REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) is a controversial carbon trading scheme that California is about to implement as a way to reduce the state’s global emissions that will impact forest communities in Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere.

On October 16th, a panel of Indigenous activists from Chiapas, Mexico, Pastaza province, Ecuador and Acre, Brazil, convened at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, CA for a discussion on the affects of REDD on their communities and ways of life. I had the opportunity to attend the panel discussion and screening of the film The Darker Shade of Green, which is part of a week-long tour through the state organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN). The tour aims to educate Californians on the negative impacts the implementation of REDD by California will have on communities in places like Chiapas, Mexico and throughout South America.

What is REDD?

REDD, also called REDD+, is a controversial market-based carbon trading scheme which gives countries the ability to ‘pay’ developing countries to conserve their forests instead of cutting them down or allowing them to be logged. This ‘conservation’ allows the country/state purchasing the credits to reduce their count of global emissions—at least on paper—arguing that their polluting practices have been counter-balanced by preventing resource use in other countries. A key question is—have emissions been reduced, or merely moved around? REDD was first put forward as a United Nations program at the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen back in 2009. Taken at first glance, the idea of “reducing emissions from deforestation” sounds appealing but when we unpack the ideas behind REDD there is more than meets the eye.

REDD is particularly controversial amongst forest peoples in Indigenous communities, who are often the frontline defenders of forests. Some welcome REDD, seeing it as a way to be paid to protect forests but more believe that it fundamentally alters Indigenous peoples’ relationship with the land and living in harmony with nature. As moderator of the event, IEN’s Tom B.K. Goldtooth said REDD “criminalizes peoples who protect and rely on forests for their livelihood and is promoting the biggest land grab of all time and may result in genocide”.

This system of carbon trading carbon not only makes industrial pollution and CO2 emissions by wealthy countries ‘acceptable’ but it also dictates what forest peoples in the Global South can do with land. Indigenous peoples especially are bearing the weight of these policies through land grabs, forced relocation, and government cutting off crucial services such as healthcare and education as a way of threatening them to relocate from their native lands.

The need for unified resistance

I was captivated by the first-hand experience of the panelists and the effects that REDD has had on their lives and communities. With a quiet dignity, Gloria Ushiga of the Association of Zapara women in Ecuador spoke about being persecuted and facing death threats for her outspoken opposition to REDD. Rosario Aguilar from Chiapas spoke about her experience witnessing healthcare services being cut to Indigenous communities that refuse to relocate from their lands. Marlon Santi of the Sarayaku in Ecuador spoke about the effects of ‘Socio Bosque’ (the “Social Forest”) – Ecuador’s national policy of privatizing lands to make way for REDD programs.

Rosario Aguilar of Chiapas, Mexico

There was one clear message throughout the evening: the struggle against REDD must be a united one – combining the efforts of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples of the Global North and South.

California’s Role in REDD 

California is currently poised to adopt legislation AB32  (The Global Warming Solutions Act), a statewide mandate for reducing greenhouse gas emissions via carbon trading. If the law is passed next year, it has the potential to set the stage for how other countries will implement compliance with REDD. If REDD is implemented in California, it will not do anything to help reduce California’s global emissions. Rather, it will rely on carbon offsets from places like Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil to allow California corporations to continue to pollute.

Alberto Saldamando, Indigenous Environmental Network campaigner on California REDD has said the following about the possibility of California adopting REDD:

“The abuses of indigenous human rights by cap and trade, particularly under REDD programs have been well documented. They have led to forced or coerced displacement of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands, assassinations, imprisonment, and alienation from Indigenous lifeways and spiritual lives. California should not repeat its mistakes of the past with regard to Indigenous and Native Peoples, including their genocide or ethnocide, just to let their polluters continue to pollute.”

From left to right: Ninawa, President of the Federation of Huni Kui (Acre Brazil, translator, and panel moderator Tom B.K. Goldtooth of IEN

The panelists all made the point that the resistance to REDD in California must be as strong and determined as the resistance to REDD in the Global South. When California industry is allowed to pollute more it affects California communities. We must ask ourselves, for instance, how much more pollution and toxic contamination from the Chevron Refinery can residents in Richmond, CA take? With REDD, communities like Richmond will continue to serve as sacrifice zones for industry.

By claiming to curb climate change through putting a price tag on nature, we are further commoditizing forests rather than tackling the root causes of deforestation, climate change, and environmental destruction. If capitalism got us into this environmental crisis, how can we expect it to get us out?

The answer is, we can’t.

Can we protect nature as long as we treat the Earth as a resource for profit?

