[E-rundbrief] Info 1113 - Rio+20 - La Via Campesina against capitalism - position paper

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1113 - La Via Campesina: The people of the world 
confront the advance of capitalism: Rio +20 and beyond. Position Paper.

Bad Ischl, 17.6.2012

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

The people of the world confront the advance of capitalism: Rio +20 
and beyond

Wednesday, 06 June 2012 10:28

Position Paper of La Via Campesina

Governments from all over the world will meet in Río de Janeiro, 
Brasil from June 20-22 2012, to supposedly commemorate 20 years since 
the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on the Environment 
and Development, that established for the first time a global agenda 
for “sustainable development”. During this summit, in 1992, three 
international conventions were adopted: the Convention on Biological 
Diversity, the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, and the 
Convention to Fight Desertification. Each of these promised to 
initiate a series of actions destined to protect the planet and all of 
the life on it, and to allow all human beings to enjoy a life of dignity.

At that time , many social organizations congratulated and supported 
these new conventions with hope. Twenty years later, we see the real 
causes of environmental, economic, and social deterioration continuing 
without being attacked. Worse still, we are profoundly alarmed that 
the next meeting in June will serve to deepen neoliberal policies and 
processes of capitalist expansion, concentration, and exclusion that 
today have enveloped us in an environmental, economic, and social 
crisis of grave proportions. Beneath the deceptive and badly 
intentioned term “green economy”, new forms of environmental 
contamination and destruction are now rolled out along with new waves 
of privatization, monopolization, and expulsion from our lands and 
territories.

La Via Campesina will mobilize for this event, representing the voice 
of the peasant inthe global debate and defending a different path to 
development that is based on thewellbeing of all, that guarantees food 
for all, that protects and guarantees that thecommons and natural 
resources are put to use to provide a good life for everyone andnot to 
meet the needs for accumulation of a few.

20 years later: the planet and humanity in crisis

20 years after the Earth Summit, life on the planet has become 
dramatically difficult.The number of hungry people has increased to 
almost a billion, which means that oneout of every six people is going 
hungry, mostly children and women in the countryside.Expulsion from 
our lands and territories is accelerating, no longer only due 
toconditions of disadvantage imposed upon us by trade agreements and 
the industrialsector, but by new forms of monopoly control over land 
and water, by the globalimposition of intellectual property regimes 
that steal our seeds, by the invasion oftransgenic seeds, and by the 
advance of monoculture plantations, mega-projects, andmines.

The grand promises of Río ’92 have resulted a farce. The Convention on 
Biodiversityhas not stopped the destruction of biodiversity and has 
strengthened and generatednew mechanisms destined to privatize it and 
turn it into merchandise. Desertificationcontinues to accelerate due 
to the industrial agriculture and the expansion ofagribusiness and 
monoculture plantations. Global warming —with all of the disastersand 
dramatic suffering it is already causing—has not slowed, but has 
accelerated andbecome more severe.

The great deceit of 1992 was “sustainable development”, which social 
organizations initially saw as a possibility to confront the root of 
the problems. However, it was nothing more than a cover-up for the 
search for new forms of accumulation. Today they look to legitimize a 
new façade under the name “green economy”.

The “green economy” and other false solutions: a new assault on the 
people and their territories.

Capitalist profit-seeking has generated the biggest systemic crisis 
since 1929. Since2008, the hegemonic system has looked for ways out of 
its structural crisis, searchingfor new possibilities for accumulation 
that support its logic. It is in this context that thecorporate 
takeover of agreements on biodiversity and climate change have 
occurred,and consequently, the development of this new financial 
engineering called GreenCapitalism.

Governments, business people, and the organizations of the United 
Nations have spent these last years constructing the myth of the 
“green economy” and of the “greening of technology”. They present it 
as a new possibility to bring together environmental stewardship and 
business, but it is in fact the vehicle to obtain new advances of 
capitalism, putting the entire planet under the control of big 
capital. . There are various mechanisms that will be advanced by the 
green economy and all of them will increase the destruction. More 
specifically,

     The green economy does not seek to reduce climate change or 
environmental deterioration, but to generalize the principle that 
those who have money can continue polluting. Up to now, they have used 
the farce of purchasing carbon bonds to continue emitting greenhouse 
gases. They are now inventing biodiversity bonds. This is to say, 
businesses can continue destroying forests and ecosystems, as long as 
they pay someone to supposedly conserve biodiversity somewhere else. 
Tomorrow they may invent bonds for water, natural “views”, or clean air.

