderna até o Largo Carioca, no centro da cidade: não à violência, mais segurança nos territórios, demarcação de terras, direitos iguais com os homens. “O urbanismo está trazendo a exploração sexual para as aldeias, dificultando a plantação, provocando poluição e desmatamento”, observou.

A faixa alaranjada que carregou durante a Marcha trouxe o apelo da tailandesa Anchalee Phonklieng, 50 anos: “Mulheres da Ásia lutam por liberdade”. Anchalee reclamou da falta de oportunidades e disse que não há muito espaço de participação em seu país. “Podemos contribuir com conhecimento, opinião e informação”, garantiu. Poma Yola, 38 anos, integrante da Articulação Feminista Mercosur, vestiu as coloridas roupas típicas dos peruanos para lembrar que é preciso romper paradigmas e fortalecer os saberes.

A seu lado, Mary Marca Paco, diretora executiva do Centro de Informação e Desenvolvimento da Mulheres, com sedeem La Paz, na Bolívia, chamou a atenção para os riscos que corre a saúde reprodutiva humana devido aos efeitos nocivos dos transgênicos, da implantação de megaprojetos, da exploração de minérios, petróleo e energia. “Nossas crianças estão sendo violadas; as mulheres ainda enfrentam o tráfico humano, que as obriga à prostituição, e os abortos clandestinos”, explicou.

Mulheres peruanas durante a marcha das mulheres na Rio+20 - Clarinha Glock

Estavam lá também as representantes da Via Campesina, bem como de instituições feministas e femininas, de partidos políticos, além de homens solidários.

O objetivo da Marcha, que conseguiu reunir gente de todos os cantos do Brasil e do Exterior, era dar visibilidade às diferentes vozes que durante muito tempo ficaram caladas e ainda hoje são caladas à força. Elas cantaram, batucaram, brincaram, portaram bandeiras, fizeram discursos e distribuíram panfletos à população. E, sobretudo, se fizeram ouvir: as mulheres são contra o modelo econômico que prioriza o lucro.

“Queremos denunciar essa falsa solução de economia verde e mostrar as alternativas construídas pelas representantes femininas em suas organizações”, comentou Bernadete Esperança Monteiro, integrante da secretaria executiva nacional da Marcha Mundial das Mulheres.

Noeli Taborda, 31 anos, da Via Campesina e da direção do Movimento das Mulheres Camponesas, lembrou que é possível construir um projeto de agricultura que de fato resolva o problema da alimentação no mundo. “Estamos organizadas, propondo a agricultura ecológica e a recuperação e melhoria das sementes crioulas, que são o início da vida. Não adianta ter acesso aos alimentos se eles estiverem contaminados. Os altos índices de câncer são resultado disso”, enfatizou.

Noeli falou contra as mortes – uma mulher assassinada a cada cinco minutos no Brasil -, e comparou a exploração sexual do corpo feminino com a da natureza – ambos são vistos como mercadoria. Sua expectativa é de que na Rio+20 os governos realmente pensem soluções que resolvam a crise ambiental e social.

“Gostaria que chegassem a soluções como a reforma agrária e a soberania alimentar através da agroecologia. Queria que os chefes de Estado pensassem pelo povo, e não apenas pela minoria de 5% que detém 40% das riquezas no mundo. Porém, acredito que a Rio+20 vai ser mais um encontro de fortalecimento das grandes economias e do capitalismo. Por isso a Cúpula dos Povos está aqui: para dizer que não queremos isso”.

Enquanto as mulheres faziam sua manifestação pela cidade, a diretora executiva da ONU Mulheres e ex-presidente do Chile, Michelle Bachelet, e a ex-primeira ministra da Noruega, Gro Harlem Brundtland, se reuniram no Riocentro e afirmaram a importância da participação igualitária e do respeito aos direitos das mulheres para o desenvolvimento sustentável. Segundo Bachelet, quando essa participação é total e igual, as sociedades, as economias e o meio ambiente ficam mais saudáveis.

Bachelet citou números que reforçam as denúncias e os apelos feitos durante a Marcha das Mulheres na Cúpula dos Povos. “Uma mulher morre a cada dois minutos de complicações do parto e da gravidez; a violência contra as mulheres continua uma epidemia global; as mulheres recebem menos que os homens pelo mesmo trabalho e continuam pouco representadas na tomada de decisões”, disse. Para Bachelet, isso não é sustentabilidade, é exclusão social e não fere apenas as mulheres, mas a todos. “Na Rio+20 temos a chance de mudar o futuro”, garantiu. (FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 18 junho (TerraViva) – Um documento que reafirme o empoderamento das mulheres e sua importância para o desenvolvimento sustentável é o que espera a diretora-executiva da ONU Mulheres e ex-presidente chilena, Michelle Bachelet, dos Diálogos para a Sustentabilidade na Rio+20.

Os debates têm o objetivo de propor um texto que será enviado aos chefes de Estado a partir do dia 20.

Para Bachelet as mulheres de todo o mundo não devem ser apenas beneficiadas pela criação de políticas globais mais inclusivas, precisam ser agentes dessas mudanças.

“É necessário que as mulheres tenham ferramentas para garantir a igualdade de gênero e assim ocupar posições de liderança nas esferas política, econômica e social”, disse Bachelet em uma entrevista coletiva concedida na manhã de hoje (18), no Riocentro, local que sedia o encontro.

Michelle Bachelet: ainda é preciso avançar muito para que as mulheres tenham posição igual - Credito: Sriyantha Walpola/IPS

Apesar de o texto elaborado conter dois parágrafos específicos sobre a temática, o pensamento de Bachelet é de que o assunto é transversal.

“É algo que permeia todos os temas e nesse sentido o resultado é positivo, mas alerta que sempre é possível melhorar. As mulheres podem contribuir com todas as áreas do desenvolvimento sustentável, da erradicação da pobreza à proteção dos oceanos.”

A ex-primeira-ministra da Noruega, Gro Brundtland, que foi a primeira mulher a governar seu país, também estava presente na coletiva e, assim como Bachelet, disse acreditar que o mundo já deu passos rumo à igualdade de gêneros, porém, o caminho ainda é longo.

“Na Rio 92 a percepção quanto ao papel da mulher existia, mas era insuficiente. Isso evoluiu, mas ainda é um tema negligenciado em muitos países. Agora é hora de acordar e concordar que o investimento nas mulheres é um grande catalisador para o desenvolvimento sustentável”, afirmou.

A ampliação da participação das mulheres na política, na economia e na sociedade como um todo, foi apontada por ambas como fator claro de desenvolvimento.

Segundo Brundtland, “nos países onde as mulheres estão presentes no governo, no parlamento ou em lideranças, o desenvolvimento do país é maior”.

Já Bachelet, lembrou que, apesar de a participação feminina na ocupação dos postos de trabalho em toda a América Latina ter crescido 53% nos últimos anos, a presença ainda é maior no setor informal ou em cargos menos privilegiados.

“As mulheres são menos de um décimo dos chefes de Estado e de governo, menos de um quinto dos membros do Parlamento, e menos de 4% dos presidentes das 500 maiores empresas do mundo. Isso tem que mudar. Homens e mulheres são igualmente capazes na tomada de decisão”. (FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 17 (TerraViva) – When world leaders from over 100 countries wind up their three-day Rio+20 summit in Brazil next week, they will leave behind the shattered remains of a slew of proposals that never got off the ground.

The Mandava weeder, a farmers' innovation, is lightweight and easy for women to use. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

A 30-billion-dollar Global Fund for Sustainable Development? A Financial Transactions Tax? A Sustainable Development Index? A Sustainable Development Council? A Global Fund for Education? A World Environment Organisation? An Inter-governmental Body on Tax Matters?

The proposals originated from environmental activists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), human rights groups, the U.N.’s NGO Committee on Financing for Development and a High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

After continued stalemate – over issues relating mostly to financing and technology transfers – the 193-member Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) failed to reach agreement Friday on a blueprint for a green economy and sustainable development worldwide.