At the end of the panel discussion there was some time left for questions and comments from the audience. I stood up and took a few moments to speak about Rights of Nature as path forward which rejects REDD and other market-based schemes that push nature further into the marketplace.

Demonstrated by the passion of the presenters, the negative impacts on all of our communities can be so overwhelming sometimes that we lose sight of the alternatives, and what we are truly for.  We must make the transition toward living within the carrying capacity of the planet. The international movement for Rights of Nature has immense potential to take humanity in a positive direction towards protecting the planet by changing law to recognize that nature itself has inherent rights to exist, thrive, and regenerate. From there, local communities can act as stewards of their local environment and build resilient local economies that do not depend on the commodification of nature.

Rights of Nature is the alternative framework we need to truly protect the environment, without price tags.

• Global Exchange was a co-sponsor of the event and, along with thirty allies, a co-signer on a letter urging Governor Brown to reject REDD carbon offsets in California.
• To learn more about Rights of Nature in the context of REDD, read the articles that were written by Tom B.K. Goldtooth, Jeff Conant, and Pablo Solon in our report Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change.
• Listen to a webcast recording of the October 16th panel.

Global Exchange staff with fellow Bay Area activists at the Global Frackdown San Francisco action. Photo Credit: Global Exchange

On Saturday September 22nd, activists from around the Bay Area gathered in San Francisco next to the iconic Golden Gate bridge for a rally and march to voice one powerful, shared message: BAN FRACKING NOW! 

What is fracking?

Fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) is a process of drilling for oil and natural gas from shale rock underneath the earth’s surface. A high-pressure mixture of toxic chemicals, water, and sand is injected deep underground.

Communities worldwide are concerned about the effects of fracking on their health, land, and water. While it is happening in 34 states across the country (where in some communities residents can actually light their tap water on fire), it is currently unregulated in California, with no warning to communities.

It was a Global Frackdown!

The action on Saturday was part of a series of events worldwide called the Global Frackdown organized by Food & Water Watch to raise public awareness around fracking and the dangers it poses to our communities, land, water, and health.

In solidarity with people from nearly every corner of the globe, from Australia to Canada to France to South Africa, people came out in numbers on Saturday to call for an end to fracking and to make it clear to oil and gas companies that we know about the dangers of fracking and we do not want it to happen in our communities.

What happened in San Francisco?

Bay Area Global Frackdown activists gathered by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on Saturday morning, the sun was shining and the sky was clear – a rare site for that part of the city at 10am. After enjoying coffee and bagels as people arrived, organizers from environmental and social justice organizations throughout the Bay Area including 350.org, Earth Works, and the Center for Biological Diversity, took turns speaking about their work and the importance of banning fracking.

Global Exchange’s Kylie Nealis, Shannon Biggs, Carleen Pickard, and Jessica Nuti at the Global Frackdown SF action. Photo Credit: Global Exchange

Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program Director Shannon Biggs spoke about our work assisting communities throughout California to pass rights-based ordinances that elevate the rights of citizens over oil and gas drilling companies and enable them to say ‘NO’ to fracking where they live. The path for these cutting-edge new laws has already been paved by places such as Pittsburgh, PA, where the city passed a rights-based ordinance banning fracking in 2010.

You can watch Shannon’s speech here:

Activists march to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco

The energy was high throughout the morning and one thing was clear: this is the beginning of a movement against fracking in California that is only going to get bigger. There is no such thing as safe fracking and yet, it is happening unregulated throughout California with no warning. In fact, a recent poll by the Los Angeles Times showed that 46% of Californians don’t actually know what fracking is.

Those of us working on fracking here at Global Exchange know that the long-term solution to banning fracking lies in changing our structure of law to elevate the rights of communities (and nature) above corporations — but the first step is getting the word out and that’s exactly what the Global Frackdown achieved.

TAKE ACTION:

• Learn how YOU can get involved in Global Exchange’s Community Rights campaign.
• Watch this new video as part of our emerging campaign around fracking that explores how fracking is an issue of community rights, not regulations.
• Check out photos from the Global Frackdown event in San Francisco on our Facebook page.
  

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From dropping a “Bust Up the Bank” banner off the office rooftop and making F.I.R.E. flame graphics highlighting the cozy relationship between money and politics in campaign financing, to doing media outreach for the United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit and conducting video interviews with staff and interns about what Rights of Nature means to them, my summer has been full of rewarding work that has opened my mind to new ideas and worldviews.

