Join us in the fight for economic justice and an end to global poverty.

Green economy blog

Syndicate content

Clegg’s Rio blame game

The Rio+20 Earth Summit has been deservedly derided as a dismal failure. Industrialised countries refused to commit to allocating a single additional penny to help poorer countries move towards a green economy, and the final agreement was nothing more than a reaffirmation of previous commitments.

Nick Clegg, who headed the UK delegation in Rio, was clear about who he blamed for the failure. No, it wasn’t the oil and gas lobbyists, nor the fossil fuel addicted governments of the industrialised world.

It was the poor.

According to Clegg, Rio failed because developing countries were “antagonistic” towards the EU’s plan to build a green economy.

This is rich indeed given that the UK government, alongside the rest of the EU, blocked almost every progressive proposal coming from the developing world during the pre-summit negotiations.

The G77 – a group of 131 developing countries – went to Rio calling on the industrialised world to commit to providing additional funding to help the world’s poorest countries develop on a sustainable basis. Thanks to the truly antagonistic stance of Clegg and his counterparts in Europe and North...

Interrupting Nick Clegg and the Great Nature Sale (Part 2)

Although we had some fun with our 'Great Nature Sale' photo stunt and trying to set up auctions online, our message is deadly serious. The UK government and institutions such as the World Bank are pushing an agenda that will increase social and environmental injustice in the world, and lead to human rights abuses such as the displacement of local communities and loss of livelihoods.

When I interrupted Nick Clegg during an event celebrating the 'pricing' of nature, it felt like the event epitomised everything that was wrong with the mainstream 'green economy' narrative. But while the wrong approach was being discussed and applauded at the official conference centre, the People's Summit held 20km away, offered practical solutions which put the rights of people and the environment before profit.

This so-called ‘green economy’ is one of the expressions of the current financial phase of capitalism which also makes use of old and new mechanisims, such as deepening public-private debt, stimulating over-consumption, the ownership and concentration of new technologies , carbon markets and...

WDM heckle raises hackles at the World Bank

Last week, WDM climate campaigner Sarah Reader donned a Nick Clegg mask and interrupted the deputy prime minister’s speech to the ‘natural capital summit’ on the sidelines of Rio+20.

Clegg was there to support to the ‘natural capital declaration’, a document drawn up by 37 big financial sector companies to call for the financial valuation of nature and the internalisation of environmental ‘externalities’ (i.e. bringing them into the market).

It seems that Sarah has raised some hackles at the World Bank. On Thursday, the World Bank’s vice president for sustainable development, Rachel Kyte, posted a blog criticising WDM for ‘missing the point’ about valuing nature:

The event had its share of unexpected excitement when a protester, wearing a Clegg mask, interrupted the UK deputy prime minister. She was from World Development Movement. Reading their blog later, I think they are missing the point. We are not talking about "pricing" nature but "valuing" it. By valuing it, you are enabling better economic decisions. For example, if you're a water-scarce country and you...

Interrupting Nick Clegg and the 'Great Nature Sale' (part 1)

Sarah Reader, campaigns and network assistant

Yesterday I interrupted Nick Clegg as he gave his keynote speech on the opening day of the Rio +20 summit. How did that happen?

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...

Campaigner interrupts key note speech by Nick Clegg

On the opening day of the Rio+20 summit yesterday, a UK campaigner interrupted a key note speech by Nick Clegg, UK Deputy Prime Minister, at a high level meeting on natural capital. 

...

Let them drink Coke…the corporate plan to price water

The era of free water is over.

Or at least, it will be if the 45 multinational companies which signed a communiqué at Rio+20 get their way. 

The companies – which include Coca Cola, Nestle and Glaxo Smith Kline – are pushing for a "fair and appropriate price" to be placed on water to end the current 'free for all'.

"Those who can afford water should pay… Companies like certainty and in areas where there is no pricing they are very vulnerable. It could potentially push up prices in some markets but better to pay more and have certainty of supply," a UN official overseeing the initiative told the Guardian.

