Monthly Archives: June 2012

2012 Media releases | Climate and energy |

Rio+20 Summit sell out of people and the planet

Friends of the Earth International

June 22, 2012

Rio+20 Summit condemned as sell out of people and the planet

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, June 22, 2012 — Friends of the Earth International today strongly condemned world leaders for selling out people and the planet in their Rio+20 declaration which falls far short of the action needed to tackle the planetary crisis we face, and does not include any of the real solutions demanded by the people at the alternative People’s Summit.1

According to Friends of the Earth International, the lack of political will from governments is rooted in the undue influence of corporations over governments and UN institutions. But pressure from civil society groups and movements and developing countries prevented world leaders from agreeing an even worse Rio+20 declaration that would have taken the world further backwards than we were twenty years ago.

“Once again corporate polluters have held UN decision-making hostage to furthering their economic interests, at the expense of people’s well-being and the planet. But real solutions to the crises exist and were presented by the alternative People’s Summit. They include economic justice, climate justice, and food sovereignty,” said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.

Friends of the Earth International has been a key player in the People’s Summit — an alternative space independent from the UN Summit supported by over 200 civil society groupings who have worked together over the past nine days to generate ideas for the change needed to tackle the crisis we face.

“Friends of the Earth International and our allied social movements will keep fighting the corporate capture of the UN which is stopping our governments from listening to the voices of the 99 percent of the people. These voices include not only the People’s Summit voices here in Rio but also the voices of the Occupy and Indignados movements around the world,” said Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator at Friends of the Earth International.

“People’s power is the solution to the crises we are facing. The alternative People’s Summit in Rio was an example of people’s voices uniting to demand real solutions. We need to build on our strengths and organise ourselves to resist corporate power, false solutions, and reclaim our democracies and UN decision-making,” said Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth International coordinator of the Forest and Biodiversity Program.

Friends of the Earth International’s analysis of key issues on the table in Rio

Green economy

The European Union block tried to impose in Rio the corporate-driven green economy agenda — which is a front for our broken and unfair economic system and for selling out nature — as the main tool for achieving sustainable development. Civil society and developing countries managed to prevent this agenda from being adopted and partially stopped its imposition in the Rio declaration, allowing, for now, individual countries to continue to define their own vision of what a truly fair and sustainable economy might look like.

Unfortunately the declaration still recognizes the green economy as an important tool and does not include any recognition that developed countries, whose unsustainable consumption patterns caused the bulk of our environmental problems, should take the lead on sustainable consumption and production. The Rio+20 declaration also fails to recognise that multinational corporations are a main cause of the multiple crises the world is facing.

The Rio Principles

The Rio+20 declaration reaffirms the so-called ‘Rio Principles’ first agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit but does not go any further.

The Rio+20 declaration ignores the need of the industrialised world to repay its ecological debt through provision of new and additional public finance and through technology transfer.

The Rio+20 declaration does not tackle the need to phase out fossil fuels through a just transition to clean and affordable community-controlled energy.

Corporate capture of the UN

The Rio+20 declaration includes a voluntary approach to sustainability reporting — something that was on the table 10 years ago and is wholly insufficient to address corporate abuses and crimes.

The Rio+20 declaration unfortunately states that governments should support initiatives including “promoting the contribution of the private sector” and the only reference to mobilizing public finance was made in connection to public-private partnerships.

The Rio+20 declaration does not include any of the steps raised in a statement issued on June 4 by Friends of the Earth International and other organisations and signed by more than 400 organisations.

The steps that should be taken include:

Limiting the privileged status that business currently has in official UN negotiations and policy-making; limits on the role of the “business and industry” major group; disclosure of existing relations and links between the UN with the private sector; a code of conduct for UN officials; a review of existing partnerships with corporates and trade associations, and a halt to entering into any new such partnerships; increased transparency around lobbying; and the establishment of a legally binding framework to hold companies accountable to environmental, human rights and labour rights law.