Interns hold up canvas flames and water drops that target the F.I.R.E. sector’s campaign finance spending

Learning the ins and outs of Global Exchange and the movement for Community & Nature’s Rights

During my first week, I dove straight into the theory and history of rights-based organizing. While I had a basic understanding of community organizing and social change, I didn’t come to grips with these concepts until college — not surprising since our public education system doesn’t teach us much about the impact corporate power has on our democracy.

But that’s not the case at Global Exchange. Together, interns collaborated on a summer project that directly confronted corporate influence in U.S. politics. Based on findings from Elect Democracy’s ‘Meet the F.I.R.E. Sector’ report, we researched the amount of money that certain interest groups contributed to political campaigns, and how these donations could’ve alternatively benefited public services. For example, Health Lobbyists spent $635.3 million from 2011-2012. This money could’ve provided 542,991 children’s vaccinations. Our finished products were flame visuals made for the Republican and Democratic National Conventions that “illuminate” the facts and water droplets that call on citizens to put the F.I.R.E. out and reclaim democracy!

I began unpacking the concepts of “democracy,” “law” and “rights” while learning about the movement for community and nature’s rights. As of today, 140 communities in the U.S. have organized not only to collectively elevate their rights above corporate interests, but also to recognize the inherent rights of nature to exist and thrive. By passing local laws that assert their right to self-governance and ban unwanted corporate activity, these communities are changing the rules of the system. Working alongside my supervisors this summer, this emerging movement quickly expanded my surface understanding of our current structure of law and the limits of regulatory environmental protections. No sooner did I also recognize that our society’s definitions of words like ‘democracy’ are skewed.

The summer intern team at the farewell party

I now understand these terms as a product of our culture, political and legal systems. We have allowed our government to craft a system of law that grants rights — as if they weren’t inherent — to corporations whose financial influence weakens the democratic power of citizens, who really should be the only ones making decisions about the activities that affect their communities — like hydraulic fracturing (fracking), water withdrawal or factory farming.

So how do we begin to create the cultural and legal shift that is necessary to restore democratic power to the people, enabling them to assert their rights above corporations?

It begins with a reframing of how we view the issues that threaten our communities and ecosystems — which must be about rights. Unwanted corporate activities (be they fracking, weather manipulation, mountain top removal or groundwater pollution) are merely symptoms of a larger problem: currently, communities don’t have the right in the eyes of the law to say ‘No’ to any of these corporate (and state) decisions.

Global Exchange staff and interns enjoying Greek frozen yogurt with Ben & Jerry’s ‘Get the Dough Out of Politics’ team.

If we look back upon history, slaves and women were once considered property. They weren’t rights-holders under the eyes of the law. But overtime, people’s movements like the suffragists and civil rights, helped to change this. The question we often forget to ask ourselves is weren’t they always rights-holders from the get-go despite unjust law? Today we are watching the same story unfold for our communities and the environment.

Rights of Nature: A new tool for protecting the environment

For centuries, western society has viewed nature as property: as something we own and can commoditize to drive the transnational capitalist market. As a result, we’ve normalized the greedy “nature” of our human relationship with the earth. It has become legal justification for the war we’re waging on the planet: resource extraction, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change and deforestation. And as long as we operate within our current system of law, which treats ecosystems as property and puts a price tag on it, we will fail to truly protect nature.

Fortunately, I’ve learned over the course of my internship that we — citizens, activists and communities — have the collective power to restore earth justice by organizing to change our current laws, which fail to recognize the Rights of Nature.

Rights of Nature (RON) defines legal rights for ecosystems “to exist, flourish and regenerate their natural capacities.” It’s part of a growing global movement and has become a new organizing tool that communities across the U.S. are using to pass local ordinances that protect their surrounding environment. Ecuador was the first country to incorporate Rights of Nature into its constitution in 2006 and Indigenous groups there have used the law to file suit against oil companies like Chevron, demanding full restoration for the damages that have been done to the Amazon rainforest as a result of drilling activities.

To ensure a sustainable future for both people and the planet, we must change our independent relationship with nature to one that is interdependent. While Rights of Nature might be new language in the western hemisphere, this idea isn’t new to many Indigenous groups. To them, the Earth is an entity whose very existence allows for human survival; its health and wellbeing are paramount to destructive human interests like profit and the desire to live more instead of simply living well. Unfortunately, our western frame of reference has all too easily dismissed this Indigenous perspective.

GX staff and interns at the Greenpeace warehouse for a non-violent direct action training

As Global Exchange’s Co-Founder Kevin Danaher pointed out to me, we live in a society where the money cycle is placed higher than our life values. Not surprisingly, this encourages exploitative behavior that is depleting the earth’s resources at a rate outpacing human survival. What else is climate change other than an indicator that we’ve exceeded nature’s capacity? It’s a clear signal that we as a species must change our behaviors and begin to live in harmony — not at odds — with nature.