A consolidated document produced by Brazil, in its capacity as president of the summit (also known as the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development), is likely to be the final action plan titled “The Future We Want” to be endorsed by world leaders when they arrive in Rio Jun. 20.

The proposals, including the strengthening and upgrading of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi to a full-fledged U.N. agency, are conditional on General Assembly approval.

On the creation of a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also to be created by the General Assembly, the action plan warns “the development of these goals should not divert focus or effort from the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).”

The target to achieve MDGs, including the reduction of extreme poverty and hunger by half, is the year 2015. The time frame for SDGs is expected to begin 2015 as an immediate follow up to MDGs.

Asked for specifics, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters, “It’s very difficult for me to say anything which may give the impression that I am prejudging any future decision by member states.

“We have eight MDGs, and whether it will be five, seven, eight or 10 goals for sustainable development, that is now still under consideration,” Ban said.

“How are these SDGs to be achieved?” he asked, and pointed out that the United Nations needs institutional tools to help implement these goals.

One of the tools will be a revamped UNEP. Another would be the establishment of an intergovernmental high level political forum, building on the existing U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) to follow up on all sustainable development commitments.

The summit will recommend the first meeting of the high-level forum to be held during the 68th session of the General Assembly which begins September 2013.

There are two other new proposals in the plan of action: the creation of a capacity development mechanism, within the United Nations, for achieving SDGs and the establishment of an intergovernmental process, under the General Assembly, to propose options on an effective Sustainable Development Financing Strategy to facilitate the mobilisation of resources.

Still, the plan of action does not have any firm financial commitments or commitments to help transfer technology to the world’s developing nations.

“As a snapshot, out of 287 paragraphs, only seven begin with ‘we commit’,” said Daniel Mittler, political director of Greenpeace International.

“Voluntary” appears 16 times, while “as appropriate” – U.N. language for doing nothing – dominates with 31 entries, he said. Statistics are not everything, but these numbers show that governments overall are in the business of delaying and doing nothing in Rio, he added.

“One saving grace,” he told IPS, is the commitment to an Oceans Rescue Plan for the High Seas.

“Whether governments commit to an Oceans Rescue Plan is now a key test of whether this summit delivers anything at all,” Mittler said.

But the blueprint for sustainable development bypasses some of the recommendations made by the 22-member panel, co-chaired by South African President Jacob Zuma and Finnish President Tarja Halonen, which produced a highly ambitious report last January.

Tricia O’ Rourke of Oxfam International told IPS, “Our topline view is that (the Brazilian text) is a more streamlined text, more likely to be agreed, less likely to deliver sustainable development.”

She said it has been skillfully constructed to clear controversy and promote consensus, but even if agreed it would not reorient economic growth towards putting people and planet first.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 15 jun (TerraViva) – Mulheres líderes brasileiras saem em defesa da equidade de gênero como forma de desenvolvimento sustentável em evento paralelo da Rio+20, Humanidade 2012, promovido pelo sistema da Federação das Indústrias no Forte de Copacabana.

Próximo de sedear o Fórum de Mulheres Líderes pela Igualdade de Gênero, o Empoderamento das Mulheres e o Desenvolvimento Sustentável e Cúpula de Mulheres Chefes de Estado, nos dias 19 e 21 de junho, no Riocentro, autoridades femininas brasileiras discutiram nesta sexta-feira, dia 15 de junho, a equidade de gênero como pressuposto para o desenvolvimento sustentável e a erradicação da pobreza.

Para a senadora Marta Suplicy do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT de São Paulo), o movimento feminista foi o maior dos movimentos do século 20. “No último século tivemos movimentos históricos como a queda do muro de Berlim, mas foi o movimento feminista que propiciou as grandes mudanças da sociedade. Nós entramos na política e nos movimentos sociais”, discutiu Suplicy.

A Rio+20, segundo a senadora, é a primeira conferência que, não sendo de gênero,  a mulher tem um papel preponderante e de preservação do meio ambiente. “No meio ambiente, estamos para brilhar e ser partícipes”, enfatizou.

Chamado para pacto global

Já para a ministra brasileira do Meio Ambiente, Izabella Teixeira, que se mantém ativa nas atividades e discussões da Rio+20, há duas décadas na Rio92 o “mundo parou para dizer que a degradação ambiental não era o caminho”. Hoje, a Rio+20 representa um chamado para um pacto e acordo em torno de uma ação, destacou.

O modelo de crescimento econômico adotado nos últimos 20 anos, segundo o Banco Mundial, incluiu 600 milhões de pessoas que saíram da pobreza. Ao mesmo tempo, outras 26 bilhões de pessoas continuam sem acesso à saneamento básico e ainda 1 bilhão de pessoas não tem acesso à água. “Este não é um crescimento inclusivo”, argumentou Teixeira.

Dos cerca de 500 eventos paralelos oficiais à Rio+20 e outras 3.000 atividades não oficiais que acontecem na cidade anfitriã da conferência, cerca de 200 eventos se dedicam ao tema das mulheres. “A política de gênero está inserida na agenda sustentável e nas ações internacionais. Nós mulheres podemos fazer a diferença como já estamos fazendo”, destacou.

Mulher negra ainda desvalorizada

Embora no Brasil, 52% da População Economicamente Ativa (PEA) seja formada por mulheres, elas ocupam a base da pirâmide sócio-econômica com cargos mais baixos e menores salários. A desigualdade de oportunidade e de direitos é insustentável, afirmaram as lideranças.

Segundo admitiu à IPS, a ministra-chefe da Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial, Luiza Helena de Bairros, a mulher negra continua sendo parte do segmento que vive mais desvantagens sociais.

“O segmento feminino foi o que mais se beneficiou dos processos de inclusão sócio-econômica que aconteceram no Brasil nos últimos oito anos. As mulheres negras que saíram da situação de pobreza estão em grande número. Mas isso revela o fato de que a situação da mulher negra era tão precária que, para conseguir uma inserção vantajosa na sociedade, será preciso ainda caminhar muito com políticas afirmativas”, afirmou.

No Brasil, ainda 16 milhões de pessoas vivem abaixo da linha da miséria, das quais 70% são pessoas negras, e destas mais de 60% são mulheres, o que corresponde a 6,7 mulheres negras na miséria.

Comunidades de matriz africana

Pensar um desenvolvimento sustentável inclusivo para as mulheres é focar especialmente nas comunidades tradicionais de matriz africana, salientou Luiza Helena de Bairros.

“Como as mulheres quebradeiras de coco, as marisqueiras e as pescadoras, são vistas dentro do desenvolvimento. Não podem ser vistas como um obstáculo se não, as mulheres dessas comunidades não serão valorizadas. Parte do desenvolvimento sustentável é promover o combate a todos os tipos de discriminação”, defendeu.

A ministra da Igualdade Racial deverá participar do Fórum de Mulheres Líderes, na próxima semana, que terá a presença da ex-presidente do Chile e atual diretora executiva da ONU Mulheres, Michelle Bachelet; a Presidente do Brasil, Dilma Rousseff; e da Argentina, Cristina Kirchner. Bairros espera que elas ocupem um espaço de protagonismo com poder de decisão.

“As mulheres ainda são vistas como instrumento, mas devem ter lugares de decisão. Para além de participar no dia a dia, elas devem ter a possibilidade de participar das grandes decisões da política pública e das empresas privadas que levem em conta o desenvolvimento sustentável inclusivo”, concluiu. (FIM/2012)

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14 (IPS/TerraViva) – Human rights should be explicitly recognised as an indispensable ingredient of sustainable development at the Rio+20 summit in Brazil, says Navanethem Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis, Pillay elaborated on the nexus between human rights and sustainable development, and what world leaders meeting Jun. 20-22 have to do to walk the talk.

Navanethem Pillay. Credit: Courtesy of UNHCHR

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: To what extent do sustainable development and human rights depend on each other?