But what about those who will be priced out? And what about the inevitable rises in food prices that will follow?

In a world in which 1.2 billion people live in conditions of water scarcity and climate change is meaning more drought across the world, the corporate solution is to slap a price on what is left to ensure there’s plenty of water to make Coke.

Last year, Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, talked about the great business opportunities in the creation of global markets in water as a commodity. He said this could happen in 25-30 years time. But now, it appears that a number of companies want to move towards...

The World Bank: privatising and commodifying nature at Rio+20 and beyond

Amid all the preparation for Rio+20 and media speculation about the possible outcomes, the World Bank quietly released a rather important document last week – its Environment Strategy for 2012-2022.

Although it has gone relatively unnoticed, the document basically lays bare what the World Bank will actually do after Rio – regardless of what is agreed at the negotiations.

And it sure isn’t pretty.

"In a market-based world, as natural resources become scarce, their price should rise", the document states in a matter of fact manner and goes onto to advocate the expansion of carbon markets (which have totally failed to reduce emissions) to the domain of biodiversity. It also envisages the expansion of the UK-funded 'WAVES' (Global Partnership for Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services) programme, which is about getting poor countries to place a price tag on their ecosystems and habitats.

As we at the World Development Movement have argued consistently in the run up to Rio, ascribing a monetary value to free...

Rio+20 Great Nature Sale: ‘ebay auction’ launched

Ebay seller “Rio_Summit_Nature_Sale” today listed some of the world’s most famous forests, oceans, lakes and species for sale on ebay. 

The sale was timed to coincide with a “Natural Capital Dialogue” being held today at Rio+20  by the World Bank and the UK government. The meeting will promote initiatives that put a price on ecosystems and allow new commodities to be created, as part of a “green economy” agenda that has drawn widespread criticism at the summit.

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

The UK government is promoting the sale of nature to the highest bidder. We set up the Rio+20 nature sale on ebay to demonstrate how ridiculous this is. By selling off iconic natural sites such as the Amazon rainforest and the Lake District, we are simply following the UK’s approach that the intrinsic value of ecosystems can now be quantified and that they can then be owned, speculated on and ultimately sold off to whoever has the most money."  

Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement on...

Rio+20: Stumbling towards a future we don’t really want

As I write, things inside Rio Centro, where the Rio+20 talks are taking place look bleak. Last Friday, after three long days of ‘preparatory committee’ meetings countries were unable to agree little more than a third of the draft outcome text. The decision was made for the UN to hand responsibility for drafting of a new version of the text to Brazil, as the host country, in the hope of finding a common pathway forward.

On Saturday night, just before midnight, a new Brazilian text was circulated. In an attempt to break the stalemate in the negotiations, and close the gulf between developed countries and the G77 group of 130 developing countries, this text had been dramatically weakened.

Pledges on increasing access to water end energy were watered down, and across the text, any meaningful language had been removed. Words such as “commit” has been largely stripped away and replaced with terms like “voluntary” and “as appropriate” – essentially enabling the statement to sound positive whilst in reality, amounting to little obligation for countries to do anything in terms of real action.

On the positive side, this new text has the potential to prevent a massive backtrack on some of the more positive principals of Rio that were agreed twenty years ago. Yet...

A visit to a steel factory: How TKCSA is wrecking lives and the environment

Sarah Reader, network and campaigns assistant

On Friday I went to a ThyssenKrupp CSA (TKCSA) steel refinery as part of a Rio +Toxic tour being run by Brazilian civil society groups. The groups planned to take a number of campaigners, researchers and journalists to different sites of corporate exploitation and environmental injustice in the outskirts of Rio so that they can witness the impact of international businesses and meet some of the local people affected by the projects and involved in resisting them.