Moving forward

An important takeaway from my internship with the Community Rights Program is that the environmental crises of our day are not just ecological issues, they’re also issues of rights.

We must view them through a rights-based lens in order to transform our organizing and provide effective tools for protecting our communities and the environment. It’s the key to driving the cultural and legal paradigm shift that allows for citizens around the world to assert the rights of communities and ecosystems in order to say ‘No’ to unwanted corporate harm and environmental destruction.

When we achieve this, we begin to create the kind of world WE want to live in and pass onto future generations — without corporate influence and wealth weakening our democratic power.

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Megan Devlin is the summer intern for the Community Rights Program at Global Exchange. She is a Communications Management and Design major at Ithaca College where she actively contributes to her campus media publications and is involved with the human rights, Colleges Against Cancer and student-worker solidarity groups. She is excited to continue fighting for environmental justice by collaborating with students, faculty and community members around the issues of fracking and food sovereignty in Ithaca.

The new “Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change” report

The following post was collaboratively written by Shannon Biggs, Kylie Nealis and Megan Devlin.

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Rights of Nature Advocates in Rio

Global Exchange’s Shannon Biggs is on the ground in Brazil this week for the Rio +20 Earth Summit to present our new report, “Rights of Nature: Planting the Seeds of Real Change” and to promote the rights of nature movement alongside allies.

The new “Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change”  report directly challenges Rio +20’s Green Economy capitalism and examines the power and possibility and logic of a rights-based framework.

‘Rights of Nature’ is a movement capable of actually changing culture and law to institute new economies based on community values and Earth rights. The report explores how recognizing Rights for Nature provides an alternative cultural and legal framework to the official corporate-led ‘Green (or Greed) Economy’ agenda being put forward by the United Nations.

Shannon Biggs (far right) joins fellow members of the Global Alliance in Rio.

If adopted, the agenda of  Rio +20 will drive nature further into the global marketplace by “defining” (in economic terms) what  the Earth “does” for humans,  called “ecosystem services.” Proponents of this scheme to put a price on soil, forests, and fresh water believe that putting a price on the natural world can “save” it.

It is time for new thinking, new direction, and new actions. That’s why climate justice activists, community organizers, indigenous peoples movements and social justice organizations have come together at the Rio+20 to dispel the belief that the earth “belongs” to humans.

Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth

Ceremonial signing of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth

On Sunday June 17 allies participated in a ceremonial signing of a so-called Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.

The Universal Declaration defines legal rights for ecosystems “to exist, flourish and regenerate their natural capacities.” This is just one demand of the Rights of Nature movement, which challenges the idea embedded within most laws that nature is seen solely as property.

While not asking to stop development entirely, recognizing legal rights for nature requires that new growth practices do not interfere with the existence and vitality of ecosystems. The idea of ‘living well’ as opposed to ‘living more’ is a key piece of the movement for nature’s rights.

Inside Peek at the New Report on Rights of Nature

The report – Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change  features visionary thinkers such as Maude Barlow, Vandana Shiva, Thomas B.K. Goldtooth, Pablo Solon, Cormac Cullinan, Mari Margil and others who address questions like:

What would it look like to truly take on the root causes of climate change and put forward a system that places humankind in living balance with the carrying capacity of the Earth’s systems?

If we are to truly reconnect within the system of creation, we must also reawaken our own humanity and love for Mother Earth and act as if what we do next matters. Because it does.

TAKE ACTION!

• Read and download the report here.
• Help Global Exchange engage youth in the movement for nature’s rights. Vote for us to win $5,000 for a Rights of Nature youth summit!
• Stay tuned for more updates from Rio +20 right here on our People to People blog.
  
• Check out pictures from Rio+20 Earth Summit on our Facebook page.
  

Should a river have the right to flow? Do trees have the right to grow? What does it mean to recognize the inherent rights of nature and how different would our world look if we did? These are just a few of many questions youth will come together to discuss this summer at our Rights of Nature Youth Summit — with your help.

Last week, the Community Rights Program entered the “Doing GOOD This Summer” challenge for a chance to win $5,000 to create social and environmental change. But here’s the catch — only the idea with the highest number of votes can win. We need your vote to make our “good” vision a reality.

Today’s youth must bare the future consequences of our current approaches to protecting and conserving the planet’s resources. Young people, who have been collectively termed The “Waking Up” Generation, have a unique potential to do just that: be strong advocates for nature’s well-being and wake everyone else up to a rights-based framework that is necessary to ensure a just future for the earth. We must strive for truly sustainable development and laws that respect nature, instead of exploiting it, for market-based financial benefits. It is up to the younger generation to move this vision forward.