     These systems of buying environmental services are being used to 
take lands and territories away from indigenous peoples and peasants. 
The mechanisms that are most forcefully promoted by governments and 
businesses are the systems known as REDD and REDD plus. They say that 
these are systems to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by 
deforestation and degradation of the forests, but they are being used 
to impose, for a ridiculous price, management plans that deny families 
and rural communities access to their own lands, forests, and water 
sources. In addition, they guarantee businesses unrestricted access to 
collective forest areas, enabling biopiracy. They also impose 
contracts that tie communities to these management plans for 20 years 
or more and that leave indigenous and peasant territories with 
mortgage liens, that increases the likelihood that these communities 
will lose their lands. The objectives of these environmental services 
are to take control of nature reserves and of the territories that are 
under the control of these communities.

     Another initiative of the green economy is to convert plants, 
algae, and all other organic material (residues, dung, etc.) into a 
source of energy to substitute for petroleum; what is called “use of 
biomass”. With agrofuels, this has meant that thousands of hectares 
that should be covered in forests or producing food are being used to 
feed machines. If the use of biomass energy is effectivelyexpanded, we 
will see life in the seas reduced still more because an important 
segment of marine species will go without food. Our soils will not 
recuperate the organic material that is essential to conserve 
fertility and guard against erosion and drought. It will be impossible 
to feed our animals because the food they need is ever more scarce and 
expensive. Also, the water shortage will worsen, either directly 
through the cultivation of agrofuels or because our soils no longer 
have the capacity to absorb and retain water due to a lack of organic 
matter.

     Then, they speak to us of “climate smart agriculture”, the goal 
of which is to convince us to accept a new Green Revolution—possibly 
with transgenics—and that instead of demanding effective support to 
defend us from the effects of climate change, we accept laughable 
payments that function the same way as REDD. They also seek to impose 
systems that are highly dependent on large quantities of 
agrotoxins—like direct seeding that depends on aerial sprayings of 
Round Up—that they would call “low carbon agriculture”. That is to 
say, we are obliged to accept a certain type of agriculture that will 
jeopardize control of our territories, our ecosystems, and our water.

     One of the most perverse aspects of the false solutions that are 
promoted in international negotiations is the restriction of access to 
and use of water for irrigation. Using the pretext that water for 
irrigation is scarce, it is suggested that water be concentrated in 
“high value crops”; meaning that export crops, agrofuels and other 
industrial crops are irrigated while food crops are left without water.

     The promotion of technological solutions that are not solutions 
at all is also part of the agenda of the discussions in Rio. Among the 
most dangerous are geoengineering and the acceptance of transgenic 
crops. Up until now, none of the solutions proposed by geoengineering 
have demonstrated any real capacity to solve climate problems. On the 
contrary, some forms of geoengineering (like the fertilization of the 
seas) are so dangerous that there has been an international moratorium 
declared aginst them. To accept Genetically modified organism (GMOs), 
we are told that crops resistant to drought and heat will be created, 
but the only thing new in GMOs are more herbicide-resistant varieties, 
which are bringing back to the market highly toxic herbicides like 2,4-D.

     The most ambitious plan and the one that some governments 
identify as “the major challenge” is to put a price on all the goods 
of nature (like water, biodiversity, the countryside, wildlife, seeds, 
rain, etc.) to then privatize them (arguing that conservation requires 
money) and charge us for their use. This is called the Economy of 
Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). It is the final assault on nature 
and life, but also on the means of work and the lives of the people 
whose livelihoods are based on agriculture, hunting, and fishing.

This “green” capitalism has the rural commons, agriculture, land and 
water particularly in its sights. We are already suffering from its 
effects in the form of land grabs or monopolization of land, 
privatization of water, the oceans, of indigenous territories, the 
national parks and nature reserves; all these processes are being 
accompanied by the forced expulsions of peasant and indigenous 
communities.

The real solution: put peasant and indigenous farmers at the center

We, peasants and indigenous peoples, are the ones who are concentrated 
in the highest levels of poverty because we have been deprived of land 
and we have been constrained by law or by force so that we cannot 
cultivate and exchange freely. Nonetheless, we are people who have 
been resisting expulsion from the countryside, and still we are more 
than 90% of the rural population. Our forms of agriculture cool the 
planet, care for ecosystems and secure the food supply for the poorest.