Rio +Toxic logo with a man walking with a gas mask

The idea is to highlight the Brazilian government’s hypocrisy in hosting Rio +20, a conference supposedly aimed at helping progress sustainable development and the protection of the environment, whilst at the same time being complicit in projects that are wreaking havoc amongst local ecosystems and people’s lives.

Brazil’s national ‘development’ bank
The tour departed from outside the Banco National de...

Report condemns EU push for biomass-fuelled ‘green economy’ at Rio+20

EU plans to promote the replacement of fossil fuels with biomass at the Rio+20 Earth Summit could lead to hunger and environmental devastation, according to a report released today by the World Development Movement and the Transnational Institute.

The report, ‘Bio-economies: the EU’s real ‘Green Economy’ agenda’, condemns the EU’s bio-economy vision as “a tantalising mirage, promising a green future but likely to deliver a parched and arid reality”.

The EU’s bio-economy policy aims to replace fossil fuels with biomass – including wood fibres, grass, bamboo, soybeans, corn and algae - as a source of energy and in the production of plastics and other manufactured goods. But the EU’s own analysis indicates that this would have a disastrous impact on developing countries, including severe pressures on food supply. 

Alex Scrivener, policy officer at the World Development Movement, said today:

“Substituting biomass for fossil fuels sounds like the easy solution to climate change. But in reality, it leads to land grabs, the destruction of rainforests, and severe food shortages where land is used to grow fuel instead of food. And the idea that biofuels are ‘...

Memo to Rio+20: 'green economy' doesn't mean monetising nature

The 1992 Rio Earth summit established 'sustainable development' firmly in the global political lexicon – even though the term meant, and continues to mean, different things to different people. For Stephan Schmidheiny, a CEO who was appointed chief adviser for business and industry at the summit and subsequently set up the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, it apparently means continuing with business as usual: in February, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the deaths of thousands of workers at his asbestos-cement factory.

As the Rio+20 anniversary conference approaches, a battle rages over the definition of another term: 'green economy'. 'A green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication' is a key conference theme (pdf). It sounds good, but what does it mean?

According to one of the ...

Landing into stalemate?

I arrived into Rio late last night, and headed straight to the small apartment that is to be home for the next ten days. Sarah, fellow WDMer had landed a few hours before, and already orientated herself around the city and had plenty of information to share. Whilst we are here, Sarah will be spending her days at the People’s Summit coordinating with social movements, participating in actions and discussing alternatives to the false solutions that are being proposed at the official summit, and I will be following what’s going on inside the Rio+20 conference (officially known as the UN Conference on Sustainable Development).

Today, I headed on the long journey to the Rio Centro, where the official summit will take place – typically this is over an hour’s drive from the city centre, a space far from the world of real people of Rio, which can be easily monitored and policed. Arriving at a UN summit is always a dizzying process. Working out the bus routes, negotiating the registration process, and orientating yourself around a massive, overbearing and stuffy conference space – in this case a huge airport-style hanger designed for 15,000 people – approximately the same population of the town where I...

Latest draft of Rio+20 negotiating document leaked – and it’s not looking good

With just a few days to go until the start of the Rio Earth Summit, there is still very little certainty about what exactly will happen. But early indications are not great. Back in January, an initial ‘Zero Draft’ of the outcome document was publicised under the title The Future We Want. While this document outlined some generally positive sentiments, we at the World Development Movement found that it was severely lacking in substance.

Protestors

Campaigners from Food and Water Watch protest against the finanicalisation of natural resources

Crucially, it didn’t define what was meant by a ‘green economy’, which is one of the main themes for Rio, leaving it in danger of being hijacked by corporate interests. This could mean the privatisation of commonly owned aspects of the natural world and the creation of new markets in ecosystem ‘services’.

Last week, the Guardian released the latest version of the document, dated 2 June when the last round of negotiations ended. For the most part, it is not looking too promising. The mainstream media has focussed on the lack of agreement between rich industrialised countries and representatives...

