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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The vast Amazon region needs sustainable development.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(FIN)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 21 de junho (IPS/TerraViva) Com a população mundial ameaçando explodir – dos sete bilhões atuais para mais de nove bilhões até meados do século –, o aumento acentuado de seres humanos não significa apenas cidades superlotadas, mas também uma demanda crescente por alimentos, água, energia e abrigo, prenunciando implicações devastadoras para um futuro sustentável.

Os esforços para promover o desenvolvimento sustentável que não abordam a dinâmica das populações continuarão a fracassar. Foto: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

O século 21 é um período crítico para as pessoas e o planeta, com tendências demográficas e de consumo que impõem enormes desafios para um mundo finito, adverte um novo relatório divulgado na cúpula Rio+20, no dia 21, pelo Fundo de População das Nações Unidas (UNFPA).

Apropriadamente intitulado Assuntos da População para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, o relatório sublinha a importância da dinâmica populacional na agenda do desenvolvimento sustentável, algo “que foi perdido nas últimas décadas”.

O relatório propõe políticas concretas centradas nas pessoas e baseadas em direitos para tratar de questões que o mundo enfrenta de uma forma ampla no Século 21.

Em entrevista ao TerraViva, o diretor executivo do UNFPA, Babatunde Osotimehin, disse que melhorar o bem-estar da humanidade, agora e no futuro, exige, acima de tudo, uma mudança real e imediata para uma produção sustentável e um consumo equilibrado – a marca da economia verde.

“Em todos os lugares, mas especialmente nas economias emergentes, milhões de pessoas estão se tornando consumidores mais ricos de bens e serviços, aumentando assim a pressão sobre os recursos naturais. Padrões sustentáveis de consumo, possibilitados em parte por tecnologias apropriadas, são, portanto, urgentes”, advertiu.

Osotimehin observou que novas dinâmicas populacionais globais apresentam muitos desafios, mas também oferecem oportunidades para garantir um futuro sustentável. Mudanças demográficas, como a tendência de viver em cidades, podem reduzir a pressão sobre o meio ambiente reduzindo o consumo de recursos.

“Desacelerar o crescimento da população pode ter um impacto positivo sobre a sustentabilidade ambiental no longo prazo. Isto também dará mais tempo para as nações se adaptarem às mudanças no ambiente. No entanto, isso só pode ocorrer se as mulheres tiverem o direito, o poder e os meios para decidir livremente quantos filhos ter e quando”, enfatizou.

O relatório diz que mais de dois terços dos governos dos 48 países menos desenvolvidos (PMD) têm manifestado grandes preocupações com o crescimento populacional, alta fertilidade e rápida urbanização.

Para inserir a agenda populacional novamente na discussão do desenvolvimento sustentável, há a necessidade de se reconhecer que a dinâmica de populações tem uma influência significativa sobre o desenvolvimento sustentável, que esforços para promover o desenvolvimento sustentável que não abordam a dinâmica populacional têm falhado e continuarão a fracassar, e que dinâmica populacional não é destino.

Entretanto, a mudança é possível por meio de um conjunto de políticas que respeitem os direitos e liberdades humanas, e contribuam para a redução da fertilidade, nomeadamente o acesso aos cuidados de saúde sexual e reprodutiva, educação além do nível primário, e o empoderamento das mulheres.

Osotimehin ressaltou que os governos também precisam integrar as tendências demográficas e projeções futuras em suas estratégias e políticas de desenvolvimento. “Os investimentos que são construídos sobre, e aproveitam, a evolução demográfica podem ajudar a transformar a população em um capital humano rico que pode impulsionar o desenvolvimento sustentável”, opinou.

“Planejar para mudanças projetadas no tamanho da população em tendências como o envelhecimento, migração e urbanização é uma condição indispensável para estratégias sustentáveis de desenvolvimento rural, urbano e nacional, bem como os esforços significativos de mitigação e adaptação às mudanças climáticas”, concluiu. (FIM/2012)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) The EU’s “agriculture minister” tells TerraViva that in Europe, the push for food security made at Rio+20 will be continued with a future European development policy centred on this issue.