A: Human rights and sustainable development are inextricably linked. Without human rights safeguards, policies intended to advance environmental or development goals can have serious negative impacts on those rights.

For example, in recent years, we have seen that technocratic efforts towards sustainable development have excluded many communities from the process of decision-making, causing economic and social inequalities to be exacerbated and human rights to be sidelined.

Indigenous peoples have seen threats to their lands and livelihoods from some emission reduction schemes, scarce food-growing lands have sometimes been diverted for the production of biofuels, and massive infrastructure projects have resulted in the forced eviction and relocation of entire communities.

This is why it is important to include specific human rights references throughout the Rio+20 outcome document. When it comes to women’s rights, we have seen time and again that if there is no explicit reference in important policy documents to women’s rights, they tend to be neglected and sometimes previous advances made are inadvertently reversed.

Q: NGOs have expressed fears that the final Rio+20 plan of action will marginalise basic human rights, including the rights of women and indigenous peoples. How valid are these fears?

A: I very much share these concerns. This is why I am personally attending Rio+20 and my office is working hard to highlight the need for human rights to infuse the final outcome.

At the end of March 2012, I wrote an open letter to all U.N. member states urging them to support human rights considerations in their deliberations as they began the second round of informal negotiations. NGOs have taken up this letter as a rallying point and some government delegations have taken up the issue. As a result, we have seen human rights proposals put forward in the negotiations, but the battle is far from over.

Most human rights provisions remain “bracketed”, and key concepts like human rights-based policy coherence and human rights impact assessment are yet to be introduced into the document.

Q: How widely did Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit recognise the concept of human rights?

A: In fact, it reflected human rights language more than one would imagine, given the current discussions. The 1992 Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development were celebrated precisely because they put human beings front and centre – starting with Principle One: “Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.”

In my letter to governments, I reminded them of this – that the 27 principles of the 1992 Rio Declaration are firmly grounded in human rights.

The Rio Declaration specifically invoked the right to development, called for action to reduce disparities in standards of living, affirmed the role of women, indigenous peoples and local communities in sustainable development, and called for the protection of people living under repression and occupation.

Q: Looking back at the progress since human rights considerations were infused in that landmark Declaration two decades ago, what are the lessons learned in terms of “walk the talk”?

A: Twenty years after Rio, one would hope and expect that we would move forward rather than backwards on these essential human rights commitments.

We must address the North-South divide, improve upon the Millennium Development Goals by ensuring that a gender perspective is properly considered, and must learn from the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements that human rights must be at the core of development.

Governments will have to “walk the talk” when it comes to human rights because the women and men on the streets are loudly demanding it.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 (IPS/TerraViva) Unlocking women’s energies and allowing them to become drivers of change could fuel the motor of sustainable development.

The question is whether world leaders meeting at the Rio+20 summit in Brazil will squander or seize this tremendous opportunity to harness women’s full potential.

Michelle Bachelet. Credit: Courtesy of UN Women

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Isabelle de Grave ahead of Rio+20, Michelle Bachelet, head of U.N. Women, explains the vital link between gender equality and the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.

Q: How does gender and women’s empowerment relate to sustainable development?

A: Twenty years ago, at the (first) Rio Summit, there was a unanimous agreement that sustainable development would never be realised without gender equality and that holds true today.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are integral to the achievement of sustainable development. Gender equality is the factor which brings together the three dimensions. It determines the access that men and women have to productive resources such as land, finance, and technology, it determines the ability of individuals to take advantage of opportunities such as education and employment, and it circumscribes access to social protection and basic services.

Women farmers make up 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries and 80 percent in some parts of Africa. If women had the same access as men to agricultural resources, production would increase by 20 to 30 percent, and has the potential to reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent.

In terms of the everyday lives of women and girls, the provision of basic services, clean water, energy, housing and transportation can reduce the intense labour of women, promote dignity and enhance quality of life.

Rio+20 provides an enormous opportunity to move forward to a new development paradigm, which appreciates the integral human value of gender equality and women’s empowerment to the achievement of sustainable development.

Q: Participation and leadership is one of the key themes of the UN Women mandate. Will women’s participation in discussions held at Rio+20 be a reflection of progress in this regard?

A: We are advocating for women’s leadership and participation because we know that when you do have women discussing things and when you allow women a strong voice, this frees up space for change.

At this year’s summit there will be a high-level forum of women leaders, and a high-level event for women leaders on the subject famine. The participation of a group of female heads of state and heads of government will bring attention to the relationship between gender equality, women’s empowerment and sustainable development. In this regard we are seeing progress.

But it’s not only about participation in one particular conference that is key, it is about women’s’ participation and leadership in diverse areas, and how we are able to link this to an action plan. That action plan will be the outcome document to be agreed upon by member states at the Rio +20 summit.

Q: Debates and discussions that have taken place ahead of Rio+20 have greatly emphasised the need to streamline the development agenda, by determining the “must haves” that governments will sign up to. In this regard, what challenges do you anticipate for the promotion of gender equality, and women’s rights ahead of the summit?

A: We’ve seen very promising developments in the past few weeks of negotiations, and I’m very pleased that gender equality and women’s empowerment is reflected throughout the text to be agreed upon by member states.

There have been calls from member states to gain greater recognition of women’s rights in relation to water as well as a section on women’s health and sexual and reproductive rights. I hope these will continue and prevail so as to feature alongside women’s right to land and property.

In relation to women’s sexual and reproductive rights, there are always debates in this area. Some countries have different positions on the issue of women’s reproductive rights and health and services.

We believe you can’t isolate one part of the world’s female population. You need to include all the aspects that are essential in terms of achieving gender equality, you cannot ensure the right to participate and be an economic agent and not consider sexual and reproductive health to be important as well. We will continue working to ensure that we get out of the document the best and most comprehensive response to women’s needs.

It is also important that after Rio, when governments will be discussing a new development framework beyond 2015 and the MDGs that women are fully integrated.

I would really like to see a comprehensive sustainable development goal on gender empowerment and the inclusion of gender targets and indicators in all other goals. We believe gender equality has to be mainstreamed – taken into consideration in all areas of development – and recognised as a concrete goal in itself.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 13 (TerraViva) Over the centuries, smallholders have learned to adjust to environmental changes and climate variability. But the climate is now changing too fast and intensely for farmers’ capacity to adapt.

“These farmers cannot be left alone,” Carlos Seré, IFAD’s chief development strategist, told TerraViva in an interview.

Carlos Seré

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How is climate change multiplying the risks for agriculture and for farmers?

A: Over the years agriculture has been evolving with the climate, with population increase, with the changes in consumption. But the variability and unpredictability of climate change effects are now overturning broadly adopted approaches to cultivation and the ‘natural’ evolution is not fast enough to go along with the change in the climate.

As rainfall becomes more erratic, for example, varieties once productive in a certain micro-climate may no longer be. These things are making agriculture riskier with implications for farmers but also for consumers in the rest of the world.

Solutions that we need to take now require enormous coordination (since) what used to happen naturally with the adaptation has now to be addressed actively through investments, through research, and changes in the technology.

I think the international community is now a lot more aware that we need to do much more to manage risks, in a comprehensive manner involving production, consumption, trade. IFAD is working on agriculture risks assessment and management in various countries but of course a lot more capacity building work would be required.

Q: For farmers, one of the most difficult impacts of climate change is the loss of predictability. What kind of help could make them be more productive and climate smart?

A: Planting schedules handed down by generations are no longer valid and farmers can no longer rely on historical averages of rainfall and temperatures. In addition to traditional risks, smallholders now face new threats, such as sea-level rise and the effect of melting glaciers on water supply.

It is not just one intervention which is going to help farmers. First, they need public policy support, and this relates to the rule of law, a functioning jurisdiction and a functioning marketing. But then they also need effective infrastructure, access to the market, and timely information. And they do need functioning services.