Breaking news: Mozambican activist deported from Brazil ahead of Rio +20

On Tuesday 12 June a Mozambican journalist was deported from Brazil and thus barred from attending the Rio +20 summit. Jeremiah Vunjanhe is a journalist by profession and works for the Mozambican organisation: Justiça Ambiental (JA!, Environmental Justice). He is also a member of Friends of the Earth Mozambique.

Jeremiah was involved in exposing the impact of the Brazilian mining giant ‘Vale’ in Mozambique. He was travelling to Rio as part of an international network that was set up linking communities and workers affected by Vale across the world and to share his experiences with people everywhere affected by extractive industries.

Vale is the world’s second largest mining corporation and operates in nearly 40 countries. It was recently nominated in the Public Eye Awards for worst corporation because of it’s 70-year history of abusing human rights, imposing inhumane working conditions and ruthlessly exploiting nature.

...

Arriving in Rio for Rio +20
Sarah Reader, networks and campaigns assistant

This morning at 5.30am (approximately 9.30am UK time), I arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the Rio +20 Earth Summit. After killing some time at the airport until it was a bit more of a respectable time to turn up on someone’s doorstep, I made my way into the centre of the city to meet the couple who own the apartment where I’ll be staying.

Within 10 minutes of arriving at the hostel where I was meeting the couple, I’d bumped into a lively group of people having breakfast who I found out are also here for the summit.

We did a quick go round of names and nationalities, and I found out I’d been lucky enough to bump into a network of people from different countries who work on indigenous rights and conservation issues. The group included people from Iran, India, Italy, Chile and Bolivia- all of whom are working on different local indigenous and conservation projects. As I was explaining what WDM does, they got excited at the mention of food sovereignty and invited me to the session they’re running tomorrow morning that happens to be on food sovereignty.

Before leaving London I printed out the current list of...

Asian Movements’ Statement on the Green Economy

Ahead of the Rio+20 summit, Asian social movements have put together this statement on the fake Green Economy being pushed at the talks. It also outlines what they will be calling for at the summit.


Fight for Our Future! No Price on Nature!
 
We are movements and organizations from Asia, waging struggles on various fronts and arenas to defend our rights, resist policies and projects that cause harm and destruction, and to fight for immediate priorities and demands, as well as profound transformation of our societies.
 
We envision a social and economic system:

  • that is aimed at providing for the needs of people and aspirations for a humane, empowering and liberating life in a manner that respects the earth’s capacity to regenerate, and to sustain life based on the integrity of natural systems;
  • that is based on and promotes equity, parity, solidarity and mutual respect among people and nations regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, capabilities and class;
  • that promotes sharing of land, water, forests, atmosphere, eco-systems and territories  based on the principles of stewardship and not private ownership, and the rights of all people to equitable and responsible...

Scottish Parliament debates Rio+20

In yesterday’s Scottish Parliament debate on Rio+20, WDM’s call for a ‘real green economy not a Trojan horse for bankers’ was reiterated by Green MSP Alison Johnstone.  Here, in her blog, she includes some extracts from her speech in the chamber.

Alison says:  In a few weeks’ time the Rio earth summit on sustainable development takes place with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups coming together to tackle poverty, inequality and environmental protection.

During yesterday's debate on Rio+20 in the Scottish Parliament, I summed up my thoughts and the Scottish Green's perspective on the summit:

Alison Johnstone MSP"The first Rio earth summit was a milestone in global environmental talks. In comparison with recent climate talks, the agreements made at Rio were extensive. Rio established the term “sustainable development” in the political vocabulary. The Rio declaration defined the polluter-pays principle and the precautionary principle, and recognised that women and indigenous peoples have vital roles to play in creating solutions to...

Signup to emails

Get the latest campaign actions, events and news direct to your inbox.

Stop the sell off - find out more

Cycle London to Paris with WDM

 

Aid campaign image - stop big business cashing in on aid