Our proposal is to host a Rights of Nature Youth Summit that gives young people the tools to initiate campaigns in their communities that will protect the environment and assert their democratic power. We will introduce youth to a new rights-based framework of organizing that more than 140 communities across the U.S. have adopted in order to assert their rights to local self-governance and prohibit unwanted corporate activity where they live.

Help Global Exchange start the youth movement with your VOTE for our proposal and the chance to win $5,000 for a Rights of Nature Youth Summit: http://goodsummer.maker.good.is/projects/Rights-of-Nature

Youth will learn about the emerging global movement of Rights of Nature and how recognizing legal rights for nature provides us with tools for protecting the environment. By exploring the concepts of community and nature’s rights, law and democracy, participants can begin to recognize the inherent rights of nature, understand how to apply these new ideas to their local communities and strategize ways to assert their self-governing rights over corporations.

Ideally, the Youth Summit would be held in a community meeting space that also has an on-site ropes course. We would begin with team-building exercises at the ropes course in order to begin building the people-to-people relationships that are central to rights-based work. Through experiential learning, youth will participate in a combination of interactive exercises and sessions that incorporate learning pieces of rights-based organizing, the history of corporate power, the limits of current environmental regulatory law, and what the movement for communities and nature’s rights currently looks like.

Our goal is to create a space where youth can lead discussions on how they can use Rights of Nature as a tool for protecting their local environments and generate ideas and action plans for how they can engage in Rights of Nature work after the summit — and personalize it for their own communities.

Vote today! Voting is open now through Friday, June 29 at 12:00 PM (PDT). Spread the word to friends, colleagues, allies and other networks to keep the energy going around this exciting opportunity for Global Exchange to empower youth about how to create a more sustainable future!

If you’re on social media, consider posting the following:

• Twitter: VOTE to help @globalexchange win $5,000 for a Rights of Nature Youth Summit – http://goodsummer.maker.good.is/projects/Rights-of-Nature

• Facebook: What does it mean to give rights to nature, and how different would our world look like if we did? Help @Global Exchange win $5,000 to host a youth summit to move this vision forward. Vote NOW – http://goodsummer.maker.good.is/projects/Rights-of-Nature

• Join the public Facebook event and invite your friends!

P.S. Check back next week for the launch of our newest report, Rights of Nature: Planting the Seeds of Change

SF Earth Day Celebration

I celebrated Earth Day along with hundreds of other earth-conscious individuals at San Francisco’s Civic Center/UN Plaza. Everyone came out that day under a common idea: we live in a wondrous community of life that is planet Earth and that community deserves our awe, respect, and attention. There was an array of speakers and musical performances as well as booths and vendors featuring local non-profit organizations, green businesses, and organic food.

I participated in a panel discussion at the celebration on Sunday around the question of “co-creating our sustainable future – what are the successful tools for coalition building and collaboration both within and beyond your organization’s work?” I was joined by leaders of the non-profit environmental movement including Rolf Skar from Greenpeace, Sarah Hodgdon of the Sierra Club, and Kevin Connelly from the Earth Island Institute.

It was insightful to hear about the different work that each of us is doing to make the future of the planet and us humans that inhabit it more sustainable and less destructive. There was one common thread throughout the discussion and that was: in order to ensure a positive future for people and the planet we must figure out how to live in balance – or in ‘harmony’ – with nature. And, in doing so, we must also learn how to work in harmony with one another towards the common goal of protecting and conserving Mother Earth and the resources that our human societies depend on for survival.

I spoke about how the emerging global movement for community and nature’s rights works to build coalitions and develop collaborations with a wide variety of groups. Our present-day global economic system and indeed our structures of law have been built upon a mindset that places humans not just apart from, but actually above nature. We codify our values in our laws and so in order to change the system, we must transform the laws that govern it.

Polar bears making a point about climate change at Earth Day

We are building a movement and there is a role to play for everyone.

The idea of organizing to actually challenge our current structures of law to recognize that nature itself has inherent rights to exist, thrive, and flourish is a big one.  We must ask ourselves the following question: If Rights of Nature is to succeed as an alternative framework to our current property-based system of law, how are we going to implement it?

The movement for nature’s rights is unique in its ability to be all-inclusive because the dire need to better protect the environment and the concept of ‘rights’ is something that everyone can understand and agree upon, despite different political beliefs or affiliations. . Most people know that allowing decision-making based on money, greed or narrow self-interest to sacrifice the well being of the planet is foolish, they just can’t see how to move to a better way of doing things.