Farmers cannot be left alone, we need more interaction and governments’ engagement to provide the right type of services. If smallholders are to be protagonists in intensifying sustainable agriculture, they will need support in dealing with the risks they face.

Q: Where should this support come from?

A: In the past we used to think that all these services have to be provided by government. Nowadays we see that a lot of these roles can be provided by the private sector, which anyway has to be adequately monitored by governments.

IFAD has also recently initiated the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme, which will help channel finance into climate-smart, sustainable investments in poor smallholder communities. It aims to help eight million smallholders become more resilient to climate change by 2020.

The initiative will focus on appropriate agricultural practices, efficient water use, expanded capacities for adaptation and risk reduction among communities, more resilient infrastructure and knowledge sharing on climate-smart practices.

Q: What does Rio+20 mean for smallholder farmers? Do you expect it will listen to their voices?

A: Rio is very ambitious in terms of sustainable development making sure we really address – as we tried to 20 years ago – those economic, social and environmental dimensions (of development). Clearly agriculture is absolutely central to that. Large parts of the world still are very agrarian societies, and agriculture is central to the discussion both in terms of the solutions but also the issues which the world worries about.

But this is not mainstreamed in the discussion. If you look at the draft outcome documents, there hasn’t been an enormous amount of appetite to put agriculture in there and I think that is one of our challenges. One of our major goals is to make sure that agriculture, and particularly smallholder farmers, that their dimension is not lost in the Rio process.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12, 2012 (IPS/TerraViva) – Building the cities of the future requires not only smarter planning but a profound shift toward greater equity and social justice, says Joan Clos, executive director of the U.N. Human Settlements Programme, or UN-HABITAT.

Speaking with U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis on the eve of the Rio+20 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, Clos explained how the world’s more than three billion urban dwellers can directly participate in the process of making their cities healthier, more liveable places.

Joan Clos. Credit: UN-Habitat

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Can you talk about the link between urban life and development, and to what extent sustainability of the latter depends on the former?

A: With more than half of the global population living in cities, there is no doubt that we live in an urbanised world and the global challenges of the 21st Century are in urban areas.

It is in cities around the world that the pressures of globalisation, migration, social inequality, environmental pollution and climate change and youth unemployment are most directly felt.

On the other hand, they have for centuries been the cradle of innovation and they currently produce more than 75 percent of the world’s GDP. From this point, sustainable urbanisation is a key driver to achieve global sustainable development and economic world growth.

Q: What role does urban design and planning play in this context?

A: With the current worldwide rapid urbanisation, cities need to ensure a good urban design and planning. We must re-embrace the compact, mixed-use city. Cities and their component neighbourhoods need to be compact, integrated and connected.

This requires a shift away from the mono-functional city of low density and long distances, which is poorly connected, socially divided and economically unproductive.

City-dwellers themselves – particularly the poorest and most vulnerable – must remain the primary beneficiaries. The “right to the city” remains a powerful principle for ensuring that the collective interest of a city prevails.

A human rights-based approach is the only way to uphold the dignity of all urban residents in the face of multiple rights violations, including the right to decent living conditions. This paradigm shift cannot take place without addressing the fundamental issues of equity, poverty and social justice.

Q: UN-Habitat is calling for “Sustainable Cities for All”. What would they look like? Do any already exist?

A: Cities in Asia and Europe offer, generally speaking, some of the best models, with Singapore, Tokyo and Osaka and Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo leading their counterparts.

Siemens Green City Index, for example, provides a comprehensive, rigorous set of measurement principles for sustainable cities along the parameters of low CO2 emissions and energy use, optimal land use, efficient buildings and transport, recycling of water and waste, and air quality and environmental governance.

According to the index, the best examples in North America are San Francisco, Vancouver and New York; in Latin America, Curitiba and Bogota. In Africa, Cape Town and Durban offered the best models.

Q: Citizens are often excluded from planning and decision-making processes. How can their voices be strengthened?

A: We emphasise the importance of citizen participation and the ability of the local community to involve many actors including citizens and groups, civil society and the private sector. In many cases, citizens do not have the information or lack the mechanism to participate in city decisions.

In this context, UN-Habitat will launch the initiative “I’m a City Changer” in Rio during the Rio+20 conference. This will be a platform to intensify exchange of experiences and examples from cities, and a global partnership for sustainable cities, involving multi-stakeholder participation – cities and local governments, civil society, national governments and the private sector.

In the essence of the “I’m a City Changer” campaign, I encourage you all to advocate for the importance of sound national urban strategies, balanced regional development policies, and strengthened urban economic and legal frameworks.

We all have to start being City Changers, and think about how we can achieve cities that are more sustainable, equitable and prosperous for all.

Q: What would be measurable results from Rio+20 for achieving sustainable urban development and to reinvigorate the urban agenda?

A: I strongly believe that the Rio+20 conference will be crucial to connect all the work by prioritising sustainable urbanisation within a broader development framework towards a new multi-level governance architecture; increasing the number of countries that adopt and implement national urban policies to coordinate different ministerial and sectoral efforts.

Now more than ever, the role of regional and local authorities is crucial to delivering practical results that will defeat poverty, protect the natural environment and improve resilience to potential disasters. Our challenge is to connect the dots, so that advances on one can generate progress on others.

UN-Habitat strongly recommends that countries establish National Urban Strategies that shape regional and local level development policies and connect the work at local levels to national policies that aim to ensure that urbanisation contributes to economic growth. As part of this process we also recommend the strengthening of the capacity of local and regional authorities to empower them to implement the plans.

Furthermore, a structurally and qualitatively different type of economic growth is needed. Incentives should direct growth towards more resource-productive, resilient, low-carbon and low risk urban infrastructure, and renewed urban design with a focus on the green economy.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 11 (TerraViva) With heads of state from more than 120 nations and tens of thousands of civil society and international development experts gathering for the U.N. Summit on Sustainable Development next week, it is accepted wisdom that rethinking agriculture is one of most critical issues facing this and future generations.

TerraViva spoke with Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a U.N. agency that focuses on eradicating rural poverty in developing countries through hands-on interventions like financial services, markets, technology, land and other natural resources.

Kanayo F. Nwanze. Credit: Courtesy of IFAD

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: IFAD, and in general experts on agrarian matters, see the fight against poverty as inextricable from the preservation of the environment. In this context, what do you expect from Rio+20?

A: As it stands, today’s food and agriculture systems are failing smallholders in developing countries. This is because two key points are not understood well enough by policymakers and the general public. First, of the 1.4 billion people living on under 1.25 dollars per day, one billion of them are in rural areas in developing countries, and the vast majority of those depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. So poverty remains a rural phenomenon and small farms play a central role in providing food and employment.

Second, while it is known that agriculture has huge impacts on the environment, it is not fully recognised that small farms in developing countries are managing vast areas of natural resources. For example, 80 percent of farmland in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is made up of small farms.

The problem is that these farmers, both women and men, are often not empowered to manage their natural resources. They do not have secure access to their land. They are reliant on the weather and do not have access to institutions and markets.

On top of this, smallholder farmers are facing growing threats and risks of volatile food prices and increasing scarcity of natural resources, such as land and water. Changes in climate patterns and expected increases in extreme weather conditions are making life even more difficult for rural communities.

While the Rio+20 negotiations are on-going, IFAD is continuing to work with farmers’ organisations, the Rome-based agencies and other partners, to raise awareness about the challenges facing the world’s smallholders and to promote an action-oriented agenda with agriculture at the centre. We expect the negotiators will take into account the case of smallholder farmers and give them a level playing field.

Q: Can you define the position you are advancing at the Rio+20?

A: We are advocating for three big changes to today’s food and agriculture system. Of course policies need to be in place for poor rural women and men to access new technologies. After nearly three decades of declining support for agriculture, it would seem that our goal of universal food and nutrition security is more elusive than ever.

But amid the dark clouds, there are rays of hope. Because of co-ordinated efforts, the devastation caused by the famine in the Horn of Africa today was less than we have seen under similar circumstances in the past.