Every real solution happens to impinge upon the unbridled profits of 
capital, put an end to the complicity of governments and supports 
forms of production that effectively care for the planet. Food 
Sovereignty is at the heart of the necessary changes, and is the only 
real path that can possibly feed all of humanity. Our proposals are 
clear and introduce real solutions:

     We should exchange the industrial agroexport food system for a 
system based on food sovereignty, that returns the land to its social 
function as the producer of food and sustainer of life, that puts 
local production of food at the center, as well as the local markets 
and local processing. Food sovereignty allows us to put an end to 
monocultures and agribusiness, to foster systems of peasant production 
that are characterized by greater intensity and productivity, that 
provide jobs, care for the soil and produce in a way that is healing 
and diversified. Peasant and indigenous agriculture also has the 
ability to cool the planet, with the capacity to absorb or prevent 
almost 2/3 of the greenhouses gases that are emitted every year.

     The land currently in the hands of peasants and indigenous 
peoples is around 20% of all agricultural land in the world. And yet 
l, on this land the peasant and indigenous families and communities 
produce slightly less than half of the world’s food. The most secure 
and efficient way to overcome hunger around the world is in our hands.

     To secure food for all and restore the earth’s normal climate, it 
is necessaryto return agriculture to the hands of peasant communities 
and indigenouspeoples. To do this, we must have urgent, integrated, 
sweeping agrarianreform that ends the extreme and growing 
concentration of land that affectsall of humanity today. These 
agrarian reforms will provide the materialconditions for agriculture 
to benefit all of humanity and thus , the defenseand protection of 
peasant and indigenous agriculture is up to all of us . In theshort 
run , it is necessary to halt all transactions, concessions, and 
transfersthat result in concentration or monopoly control of land 
and/or thedisplacement of rural communities.

     Peasant and indigenous systems of agriculture, hunting, fishing, 
andshepherding that care for the land and the food supply should be 
supportedadequately with public resources that are not subject to 
conditionalities.Market mechanisms—like the sale of carbon and 
environmentalservices—should be eliminated and replaced with real 
measures like thosementioned above. Ending pollution is a duty that no 
one should be able toavoid by paying for the rights to continue the 
destruction.

     The legitimate use of what international organizations and 
enterprises nowcall biomass is to feed every living being, and then to 
be returned to theearth to restore its fertility. The emissions that 
come from wasted energyshould be reduced through saving and 
eliminating waste. We needrenewable, decentralized sources of energy, 
within reach of the people.

We are mobilized to unmask Rio +20 and green capitalism

We, peasants, family farmers, landless peasants, indigenous peoples 
and migrants, men and women, decidedly oppose the commercialization of 
the earth, our territories, water, seeds, food, nature, and human 
life. We reiterate what was said at the People’s Summit in Cochabamba, 
Bolivia: “Humanity faces a grand dilemma: to continue the path of 
capitalism, predation, and death, or undertake the path of harmony 
with nature and respect for life.”

We repudiate and denounce the green economy as a new mask to hide 
increasing levels of corporate greed and food imperialism in the 
world, and as a brutal “green washing” of capitalism that only 
implements false solutions, like carbon trading, REDD, geoengineering, 
GMOs, agrofuels, bio-char, and all of the market- based solutions to 
the environmental crisis.

Our goal is to bring back another way of relating to nature and other 
people. This isalso our duty, and our right and so we will continue 
fighting and calling on others tocontinue fighting tirelessly for the 
construction of food sovereignty, for comprehensiveagrarian reform and 
the restoration of indigenous territories, for ending the violence 
ofcapital and restoring peasant and indigenous systems of production 
based onagroecology.

NO TO THE FALSE SOLUTIONS OF GREEN CAPITALISM

PEASANT AGRICULTURE NOW!

http://www.viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1277:the-people-of-the-world-confront-the-advance-of-capitalism-rio-20-and-beyond&catid=48:-climate-change-and-agrofuels&Itemid=75

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
Spenden-Konto Nr. 0600-970305 (Blz. 20314) Sparkasse Salzkammergut,
Geschäftsstelle Pfandl
IBAN: AT922031400600970305 BIC: SKBIAT21XXX

--

Ausgezeichnet mit dem (österr.) "Journalismus-Preis von unten 2010"

Honoured by the (Austrian) "Journalism-Award from below 2010"