Rio+20 protests

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 20.—The High Level Session of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, was opened today by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, while thousands of people from all over the world staged a gigantic protest in defense of nature and against the capitalist system.

During this initiative, known as the Global Mobilization, approximately 50,000 protestors rejected new forms of the reproduction of capital, which are attacking the environment and are contrary to sustainable development.

Prensa Latina reported that the huge march comprised social activists, environmentalists, campesinos, women, people of African descent, indigenous groups, academics and political activists.

Organizations such as Vía Campesina affirmed that, 20 years after the Earth Summit, life on the planet has become dramatically difficult.

They also warned that "the number of hungry people has increased to almost one billion, which means that one in six human beings are suffering from hunger, principally women and children in rural areas."

The protestors stated that the expulsion of rural workers from their own lands and territories is currently a major problem, not only because of the disadvantaged conditions imposed on them in commercial contracts and the industrial sector, but also due to new forms of monopolizing land and water, the global imposition of forms of intellectual property which steal their seeds, the invasion of transgenic seeds, the advance of mono-cultivation, mega-projects, and mining.

The grand promises of Rio ’92 have resulted in farce, as have those of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the protestors claimed.

The Social Summit organizers noted that, two decades later, these issues remain pending and they fear even stronger neoliberal policies and processes of capitalist expansion, concentration and exclusion, the generators of an environmental, economic and social crisis of extremely grave proportions.

They particularly criticized the so-called green economy and are convinced that, under this deceptive name, new forms of contamination and environmental destruction, as well as new waves of privatization, monopolization and expulsions from "our lands and territories" are on their way.

The environmentalists also emphasized their disappointment at the final document, approved on June 19 by the negotiators for discussion by country leaders, who can introduce changes to the text. This is precisely what the protesters want.