And because of commitments to agricultural development made in recent years – from the African Union Maputo Declaration to the G8 L’Aquila summit – we are developing the framework to ensure that food security crises, such as those witnessed today, will someday become history.

We are pushing for massive scaling up of investments in “sustainable smallholder agriculture” that can increase farmers’ productivity and incomes, improve their resilience to erratic weather conditions, and prevent the natural resource base from further degradation.

Sustainable agriculture with smallholders means we do not need to make the false choice between reducing poverty or tackling climate change. In the long run we can do both through approaches that bring agriculture planning, such as increasing crop or livestock production, together with planning in other sectors like environment, energy, and transportation. This is the only way we will get the balance of social, environmental and economic benefits that is the basis of sustainable development.

Second, smallholders are entrepreneurs who don’t have a level playing field for running their businesses. It’s incredible how much they achieve off the sweat of their brows, their traditional knowledge and their unflagging ingenuity.

Smallholders have, for generations, been adapting to changing conditions and now that climate is changing so much more rapidly, there is a lot we can learn from them. We can support them with accessible technologies that can help them adapt to the new and uncertain conditions. But their lives will not change much if they cannot connect to markets.

There are plenty of examples of smallholder farmers driving agricultural production and supplying national and even global markets. They have the potential to increase their production and contribute to feeding nine billion people by 2050.They need a little support and not handouts. Part of this will be changing the perception of the private sector to see smallholders as entrepreneurs in their own right and potential partners for business deals.

Last but not the least is that no one government or organisation can do this alone. We need better partnerships to link smallholder women and men to government institutions, civil society, the private sector and researchers. We need a new paradigm of collaboration that allows us to plan across sectors from agriculture and health, to transportation and education, as well as cross cutting ecological landscapes that do not share the borders of our human communities and activities.

Q: How would you strengthen the role of poor peasant farmers and their organisations in order to reach these objectives?

A: IFAD is one of the largest sources of financing for agriculture and rural development in many developing countries, and we support government programmes that empower smallholder farmers and their organisations to interact more effectively with their governments, with their natural environment and with markets.

We want to enable poor women and men to have a voice in decision making and governance processes and form equitable partnerships and contractual relationships. In 2011, the projects we financed supported 13,000 marketing groups, trained more than 700,000 people in business and entrepreneurship, and 2.1 million people learned about community and natural resource management. We also work with many national and regional farmers’ organisations.

My organisation is also focussed on linking smallholders to markets. Over the past 12 years, the proportion of IFAD-supported projects that include work on value chains has increased dramatically from three percent in 1999 to 46 percent 2009, and this trend continues to rise.

Q: What you are proposing seems applicable especially to rural women.

A: Absolutely. I’ve always said that the average small farmer is a woman with a baby on her back. On average, women constitute 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries – in sub-Saharan Africa as much as 50 percent – but they are poorly paid, have less secure jobs, less access to education, and have less access than men to agricultural resources such as land, livestock, credit, fertiliser and machinery.

Experience shows how rural organisations, including cooperatives, can help women to overcome the social, economic, and environmental limitations they face through lending services, such as access to markets and information. I must also emphasise that the rural youth of today are the farmers of tomorrow. Investing in young people, both girls and boys, living in rural areas is key to enhancing agricultural productivity and food security.

In effect, organisations of producers and ties to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the scientific community, and public and private agents also help small producers, both women and men, to express their concerns and interests in order to influence policy formulation.

Last year about half of all participants in projects that we supported were women, and 60 percent of the people trained in business, entrepreneurship and community management were women. Also, a full 83 percent of active borrowers served by IFAD-supported microfinance institutions were also women – a total of about 24 million of them.

Q: In your experience, what are the conditions necessary to broaden the long-term benefits to farmers and their communities of development projects intended to combat poverty while advancing environmental preservation?

A: I think the 10 principles of our environment and natural resource policy demonstrate how deeply we believe in integrated approaches to achieve the balance of social, environmental and economic benefits we must achieve. Here they are.

1. Scaled-up investment in sustainable agriculture

2. Recognise economic, social and cultural values of natural assets;

3. Promote “climate-smart” rural development;

4. Build smallholder resilience to risk and natural-resource-related shocks;

5. Engage in value chains that drive green growth;

6. Improve governance of natural assets;

7. Promote livelihood diversification;

8. Promote role of women and indigenous peoples;

9. Increase smallholder access to green finance; and

10. Reduce IFAD’s environmental footprint.

NACIONES UNIDAS, jun (IPS) – Será imposible hablar de sostenibilidad en Río+20 sin escuchar qué tienen para decir los pequeños agricultores del mundo, sostuvo el director de la Oficina de Asociación y Movilización de Recursos del Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA), Mohamed Béavogui.

Los pequeños productores tienen mucho para aportar, por ejemplo en crisis alimentarias como la del Sahel, zona árida entre el desierto del Sahara en el norte y las sabanas de Sudán en el sur.

Río+20 debe escuchar a los pequeños agricultores del mundo, dijo Béavogui a IPS. Crédito: Cortesía del entrevistado

La Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, conocida como Río+20, se realizará del 20 al 22 de este mes en Río de Janeiro.

Unos 18 millones de personas en el Sahel corren riesgo de inseguridad alimentaria y desnutrición, alertó la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO).

Las sequías recurrentes, la degradación ambiental, los altos precios de los granos, la caída de las remesas de los emigrantes, el desplazamiento de personas y la pobreza crónica crearon una situación que, entre otras cosas, causó una caída de 26 por ciento de la producción de cereales respecto de 2011.

Hallar soluciones a largo plazo es clave en este contexto, subrayó Beavogui.

Entrevistado por IPS, el funcionario del FIDA dijo que el mundo puede aprender de los pequeños productores para promover una agricultura sostenible.

IPS: Regiones como el Sahel parecen ser azotadas por el hambre en forma recurrente, generalmente por razones predecibles. ¿Qué cambios estructurales se pueden hacer para romper este ciclo?

MOHAMED BÉAVOGUI: Primero, debemos invertir en la promoción de una mayor capacidad para llevar a cabo actividades de autoayuda en determinadas comunidades, en respuesta a la escasez de producción, así como coordinar e implementar más efectivamente las actividades de asistencia gubernamentales e internacionales.

En segundo lugar, hemos aprendido que en las áreas donde se han realizado intentos de adoptar enfoques sostenibles de largo plazo, como la regeneración de tierras, la solución de los problemas de disponibilidad de agua y la irrigación por goteo, los efectos adversos de las sequías han sido menores.

Pero esto significa que debemos trabajar todos juntos. Los gobiernos deben impulsar las políticas adecuadas para permitir que se obtengan los insumos, necesarios particularmente semillas resistentes a las sequías, así como políticas que permitan la adopción de buenos servicios de extensión y mejor acceso, particularmente para las mujeres y los jóvenes.

Debemos, por tanto, invertir mejor en carreteras para permitir el transporte de alimentos desde las zonas de alta producción hasta las que presentan déficit.

IPS: El FIDA ha apoyado la agricultura orgánica en proyectos piloto, como el de productores de cacao en Santo Tomé y Príncipe, como forma de apuntalar mercados más lucrativos. ¿Se están expandiendo estos mercados y ofrecen alguna oportunidad para una asociación público-privada que realmente beneficie a los pequeños agricultores?

MB: Sí, es una buena forma de contribuir a la creación de riqueza para los pequeños productores rurales.

Tuvimos experiencias muy exitosas en Santo Tomé y Príncipe, Sierra Leona, Uganda y en muchas partes de América Latina.

¿Pero qué hemos aprendido? ¿Cuáles son los factores de éxito para poder llegar allí? Y cuando digo “allí” me refiero a la situación en la que el agricultor obtiene un precio justo por su producto, incrementando sus ingresos de forma respetable, y su socio, el empresario privado, también está satisfecho y haciendo dinero. Porque esa es la realidad: todo se trata de hacer dinero, pero de forma justa.