This is because our current structures of law actually facilitate the on-going exploitation of nature. Climate change, water withdrawal, and deforestation are all symptoms of the same problem; that communities do not have the right to make decisions about how to protect the environment under the current system. Instead, this right is reserved for corporations and the state.

In addition to our coalition building with communities, policy makers, indigenous allies, and climate justice allies, I also spoke about the role of small farmers in creating viable alternative systems to corporate-dominated agriculture. If large, corporate factory farms are not what we want our food system to look like then what is the alternative? The answer lies in small, community-based farmers selling, growing, and sharing their own food.  Food sovereignty is a growing issue for communities across CA (and the rest of the world) and we have been getting an increasing number of calls from places like Nevada City, and Mendocino, CA, where citizens are looking to pass a law that asserts their right to local food sovereignty without interference from government regulations and raids on small farms.

Occupy the Farm banner

Occupy the Farm

Meanwhile on Earth Day, across the Bay in Albany, California, the Occupy Movement was taking a stand for local food sovereignty by taking over a portion of property known as the ‘Gill Tract’. It is the last remaining 10 acres of Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay. The owner of the land, UC Berkeley, plans to sell the property to Whole Foods to open a new retail store. For decades the UC has thwarted attempts by community members to transform the site for urban sustainable agriculture and hands-on education. In solidarity with Via Campesina, “Occupy the Farm” is a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists that have begun planting over 15,000 seedlings at the Gill Tract. Over 300 people turned out on Sunday to help plant seeds and till the land.

The goals of “Occupy the Farm” echo the calls of communities across California and the US that there is a dire need for people to have access to uncontaminated land for farming if we are to reclaim control over how food is grown and where it comes from. That sustainable, community-based farming is the best alternative to corporate control (and poisoning) of our food systems.

Citizens tilling the land at Occupy the Farm

The time for a new system is now and the well being of the planet, our health, and that of future generations absolutely depends on it. We are up against an enormous task to remove the power of decision-making from profit-driven corporations (and the state) and put it back in the hands of people and communities, thereby enabling us to co-create our sustainable future.

TAKE ACTION!

•    Watch this video documenting the first day of Occupy the Farm.
•    Learn more about the movement for Community and Nature’s Rights.

The stakes are high in Rio. As Via Campesina points out, “Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.”

Critiquing the focus on corporate ‘Green Economy’ evident in the march to Rio documents and planning, Via states:

“Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.

The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.

In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!

Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.

The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.

Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.

The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”.

The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.

In April 2011 Global Exchange, in collaboration with the Council of Canadians and Fundacion Pachamama, released a book called The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which featured a chapter by then-Ambassador to the UN for Bolivia, Pablo Solon, titled ‘The Green Economy Versus the Rights of Mother Earth’. In it, he states,

“…From the point of view of these proponents of the green economy, in order to re-establish equilibrium with Nature, we must assign an economic value to the environmental “services” nature provides. An underlying assumption is only that which can be owned and profited from deserves stewardship.”

“…We are facing a debate in the United Nations among those that believe we need to strengthen the capitalist logic as it related to Nature, and others that suggest we should recognize the Rights of Nature. These are two very different conceptions. One advocates the path of the market, and the other the past of recognizing and respecting the larger system of the planet Earth on which we all live. The future of humans and Nature depends on the path humanity chooses.”

Global Exchange will be on the ground in Rio – promoting the Rights of Nature. Read more about the Community Rights Campaign here and join Via Campesina in the Call to Action. They:

… declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:

•    Defend sustainable peasant agriculture;
•    Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food;
•    Reclaim and exchange native seeds;
•    Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land;
•    Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism;
•    Dream of a different world and create it!!

Global Exchange stands with Via Campesina to ‘GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!! GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!’

• Live in the Bay Area and want to learn more about the call for the Rights of Mother Earth at Rio+20? Attend the upcoming Rights of Nature seminar hosted by the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus in Marin County April 13th-14th.

Photo by Brett Weston, Corbis

Last week our friends at the Earth Island Journal published a cover article on the Rights of Nature in their spring issue. The spread, titled Natural Law: From Rural Pennsylvania to South America, a Global Alliance is Promoting the Idea that Ecosystems Have Intrinsic Rights; takes a deep look at the evolution of the movement to grant legal rights to nature from its origins in the small community of Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania; to the ground-breaking developments in Ecuador in 2008 when that nation became the first to recognize nature’s rights in its national Constitution; up to the present moment as environmental and climate justice activists gear up to advocate for nature’s rights at the Rio+20 United Nations Earth Summit in Brazil this June.