For more information

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International
+234 803 727 4395 (Nigerian cell), or email Nnimmo [at] eraction.org

Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International (in Brazil)
Tel: +55 51 98 41 87 07 or +55 21 6968 7826 or email lucia [at] natbrasil.org.br

Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth International coordinator of the Forest and Biodiversity Program
Tel: +55 21 6968 7885 or email isaac [at] coecoceiba.org

Paul de Clerck, Corporates Campaign Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International
Tel: +32 494 38 09 59 or email paul [at] milieudefensie.nl

Notes to editors

1 The solutions promoted at the People’s Summit include:

  • Small scale and local renewable energy production
  • Investing in energy efficiency
  • Shifting from export oriented large scale food production to food sovereignty to serve local food needs
  • Implementing a global financial transaction tax
  • Implementing internationally binding rules for companies and sanctions if they violate them
2012 Media releases | Climate and energy | Environmental justice |

World leaders failed at Summit in Rio

Friends of the Earth International

June 22, 2012

Comment on the Rio+20 Summit closing day

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, June 22, 2012 — Commenting on the Rio+20 Summit closing day, Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International said:

“World leaders failed at their Summit in Rio, mainly because of the undue influence that multinational corporations have on them and the UN.”

“But the parallel People’s Summit demonstrated that real solutions to the current crises do exist and that people are successfully mobilizing around them.”

“By exposing the negative influence of multinational corporations we have gained considerable momentum in our efforts to reclaim the UN as a people’s space. And this campaign is just starting.”

For more information

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International
Tel: +234 803 727 4395 (Nigerian cell), or email Nnimmo [at] eraction.org

Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International (in Brazil)
Tel: +55 51 98 41 87 07 or +55 21 6968 7826 or email lucia [at] natbrasil.org.br

Paul de Clerck, Corporates Campaign Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International
Tel: +32 494 38 09 59 or email paul [at] milieudefensie.nl

Notes to editors

Read more about FoEI’s reclaim the UN campaign at:
http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs/2012/reclaim-the-un-from-corporate-capture/view

Blogs | Climate and energy | Environmental justice |

Friends of the Earth in Rio

On June 19, Friends of the Earth (FoE) released a report critiquing the corporate capture of the United Nations. Corporate capture means that governments are not doing their job and that they have become advocates for the corporate agenda. Popular movements have risen to the occasion in a re-energized drive to democratize the political process and take back control over our lives and nature.

This new energy was evident from the beginning of the popular forum. Unity and integrated coherence are the bywords. Unlike the highly fragmented, dispersed World Social Forums and the UN process itself, the People’s Forum discussions were consolidated into five broad and interconnected dimensions, each with its own plenary and tent. These include energy and extractive industries, food sovereignty and decommodification of nature. The focus at the plenaries was first, to come to a consensus on structural roots of the sustainability crises and false solutions; second, to articulate peoples’ solutions; and third, implementation of solutions. After considerable popular input, discussions of these five dimensions are being integrated into one declaration to be considered by a Peoples’ Assembly at the end of the Summit.

The morning of June 18, FoE delegates joined the World March of Women’s mobilization Against the Commodification of Life and Our Common Heritage. Downtown Rio was brought to a standstill by a multitude of women including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer (LGBTQ) folks, unionists, farmers, students, Indigenous women, women of faith, people from all walks of life in varying degrees of dress and undress with its multiple meanings. It was exhilarating to be engulfed by a mass of jubilating, dancing, singing, chanting feminists and their allies amongst men. While confronting the police we shouted “where are our disappeared?”

Today (June 19) we went to the Rio Centre where the official government meetings take place. There was a notable lunch time demonstration by at least 200 women from all over the world. The women formed concentric circles facing outwards. They waved purple scarves and chanted slogans in many languages affirming women’s power including “women’s rights are human rights,” “women’s rights not corporate rights,” “women and the planet are not for sale” and “shame on them.” Their signs condemned our ‘do nothing’ governments. The signs said “against greed economy,” “Reproductive Rights!,” “women’s rights now,” “women defending sexual and reproductive health and rights,” “justice, gender and ecology,” “women as the voice for the right to a healthy environment.”