Entonces, el primer factor de éxito es pensar a largo plazo. Debemos trabajar con verdaderos profesionales del sector privado, socios, comprometidos con el desarrollo, con los seres humanos. Además de los negocios y el comercio, es fundamental para esto algún tipo de enfoque ético al trabajo. Así que, en resumen, necesitamos un compromiso genuino de todos.

El segundo factor de éxito es trabajar con productores organizados para asegurar una masa crítica. Permitirles tener, primero, el tamaño suficiente para la oferta y, en segundo lugar, minimizar los costos de procesamiento y de mercadeo.

En tercer lugar, necesitamos asegurar la calidad para tener buen acceso a los mercados y buenos precios, y necesitamos optimizar la logística para reducir otra vez los costos, así como una fácil transferencia del conocimiento especializado y de las buenas prácticas.

IPS: La igualdad de género es una prioridad para el FIDA. ¿Les están dando los gobiernos a las mujeres, sobre todo a las jóvenes y del ámbito rural, la atención y el apoyo que necesitan?

MB: Creo que tenemos un largo camino por recorrer en ese sentido. Las políticas están cambiando. En África, las nuevas constituciones les están dando más espacio a las mujeres.

Si se ven los gobiernos, hay cada vez más mujeres en posiciones de alto nivel, y lo mismo ocurre en diferentes corporaciones.

Donde creo que todavía hay mucho trabajo por hacer es en el caso de las mujeres de las zonas rurales.

En los papeles hay mucha discusión sobre cómo ayudamos a las mujeres, pero cuando se analizan las actividades, en los hechos, se ve que los servicios de extensión para la agricultura están dirigidos frecuentemente a los hombres.

IPS: Hay un creciente reconocimiento de que la agricultura sostenible es central para el desarrollo humano. ¿Qué espera que se logre en Río+20 en este aspecto?

MB: Nosotros con el FIDA estamos insistiendo en que no podemos lograr sostenibilidad sin involucrar a los principales actores. Tenemos unos 2.000 millones de pequeños agricultores en todo el mundo.

Estas personas están trabajando todos los días las tierras que tenemos en el planeta, se ocupan de nuestras aguas, de nuestros bosques, de nuestro ganado. De hecho, de nuestra naturaleza.

Así que es imposible hablar de sostenibilidad de nuestro ambiente sin involucrar realmente a estas personas.  Pueden ayudarnos a tener una agricultura sostenible, que nos permita producir suficiente alimento y al mismo tiempo preservar nuestra naturaleza.  (FIN/2012)

UNITED NATIONS, May 30, 2012 (IPS) – As Africa’s Sahel region faces a new food crisis, smallholder famers hold the key to making future development policies sustainable.

That is why it “is just impossible to speak about sustainability” at the Rio+20 conference next month without listening to what smallholder farmers have to say, says Mohamed Béavogui, head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development‘s Partnership and Resource Mobilisation Office.

Some 18 million people in the Sahel region are at risk of food insecurity and malnutrition, warns the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Recurring droughts, environmental degradation and high grain prices accompanied by decreasing migrant remittances, as well as displacement and chronic poverty are creating a situation that has resulted among others things in a 26-percent decline in cereal production compared to 2011. Finding long-lasting solutions is pivotal in this context, said Beavogui.

Mohamed Beavogui Credit:Courtesy of Mohamed Beavogui

And these solutions are already there, developed by smallholder farmers over centuries.

Promises were made by the G8 group of wealthy donor nations to scale up international agriculture-related foreign aid, especially in Africa, but they remain unfulfilled.

Speaking with U.N. Correspondent Rousbeh Legatis, Beavogui laid out what the world can learn from smallholder farmers to promote sustainable agriculture as a key element of future sustainable development.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Regions like the Sahel seem to be hit by famine every few years, often for predictable reasons. What structural changes can be made to break this cycle?

A: Firstly, we should invest in providing targeted communities with greater capacity to implement self-help activities in response to production shortfalls, as well as more effectively coordinate and implement governmental and international relief activities.

Secondly, we have been learning that in areas where attempts were made to build long-lasting sustainable approaches like re-greening of land, solving the issues of water availability, drip irrigation, bounds, the adverse effects of droughts have been less than in areas where this kind of work has not been undertaken.

But this means what? It means that we should work all together. Governments should encourage the right policies that allow to have the right inputs, particularly drought-resistant seeds, as well as policies that allow good extension services to be adopted and easy access – particularly for women and young people.

We should furthermore invest in better roads to allow the transportation of food from the high production zones to the deficit zones.

Q: IFAD has supported organic farming pilot projects, such as among cocoa producers in Sao Tome, as a way to leverage higher-paying markets. Are these kinds of markets – organic, fair trade – expanding, and do they offer an opportunity for public-private partnerships that really benefit small farmers?

A: Yes, it is a very good way to contribute to the creation of wealth for the rural smallholder farmers.

We have had very successful experiences in Sao-Tomé, Sierra Leone, Uganda and in many other places in Latin America and so on.

But what have we learned? What are the success factors in order to get there? When I say “there” I mean the situation whereby the farmer is getting the fair price on its product, increasing his or her income in a very respectable manner and the partner, the private company, is also satisfied that it is making money. Because that is the reality: it is about making money, but in a fair manner.

So the first success factor is that we should think long-term. We should work with real private sector professionals, partners, committed also to development, to just human beings. Besides business and trade, fundamental to this is that we need some kind of ethical approach to the work. So in short, we need genuine commitment from everyone.

The second success factor is that we need to work through organised producers to ensure a critical mass. Allowing to have, firstly, the size for delivery and, secondly, minimised processing and marketing costs.

Thirdly, we need to ensure quality to have good access to markets and good prices and we need to optimise logistics to reduce cost again, as well as an easy transfer of knowhow and good practices.

Q: Gender equality is a priority for IFAD. Are governments giving women, especially young and rural women, the attention and support they deserve?

A: I think we have a long way to go in that area for the time being. Policies are changing. If you look at what is happening now in Africa, the new constitutions are giving more and more space to women. You look at the governments, you are having more and more women getting to high-level positions, women are getting also better positions in different corporations.

The issue where I think there is a lot of work to do yet and which need a bigger push is really women in the rural areas.

In the documentation, there is a lot of talk about how do we help women, but when you go into actual activities, you will see that the extension service for agriculture is geared very frequently towards men. That issues like land are first devoted to men. So, that is where we have to work and to continue supporting.

Women in Africa particularly are the ones who produce food, who process and market food. Commodities are dealt with by men, but food is the responsibility of women. So, in IFAD we have been investing a lot in this area. The major partners in our programmes are women first and young women also.

Q: There is a growing recognition that sustainable agriculture is central to sustainable human development. What do you hope could be accomplished at the Rio+20 summit in this regard?

A: What we as IFAD are pushing is that you cannot build sustainability without involving the main actors. We have about two billion smallholder farmers around the world. These people are working on the lands we have every day, they are dealing with our waters, with our forests, with our livestock, they are in fact dealing with our nature.

So it is just impossible to speak about sustainability of our environment without really involving these people.

They can help us to have a sustainable agriculture; an agriculture that allows us to produce enough food and in the same time to preserve our environment, our nature.

Smallholder farmers are dealing with our local knowledge. They are good managers of risks, have very good experiences and solutions in terms of alternative responses to droughts, floods etc.

Sometimes, if you look at these farms you will see that he or she plants different types of species to manage the risk. One (plant) will respond to droughts, in case there are droughts, and you have others who would respond to floods, and if there is a flood, that production will survive. So they have this type of responses that are extremely efficient. So we have a lot to learn from them. (END)

LILONGWE, May 29, 2012 (IPS) – As she sits down to watch the 8pm news on TV, Mercy Kamphoni from Chamtulo Village in Malawi’s Mangochi lake district looks elated. She still cannot believe that she is the new proud owner of a television set, refrigerator and radio.