This critical disclosure comes at an important time both for the movement and for Mother Earth. Rising temperatures and sea levels resulting from climate change, deforestation, mountaintop removal, and harmful methods of oil and natural gas drilling which are forever altering natural landscapes are just a few of the ill affects on the environment from human activities that come to mind.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible for us to continue to evolve in a way that is sustainable for people and the planet – but in order for this to happen we must first change the way we view our human relationship with nature, away from one that is property-based and towards a rights-based model of balance. This is the driving idea behind the Rights of Nature.

As author Jason Mark says in the article,
“This is happening. It is occurring through the work itself, as the changes in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Pennsylvania force some people to re-imagine how they think about, and feel about, the world we live in. Over time, the once- marginal starts to sound mainstream, even ordinary.”

Global Exchange’s Community Rights program is working with allies here in the US and around the world to put forward the call for nature’s rights and to say loudly and clearly that the time for a new approach to environmental protection is now – not later.

•    Stay updated on the upcoming events at Rio+20 as well as our work organizing locally in California communities by joining our e-mail list-serve.

•    Live in the Bay Area? Attend the upcoming Rights of Nature seminar hosted by the Women’s Earth & Climate Caucus April 13th-14th in Marin County.

•    Want to learn more about Rights of Nature and the emerging global movement? Get a copy of the book, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Contact Kylie Nealis (kylie@globalexchange.org) or by phone at 415.575.5551

•    Find out more about Rights of Nature work internationally by visiting the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature website.

•    Read an article by Shannon Biggs in Tikkun Magazine ‘A Community Perspective on the Rights of Nature’

Kylie Nealis

The following is an eyewitness account of #J28 Occupy Oakland Move-In Day written by Kylie Nealis in collaboration with Andrew Montes. Kylie is the assistant to the Community Rights program at Global Exchange and Andrew is a writer and resident of Oakland, CA. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Global Exchange.

The images of street battles and arrests at the Occupy Move In Day in Oakland this past Saturday have garnered national attention. About 400 protestors were arrested during the action. Unfortunately, much of the reporting by mainstream corporate media has been incomplete and/or inaccurate, misrepresenting the intentions behind the march and distorting the sequence of events that led to the mass arrests.

What started as an attempt to reclaim an abandoned space (the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center) and repurpose it for human needs by converting it into a social center was met with intense police aggression resulting in injuries to peaceful protestors, plus the roughly 400 hundred arrests by the end of the day. I was not one of those arrested, but I participated in the action for several hours. Here’s what I experienced:

I arrived downtown around 1:30pm, shortly after the march left Oscar Grant Plaza. Following police helicopters, walking the few blocks towards Laney College, I met lines of riot police forming blockades at strategic intersections throughout downtown before seeing a single protester. The tone for the day was clearly set.

Photo credit: Andrew Montes

Nervous, I finally caught up with the march inside the Laney College campus, and joined approximately 1,000 people as we zigzagged our way towards the convention center, but as I neared the block where the vacant center is located, I saw smoke ahead. The police had decided they’d seen enough. Over a loudspeaker a disembodied voice declared an unlawful assembly and issued an order to disperse, an order that was punctuated with more flash-bangs and smoke bombs. These would be the first, but not the last shots fired by the police at citizens during the day.

Nearing the entrance to the Oakland Museum of California, I saw the police use rubber bullets and tear gas, many protesters protected themselves using improvised shields. Some responded to the assault by throwing back whatever they could, whatever was at hand, rocks, bottles, the same tear gas canisters that had just been thrown at them. I heard one person yell, “Oakland Police Department, we declare your assembly unlawful, and hereby order you to disperse!”

This is where I saw the first attempt by the police at kettling (a form of crowd control that involves cutting off escape routes, leaving demonstrators trapped), but a small alley was left unguarded and people fled into surrounding blocks. People were confused by the sudden violence, unsure of where to go; nobody around me seemed to know whether the original plan was still being followed or if the police had derailed everything. The general consensus was to move back to Oscar Grant Plaza and City Hall to regroup.

Photo credit: Andrew Montes

At this point I left, partially in fear of further police violence. My feeling was right, as the evening would see more brutality and eventually mass incarcerations. After the group took to the streets once more towards a backup occupation target, the police finally managed to fully kettle protesters at 19^th and Telegraph, a location known as much for a previous occupation attempt in November as for its statue commemorating champions of social justice and civil liberties throughout history. More chemical agents were used without warning, but the cornered protesters escaped by tearing down the very same fences they had torn down in November.