The demonstrations and convergences at the Peoples’ Forum affirmed the commonalities of our struggles globally. We also made solidarity visits to three communities devastated and condemned to death by the ‘development’ of the world’s second largest mining corporation, Vale, and Petrobras, a state within the Brazilian state. The “Rio+Toxic” tours revealed how these global firms have dispossessed self-sufficient, autonomous fishing peoples and farmers of their homes, land, access to the sea and subsistence. Their rich cultures can’t be passed on to their children because the people have been forced into wage slavery. One father with tears in his eyes decried the degradation of many young women reduced to prostitution in the wake of Thyssen-Krupp-Vale’s iron ore smelter.

This evening the communities and workers affected by Vale gathered from all over the world to evaluate and extend coordinated resistance. The Vale-affected communities in Rio and the international delegates who had visited them met this morning to build solidarity and solutions prior to a public demonstration. They then marched from Flamingo beach to Vale’s global head office. With this vocal mobilization countering the impotence of captured governance, we can only expect an escalation of people’s confident assertions of alternatives in the build up to the concluding People’s Assembly.

Terisa Turner and Terran Giacomini

Terisa Turner and Terran Giacomini are representing Friends of the Earth Canada at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

2012 Media releases | Climate and energy | Environmental justice |

Reclaim the UN campaign

Friends of the Earth International

June 4, 2012

Reclaim the United Nations campaign starts today

BRUSSELS (BELGIUM) / RIO DE JANERIO (BRAZIL), June 4, 2012 — Tomorrow, on World Environment Day, just two weeks before a major United Nations (UN) Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Friends of the Earth International starts a campaign urging the UN to limit the excessive influence of multinational corporations on its decision-making processes.

Friends of The Earth International launches an online public petition asking UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take the steps needed to reclaim the UN from corporate capture.

Already more than 335 civil society organizations representing millions of people from around the world signed an earlier joint statement initiated by Friends of the Earth International and nine other organisations, denouncing the corporate domination of the United Nations.

Signatories are requesting a clear public response from the UN that its priority is to serve the public interest and not business interests, and that the UN will take concrete steps to limit business and industry’s influence in UN decision-making processes.

“We have clear and troubling examples of how major corporations and business lobby groups exercise an increasing and unacceptable level of influence on UN decision-making processes,” said Paul de Clerck, Corporates Campaign Coordinator at Friends of the Earth International.

“We are demanding a formal response from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and from the UN member states, we want them to curb the business lobby at the UN, to halt UN-business partnerships, starting with companies involved in human rights violations, and to introduce global rules to hold companies accountable for their negative impacts,” he added.

“The people are reclaiming the UN from the influence of big business and calling on governments to restate that their over-riding prerogative is to serve the public interest. Friends of the Earth International will participate in the alternative People’s Summit in Rio to underscore that the system needs to change in order to solve the current crisis,” said Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator at Friends of the Earth International.

For more information

Paul de Clerck, Corporates Campaign Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International (in Brussels), Tel: +32 494 38 09 59 or email paul [at] milieudefensie.nl

Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International (in Brazil), Tel: +55 51 98 41 87 07 or email lucia [at] natbrasil.org.br

Background information

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as the Rio Earth Summit. For 20 years governments have tried to agree on ways to save our planet — and ultimately our lives. As we are facing multiple global crises today, people around the world can no longer remain silent about the false solutions offered and the environmental injustices that remain unresolved.

The UN is the only forum we have to address global problems, in which all of the world’s 192 countries have an equal voice. However more and more we see that UN policies do not necessarily serve the public interest but instead promote the interests of corporations.

Steps to be taken include limiting the privileged status that business currently has in official UN negotiations and policy-making; limits on the role of the “business and industry” major group; disclosure of existing relations and links between the UN with the private sector; a code of conduct for UN officials; a review of existing partnerships with corporates and trade associations, and a halt to entering into any new such partnerships; increased transparency around lobbying; and the establishment of a legally binding framework to hold companies accountable to environmental, human rights and labor rights law.