These electronic goods are seen as luxury items in this southern African nation where 74 percent of the population lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day. And they are just a few of the many “exclusive” things that Kamphoni owns.

Mercy Kamphoni is able to send all her children to school and provide for her family’s needs – thanks to paprika. Credit:Claire Ngozo/IPS

For a woman living in rural Malawi, Kamphoni is considered to be well-off. She also owns a bicycle, a treadle pump – a suction pump that is positioned on top of a well – for irrigating her crop, and a silo for storing the harvest.

Kamphoni, 44, has managed to amass all these things over the last three years since she started commercial farming and abandoned subsistence farming, which she began when she married at 16.

Now divorced for four years, and with five children between the ages of six and 14, Kamphoni is able to send all her children to school and provide for her family’s needs – thanks to paprika.

“I only grew maize because that was the norm. Almost everyone in this country grows maize and that’s what my ex-husband and I did until he left my children and me. Afterwards I had to search for ways to survive and take care of the children,” Kamphoni told IPS. “I was introduced to a women farmers’ club and that’s where I learnt that one could make money from growing paprika.”

In fact she earns roughly three times more than she did when she farmed maize. A kilogramme of maize sells for 35 cents while a kg of paprika earns Kamphoni one dollar.

“Paprika is the best option for Malawi. It provides me with a profit four times the amount I invest in growing it,” said Kamphoni.

The Farmers’ Union of Malawi (FUM) is encouraging smallholder farmers to diversify to commercial farming, which it says is more sustainable.

“We agree that growing maize is good for people’s daily livelihoods as they’re assured of an availability of it in their households. But cash crops such as paprika are even more viable and sustainable as they allow farmers to make money with which they can buy a diverse range of products,” FUM president Felix Jumbe told IPS.

In addition to promoting paprika, FUM is also urging farmers to start growing mushrooms and soy beans, which are also in demand. However, not many farmers are aware that paprika has the potential to be a significant foreign exchange earner here.

Tobacco is Malawi’s main revenue earner, accounting for up to 60 percent – or 950 million dollars – of foreign exchange. The country’s tobacco accounts for five percent of the world’s total exports, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

However, Jumbe said that tobacco sales have not been doing well, as a result of the successful efforts of international anti-smoking lobbies. In 2011 the tobacco exported by Malawi amounted to 210 million kgs, but sales for 2012 are only projected to be 151.5 million kgs.

“We have seen dwindling sales of tobacco year in, year out and we need to be looking at something else for sustainability. That something else is paprika,” he said.

According to a 2011 report by the Ministry of Agriculture on the potential earnings paprika could generate, there is a market for 10,000 metric tonnes. Sales could amount to 9.4 million dollars. Currently the country’s farmers only export 500 metric tonnes of the capsicum fruit, which brings in 470,000 dollars in foreign exchange.

Gladwell Kwapata, a 51-year-old farmer from the central district of Mchinji, is one of the few farmers who have chosen to abandon tobacco for paprika.

Prior to this Kwapata was a tobacco farmer for 21 years.

“But over the past five years, tobacco sales have been dwindling, with the average price dropping from 2.5 dollars to less than a dollar a kg. This was threatening my family’s livelihood, hence I switched to paprika,” he told IPS.

Malawi’s new President Joyce Banda seems to realise the important role that paprika could play in the country’s economy.

She told parliament on May 18 during her state of the nation address that she would like to see a sustainable paprika industry in the country.

“Agriculture plays a vital role in the socio-economic development of the country. Government is determined to eliminate hunger and to ensure that no child in Malawi goes to bed on an empty stomach, let alone dies of starvation,” Banda said. Nearly one in 10 children in this country die before their fifth birthday.

She said that her administration’s overall goal for the agricultural sector was to generate growth and wealth creation through commercialising farming, the promotion of regional markets, and crop diversification. Banda said this would require the introduction of new policies and institutional changes.

Meanwhile, Kwapata is reaping the benefits from switching crops.

“I have been growing paprika for the past two years and I am already enjoying the fruits of my labour. I was able to make a profit of over 1,500 dollars just in the last year,” he told IPS. (END)

LIMA, May 29, 2012 (IPS) – For ages, rural women in the Peruvian highlands have been selecting and storing seeds, ensuring their preservation. But the authorities have failed to tap into this storehouse of knowledge and experience, despite the contributions it could make to the design of effective policies for adaptation to climate change, which poses a growing threat to the women’s livelihoods.

Farmers in Piura display native seeds they preserve. Credit:Savina Córdova /IPS

Peru’s campesinas or peasant women have played this role from time immemorial, handing down their knowledge by oral transmission. But today their traditional know-how is insufficient to help them endure unseasonal rainfall, extreme frosts, gale-force winds and other climate change-related phenomena.

The national meteorology and hydrology service projects a 0.2 to 0.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature in Peru by 2030-2050 due to global warming. As a result, the rainy season will continue to change, which will have a heavy impact on agricultural production.

Experts predict that the difficulties already faced by families who depend on agriculture will thus be aggravated, and that women will especially feel the effects, due to gender inequality. But they also say it is possible to start coming up with viable medium to long-term adaptation measures.

“Small-scale agriculture is one of the areas most vulnerable to climate change,” said Elena Villanueva, with the Rural Development Programme of the Flora Tristán Centre, a local women’s group. “Women suffer problems finding water, due to the disappearance of snow and ice on the mountaintops and to drought, or they lose their crops to severe frost and floods.”

But the sociologist told IPS that although women suffer the brunt of this situation, they can also develop skills that allow them to play an active role in adaptation, as shown by the Flora Tristán Centre in the southern Andean region of Cuzco and the northern coastal region of Piura, where it is carrying out a project on climate justice and rural women.

One of the areas to expand on is the accumulated knowledge and practical wisdom of rural women with regard to the care and preservation of native seeds, which have not been taken into account by decision-makers at the local, regional or national level.

“It has been demonstrated that these seeds are more resistant to pests generated by abrupt climate swings, because no chemicals have been used to grow them,” Villanueva said. “They also have the capacity to adapt to other ecosystems, where women could continue farming.”

Small-scale agricultural production helps maintain the great genetic diversity found among crops in Peru, which is largely the result of the work of thousands of generations of women.

At 3,100 metres above sea level, in the highlands community of Tiomayo near the city of Cuzco, 1,150 km southeast of Lima, Isabel García Champa, 42, works hard on her small farm.

In workshops at the Flora Tristán Agroecological School, she has built on what she learned about preserving and saving seeds since she was a young girl. And she is all too aware of the impact that climate change can have.

“On my land I grow potatoes, maize, beans, apples, peas and wheat,” she told IPS. “Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. It’s not like it was before; everything is changing with the rise in temperatures, the heat. The rains don’t come when they’re supposed to, and often we can’t even grow anything.”

García, whose mother tongue is Quechua but who also speaks Spanish fluently, is a married mother of four and divides her long days between working on the nearly one-hectare farm and taking care of her family.

Her children also help out on the farm, although only the two youngest – a 16-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy – still live there.

She sees herself as an inquisitive, enterprising woman who wants to continue learning and to help encourage other women farmers.

In late 2011, she won the first contest for Women Caring for Seeds and Preserving Identity and Life.

The prize is granted by the Flora Tristán Centre and Peru’s Network of Rural Municipalities, and García is especially proud of the farm tools that she was awarded, worth around 300 dollars.

Isabel García Champa next to one of the apple trees on her small family farm in the Peruvian region of Cuzco. Credit: Katherine Pozo/IPS

She said the women presented seeds of more than 30 native varieties of potato, maize, beans, wheat, barley, peas, oca (Oxalis tuborosa – a tuber), quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa – a grain-like crop native to the Andes) and tarwi or Andean lupine (Lupinus mutabilis – a protein- rich native legume).

She won the prize with the six kinds of maize she grows, some of which are exclusive to the Peruvian highlands: chullpi, janka, sacse, cheqche, estaquilado and blanco.