Dacian Ciolos. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Q: How do you evaluate the final Rio agreement?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The comparison with the 1992 Agenda 21 was inevitable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpts of the interview follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(END)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Documento rechazado

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RÍO DE JANEIRO, 21 jun (TerraViva) Se calcula que la población mundial pasará de los actuales 7.000 millones de personas a 9.000 millones para mediados de este siglo, y esto no solo significa ciudades hacinadas, sino también una mayor demanda de alimentos, agua, energía y vivienda.

Los esfuerzos por promover el desarrollo sostenible que no abordan la dinámica demográfica han fracasado y continuarán haciéndolo. Crédito: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS.

El siglo XXI es un periodo crítico para las personas y para el planeta. Y las tendencias demográficas y de consumo plantean desafíos tremendos en un mundo finito, alerta un informe divulgado este jueves 21 por el Fondo de Población de las Naciones Unidas (UNFPA) en la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible, conocida como Río+20.

Titulado “Population Matters for Sustainable Development” (Asuntos de población para el desarrollo sostenible, o La población importa para el desarrollo sostenible), el estudio subraya la relevancia de las dinámicas demográficas en la agenda del desarrollo sostenible que, señala, se ha perdido en las últimas décadas.

El informe propone políticas concretas, centradas en las personas y los derechos humanos, para abordar los problemas que enfrenta el mundo en este siglo.

En una entrevista con TerraViva, el director ejecutivo del UNFPA, Babatunde Osotimehin, dijo que mejorar el bienestar de la humanidad ahora y con vistas al futuro requiere, sobre todo, un cambio genuino e inmediato hacia la producción sostenible y el consumo equilibrado, ambos sellos distintivos de la economía verde.

“En todas partes, pero especialmente en las economías emergentes, millones más de personas se están volviendo consumidoras más ricas de bienes y servicios, lo que se agrega a las presiones sobre los recursos naturales. Por lo tanto, se requieren con urgencia patrones sostenibles de consumo, habilitados en parte por tecnologías apropiadas”, declaró.

Según Osotimehin, la nueva dinámica demográfica presenta muchos desafíos, pero también ofrece oportunidades para garantizar un futuro sostenible. Cambios como la tendencia a vivir en ciudades, pueden reducir las presiones sobre el ambiente, reduciendo el consumo de recursos.

“Enlentecer el aumento de población puede tener un impacto positivo sobre la sostenibilidad ambiental a largo plazo. También dará a las naciones más tiempo para adaptarse a los cambios en el ambiente. Sin embargo, esto solo puede ocurrir si las mujeres tienen el derecho, el poder y los medios para decidir libremente cuántos hijos tener y cuándo”, dijo.

El informe plantea que más de dos tercios de los gobiernos de los 48 países menos adelantados se han declarado muy preocupados por el gran aumento de la población, la alta fertilidad y la rápida urbanización.

A fin de volver a poner la agenda de población en el debate acerca del desarrollo sostenible, es necesario reconocer que la dinámica demográfica tiene una gran influencia sobre el mismo. Los esfuerzos por promover el desarrollo sostenible que no abordan la dinámica demográfica han fracasado y continuarán haciéndolo, señala.

Pero el cambio es posible mediante una serie de políticas que respeten los derechos humanos y las libertades, y que contribuyan a la reducción de la fertilidad, a un notorio acceso a los servicios de salud sexual y reproductiva, a una educación que vaya más allá de la primaria, y al empoderamiento de las mujeres.

Osotimehin dijo que los gobiernos también tienen que integrar las tendencias poblacionales y las proyecciones para el futuro en sus estrategias y políticas de desarrollo.

“Las inversiones que se realizan en base a -y que se aprovechan de- las tendencias demográficas pueden ayudar a transformar las poblaciones en un rico capital humano que puede impulsar el desarrollo sostenible”, expresó.

“La planificación para los cambios proyectados en el tamaño de la población por tendencias como las migraciones, el envejecimeinto y la urbanización es una condición indispensable para que haya estrategias sostenibles de desarrollo rural, urbano y nacional, así como esfuerzos significativos para mitigar y adaptarse al cambio climático”, agregó.

(FIN)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* This story was originally published by IPS TerraViva.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpts from the interview follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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