Rio+20: UK pushes for ‘privatisation of nature’

On the final day of the Rio+20 summit, the World Development Movement has slammed the lack of commitment from rich industrialised countries in the Rio+20 agreement, and has condemned the UK government’s use of the summit to push for the privatisation of nature. 

Kirsty Wright, campaigner at the World Development Movement, said:

Rio+20 has produced a pathetically unambitious document devoid of solid commitments and packed with diplomatic fudges and ambiguous language. This will do nothing to solve the multiple crises we face.

The UK government, ignoring developing countries’ solid opposition to its plans to put a financial value on nature, has used the summit to push forward its ‘great nature sale’, which would see control of resources like water and biodiversity taken from the people who depend on them, and handed over to multinational companies.

Role of the UK government 

Kirsty Wright said:

The UK government has used the Rio+20 summit as a smokescreen for pushing forward the interests of bankers and multinational corporations. As we steamroll towards environmental destruction and ever growing gap between rich and poor, the UK and its allies are championing the same broken tools that created the global financial crisis in the first place.

Green economy

Kirsty Wright said:

Rio+20 has seen a concerted effort to push through a warped version of a ‘green economy’ that aims to slap a price tag on the world’s ecosystems and biodiversity, selling them off to the highest bidder. Whilst developing countries successfully opposed the privatisation and commodification of nature in the final agreement, the UK government has pushed forward its own agenda outside the official process. The government’s emphasis on ‘natural capital valuation’ has demonstrated that it is more concerned about corporate profits than about addressing the dire global financial and environmental crisis we are facing.

Fossil fuel subsidies

Kirsty Wright said:

Whilst the world faces the prospect of devastating temperature rises and millions of deaths from increased drought and famine as a result of climate change, rich industrialised countries are refusing to commit to transition away from a fossil fuel economy by eliminating subsidies for dirty energy. These countries grew rich by using fossil fuels, but they have pointed the finger of blame at poorer countries, who do not bear the historical responsibility for climate change, asking them to take on an equal role in reducing subsidies whilst failing to take action themselves.

Finance

Kirsty Wright said:

For all the talk about sustainable development and a green economy, rich industrialised countries have failed to make any meaningful commitment to new and additional finance. They have not provided the financial or technological resources they promised for years, yet they still expect commitments from developing countries.

Basic rights

Kirsty Wright said:

The final document reasserts commitments to the human right to water, but an agenda to commodify and privatise it has been pushed forward in parallel with the official summit. This will do nothing to ensure access to water for the 1.2 billion people facing water shortages. Regardless of what is agreed, Rio+20 has played into the hands of companies like Coca Cola, which has pushed for water to be privatised. 

The G77 gave a determined defence of other key principles such as the right to food, and the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ which recognises the greater responsibility of industrialised countries in combating environmental degradation due to their historic responsibility. If poorer countries had not remained united, we might have seen an even worse outcome.