“I have gradually improved my knowledge,” she said. “I shell the corn and choose the healthiest kernels, the ones that are the same size and colour. The kernels have to be whole; broken ones aren’t any good.

“When everything is ready, I put the kernels in cloth sacks and store them in my house, in my bedroom. The kernels are safe there from dust or worms, and they last at least a year, for when I’m ready to plant again,” she said.

But information and technical resources are scarce and difficult to access for rural women, and the efforts of NGOs cannot fill the gaps left by the state, which does not take advantage of this valuable human capital.

“We need support to organise ourselves and to reach all of our fellow women farmers in the different communities, especially way up in the mountains,” García said.

“We also have the right to know how to take better care of the seeds. That is what I would ask of the authorities, and also I would ask that they call on us to participate in the climate change plans that have to be designed. That way we could contribute what we know,” she said.

The mishandling or poor storage of seeds reduces their yield, and farmers must learn techniques to guarantee their capacity to germinate.

“Many factors influence this process, such as temperature, humidity level, storage conditions and the quality of the seeds,” Villanueva said.

She proposed developing strategies to make the women’s skills and practices sustainable, create seed banks at the community, local and regional level, and patent the seeds, to ensure they are protected.

“But the main thing is: how can it be possible that women farmers have alternatives to offer for adaptation in the face of the vulnerability of agriculture, but they are not included in the design and application of policies at all levels; this has to be remedied,” she said.

For example, the official documents on regional strategies on climate change in Cuzco and Piura lack a gender perspective and do not take organisations of rural women into account.

The same is true with regard to the national plan for environmental action, PLANAA-Peru 2011-2021, which outlines the government’s climate change adaptation measures.

Alexander Rojas with the Network of Urban and Rural Municipalities of Piura said it was an urgent obligation of local governments to earmark budget funds for ongoing training for farmers, taking into account the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change.

“Farmers’ associations need extension and assistance in strengthening their organisational capacity, so their traditional seed preservation practices can respond to the current climate change challenges and play a part in effective adaptation actions that take the shape of public policies,” he told IPS. (END)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brasil, 23 de abril de 2012, (IPS) – (Tierramérica).- Uma plataforma online que admite até 400 mil pessoas conectadas ao mesmo tempo permitirá apresentar recomendações aos governantes reunidos na Conferência Rio+20

Manifestantes ecologistas na conferência sobre mudança climática de Copenhague, em 2009. Crédito: Ana Libisch/IPS

Inovar e redobrar a pressão sobre os governos é o lema da sociedade civil com vistas à Rio+20, que tem a ambiciosa meta de mudar a forma como a humanidade se relaciona com o planeta.

A Rio+20 é a Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, que acontecerá entre 20 e 22 de junho no Rio de Janeiro, mesma cidade onde em 1992 aconteceu a histórica Cúpula da Terra.

Ali será discutida a economia verde no contexto do desenvolvimento sustentável, da erradicação da pobreza e do âmbito institucional para se alcançar esse desenvolvimento. “Há muita preocupação pelo que vai acontecer, há ceticismo”, disse ao Terramérica o coordenador executivo do não governamental Instituto Vitae Civilis, Marcelo Cardoso.

“Para nós será uma oportunidade para que a sociedade civil internacional busque em conjunto agendas de convergência” com as autoridades e o setor privado para chegar ao consenso, explicou.

Na Agenda 21, um plano de ação adotado na Cúpula da Terra, está prevista a participação social, organizada em nove grupos principais para influir nas negociações intergovernamentais: povos indígenas; agricultores; trabalhadores e sindicatos; autoridades locais, empresas e indústrias; comunidade científica e tecnológica; mulheres, crianças e jovens; e organizações não governamentais.

Estes grupos tentam incidir nas discussões formais e organizam campanhas e atividades paralelas no Fórum de Setores Interessados para um Futuro Sustentável (Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future).

“A sociedade civil organizada tem que assumir um papel planetário”, afirmou Marcelo. Trata-se de um coletivo fundamental para “os processos decisórios, mas complexo e muito fragmentado”, reconheceu.

“Queremos aglutinar as organizações que trabalham o tema da economia verde e integrar programas”, enfatizou. Em 1992, a sociedade civil teve um papel de contexto. “Hoje precisa agir em conjunto com o setor privado e o governamental”, insistiu.

O Instituto Vitae Civilis foi um ator civil destacado em 1992, quando foram adotadas as definições sobre desenvolvimento sustentável. Desde 2008, participa das discussões na Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) para redação do documento final da Rio+20, conhecido como zero draft (rascunho zero), integrando o grupo de organizações não governamentais.

Além deste documento, da Rio+20 deverá surgir um programa de metas de sustentabilidade que inclua da erradicação da pobreza até a estabilização do clima planetário, embora o mais provável seja a não adoção de compromissos obrigatórios.

Também deverão ser assentadas as bases de instituições globais com poder para implantar e fazer cumprir o que for acordado. Segundo sua definição tradicional, o desenvolvimento sustentável atende as necessidades humanas do presente sem comprometer a capacidade das futuras gerações de fazerem o mesmo.

Como princípio orientador de longo prazo, se compõe de três pilares: os avanços econômico e social e a proteção ambiental.

No entanto, as últimas décadas testemunharam poucos progressos desse modelo, e hoje o mundo enfrenta uma crise econômica e financeira que afeta sobretudo o Norte industrializado e crises mais profundas e duradouras, como a climática, a perda de biodiversidade e de recursos naturais e a persistência da pobreza.

A Rio+20 corre o risco de acabar em um grande retrocesso para a natureza, alertam 18 especialistas em meio ambiente, ex-ministros e legisladores do Brasil em um documento divulgado no dia 18.

Os autores do documento – entre eles a ex-ministra do Meio Ambiente, Marina Silva – consideram que a agenda da cúpula está muito “diluída”, pois não colocou o ambiental como eixo principal.

Para Carlos Henrique Painel, coordenador do Fórum Brasileiro de ONGs e Movimentos Sociais para o Meio Ambiente e o Desenvolvimento, o desafio social é apresentar as “verdadeiras soluções”. Painel é um dos organizadores da Cúpula dos Povos sobre a Rio+20 pela Justiça Social e Ambiental, que entre 15 e 23 de junho buscará ser contraponto da conferência oficial.

Muitas organizações criticam o conceito de economia verde como uma “monetização da natureza e dos bens comuns”, alertou Carlos Henrique ao Terramérica. O que se necessita é um “novo pacto para uma agenda global. Queremos apontar para as causas das crises estruturais que vivemos, mostrar as verdadeiras soluções que os povos praticam, como agroecologia e permacultura”, explicou.

O negociador-chefe da delegação brasileira na Rio+20, embaixador André Corrêa do Lago, afirmou que a sociedade civil não só poderá fazer sugestões como também influir nos rumos e nas opções que muitos países tomarem. Desde o dia 16 deste mês, uma plataforma virtual, a Rio+20 Diálogos (www.riodialogues.org/es), pretende melhorar essa participação, informou o diplomata em um seminário para jornalistas.

A ferramenta, que suporta até 400 mil pessoas conectadas ao mesmo tempo, busca reunir especialistas mundiais do setor acadêmico, da sociedade civil, das empresas e dos meios de comunicação que definam recomendações práticas “que serão comunicadas diretamente aos chefes de Estado e de governo durante as sessões de alto nível”.

Os diálogos, explicou o embaixador, estão organizados em dez tópicos: água; florestas; ecocidades e inovação; desenvolvimento sustentável como resposta às crises econômicas; desemprego, trabalho decente e migrações; economia do desenvolvimento sustentável; energia sustentável para todos; erradicação da pobreza; oceanos; e segurança alimentar e nutrição.

Por meio da tecnologia, pode-se assegurar uma “participação grande e inovadora”, estimou. Embora não seja ideal, “é uma contribuição importante”, concluiu.

(FIN/2012)