"Re-Invent the World": Rio+20 People's Summit Gathers Pace 

The counter conference is designed to foster alternative ideas
and provide an outlet for discontent

By Jonathan Watts 
The Guardian/UK 
June 18, 2012 

They come with speeches, placards, power point presentations
and drums. Some with body paint and bows and arrows. Others
with suits and business plans. Almost all driven by a desire
for radical change.

A model Statue of Liberty during the People's summit at
Rio+20. (Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters) "Come re-invent
the world" is the call to the People's summit, which has
opened in Rio de Janeiro to counter what many participants
see as the malign influence of capitalism at the Rio+20
United Nations sustainable development conference now taking
place on the outskirts of the city.

Two hundred civil society groups - including
environmentalists, unions, religious groups and indigenous
tribes - will take part in the nine-day event, which is
expected to climax with a rally of 50,000 people on the 20th
June.

On that day, more than 110 world's leaders will fly in for
the Earth summit, marking the two decades that have passed
since the original Rio gathering in 1992 set in place a
system of international conventions and policy documents
designed to bring the human economy back into balance with
the global environment.

Despite those measures, the decline of ecosystems has
accelerated. Negotiators at Rio+20 aim to address this with
new measures to promote a green economy, strengthen global
environmental governance and encourage nations to commit to a
new set of sustainable development goals.

But the People's summit - which is funded to the level of $5m
by the Brazilian government - is designed to foster
alternative ideas and provide an outlet for discontent at UN
member countries' failure to preserve biodiversity, eliminate
poverty and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Organizers expect 15,000 people daily at the gathering, which
is supported by Greenpeace, Oxfam, the Via Campesina
international peasant movement and a panoply of other
participants including Ukranian green education pioneers,
survivors of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, organic food
organizations, the 100 Million Trees program and ITPA, a
Brazilian conservation group.

Most eye-catching are the hundreds of representatives from
Brazil's many indigenous groups, who performed a ritual on
the opening day. Their appeal for protection of land rights
and compensation for ecological services are only briefly
mentioned in the official negotiating text, but they take
central position at the People's summit.

"Native people preserve nature. We know that nobody can live
without the oxygen from the trees. But the farmers take our
land and start fires in the forest, and the dam builders
block our rivers," said Waratan, a member of the Pataxo tribe
from Brazil's Bahai region. "Native culture needs to be
preserved like the environment."

As he spoke, the challenge was being underscored by a
simultaneous protest in a distant corner of Brazil where 300
indigenous people and local residents occupied the site of
the Belo Monte Dam project, which will be the third biggest
in the world, and flood a 400 square-kilometer area of the
Amazon including the homelands of native tribes.

Like the official negotiations, the People's summit got off
to a slow and somewhat chaotic start. On the opening morning
on Friday, some facilities were still under construction, the
rest largely empty apart from a smattering of Hare Krishna
and Christian groups and small clusters of environmental
activists.

But the energy levels rose through the weekend along with
volume and variety of music. On Saturday night, samba,
reggae, rap, folk songs and even nasal whistles echoed across
Flamengo's white sands and yacht marina. Some participants
danced,but many more were huddled in discussions about an
alternative future.

Far from the air conditioning of the hangar-like conference
center at RioCentro, the debates at the People's summit take
place in marquees, tents and canopies erected with bamboo and
canvas. Ideas are propagated through pamphlets, performance
art and - until Sunday - Summit Radio, a community station
normally based in a favella, that uses a mobile studio on a
bicycle. (It was ordered to cease transmissions on Sunday
because it lacked a license.)

There is no single ideology. At one end, anti-capitalist
groups held discussions on the "hidden agenda of the green
economy", which they fear is a new ruse to constrain the
growth of developing countries and to expand the
commodification of natural resources that are currently free.

"We are suspicious of this talk of a green economy. It seems
like another attempt by the rich powers to impose a model on
poor countries," said one veteran Vietnamese women's rights
activist.

"Instead, we should talk about green economies because
different approaches will be needed in different countries."

At the other end of the strip, green entrepreneurs displayed
sustainable business ideas at two brightly illuminated
showrooms. Among the ingenious ways to make money and save
resources were Acquazero, a biowash for cars that its
suppliers claim uses 99% less water than a power hose, and
Ecomaquinas, which makes bricks from recycled construction
waste and - at a pilot program level - old money taken out of
circulation.

The head of Brazil's Small Business Association, Luis
Barreto, said the People's summit was an important way of
sharing good ideas and changing perceptions. "We're here to
highlight business opportunities and show that there is no
contradiction between being sustainable and making money."

Elsewhere, promoters of the "Solidarity Economy in Latin
America and the Caribbean" debated the needs and means for a
wholesale shift of priorities to "re-democratize the economy"
so that more resources benefit and are recycled by local
communities. Greenpeace pushed for "zero deforestation" in
the Amazon by 2020, following the 80% decline in
deforestation rates in less than a decade. The National
Movement of Catadores - informal rubbish collectors - sought
greater recognition for the job they do in recycling.

The range of convictions were apparent in slogans and
posters: "No more poisoned food," "Support women farmers",
"Nuclear-free Brazil", "Stop endocrine disruptors."

"We know how to destroy, but do we know how to build?" asked
Andre Ruiz, who declares himself a businessman who became a
campaigner. He has turned himself into a walking billboard
covered with graphic photographs of environmental destruction
and slogans warning of dire consequences if people fail to
take action.

Attendances so far seem considerably lower than the
predictions, suggesting there is a long way to go before the
People's summit provides the surge of creativity and new
thinking that the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon,
suggested might be one of the most positive outcomes of
Rio+20. But a week remains and so does hope in what this
counter-conference might achieve.

"It's important," said Thais Herdy, a public official who was
visiting Flamengo with a friend. "The activists may be a
little too idealistic. But we must believe an alternative is
possible."

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited

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