Undaunted, they continued to march until being completely fenced in near the Broadway YMCA. Seeing the dire situation of the protesters, an employee of the YMCA unlocked the door and several dozen people escaped through the back. The rest were not so lucky, and spent the following hours sitting on cold pavement in zip-tie handcuffs, waiting to be processed and bussed to Santa Rita jail. Several reporters were arrested, in flagrant violation of the Police’s own stated Crowd Control and Crowd Management Policy.  All of this I watched live, on the internet stream of a citizen journalist.

From my first encounters, it was clear to me from their actions and attitude that the Oakland Police Department was intent on escalating the situation so as to arrest as many people as possible. Tired of the vocal criticism about their handling of past Occupy Oakland actions, they aimed to lock up as many organizers as they could in one fell swoop. In defense of property, they turned their weapons against people. Complicit in this entirely legal crime is the corporate media, which willfully slants coverage to minimize police violence, whitewashing the physical oppression endemic to the system of the 1%.

Protester's view from the kettle at the YMCA. Photo credit: Allison Deger/Mondoweiss

The previously vacant and newly converted social center would have housed a kitchen for the hungry, a first aid station, sleeping quarters and an assembly area, libraries, and free classes. Instead it remains vacant and empty, a fitting testament to the Oakland Police Department’s hollow victory. Instead there was a fuller jailhouse and court arraignments. A couple of things are clear to me from Saturday’s events, one being that the force used by the police to thwart the demonstration was unjust and entirely heavy handed. And the other is that now is the time, perhaps more than ever before in the Occupy Movement, when it is critical for people to remain unified and committed to taking peaceful action in standing up for the needs and rights of the 99%.

KEEP UPDATED! Keep up-to-date about the Occupy movement by following our blog. You can subscribe to this People to People blog here.

Line of people holding US budget banner in front of Bechtel

Since early this morning; a multitude of people, groups, movements, and communities have self-organized and taken action to disrupt business-as-usual at various corporations and banks throughout the financial district. Global Exchange chose Bechtel as a target for today, partnering with our friends from of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Fellowship of Reconciliation, New Priorities Campaign and others, forming the Bechtel Action Group, to protest the waste and corruption of the Bechtel corporation and the ways that it’s power has influenced the nation’s budget priorities.

The action began at 6am this morning when several dozen people successfully blocked the entrance to Bechtel’s San Francisco headquarters. Global Exchange’s Organizing Director Kirsten Moller along with other staff were present for the early morning action which lasted until about 9:30am when people peacefully exited the building. The Carnival of Resistance bus led by Occupy Oakland stopped by Bechtel and there was singing and chanting throughout the morning while a group of people stood in front of Bechtel handing out information to people passing by and holding a 30 foot banner outlining the current US budget and a breakdown of where American tax dollars are being allocated:  59% to military and military contractors, with only 4% going to Education and 6% to Health and Human Services.

Umbrellas painted with 'People before profit' at Bechtel

Why Bechtel?

• The Bechtel Corporation is one of the largest engineering and construction firms in the world, and the fifth largest privately held firm in the United States.

• It is one of the world’s leading nuclear engineering and construction firms, providing construction support services for nuclear power plants around the world.

• Bechtel is one of of the major corporations that has profited from the Iraq War through reconstruction contracts. On April 17 the US Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded a contract worth $680 million to Bechtel Corp.

•  It builds and manages huge petrochemical, transportation, energy and mining projects worldwide and is one of the largest U.S. military contractors.

• It is involved in the construction of oil refineries, pipelines and dam construction and built the infrastructure at Hanford, Washington for the secret Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.

• Bechtel and its alumni have become an integral part of the U.S. power structure serving as a chair of the Atomic Energy Commission and director of the Central Intelligence Agency; serving  as  Reagan’s Defense Secretary (Caspar Weinberger) and Secretary of State (George Schultz) .

• Bechtel plays a significant role in the privatization of infrastructure. In Cochabamba, Bolivia they tried to privatize the water system and were thwarted by local and international opposition. Still Bechtel proudly bills itself as “a one-of-a-kind industry leader in infrastructure privatization.

Food Bank of America

Some of the other actions that have unfolded so far have included groups blocking the entrances to major banks including Wells Fargo and Bank of America where organizers set up a ‘Food Bank of America’ distributing fresh, hot food cooked by volunteers, Occupy the Courthouse led by Move to Amend, and street theater actions led by Iraq Veterans Against The War (IVAW) throughout downtown.

At 3pm the Bechtel Action Group will reconvene at Bechtel’s headquarters (50 Beale Street) for a teach-in and at 5pm Occupy Wall Street West will converge on Justin Herman/Bradley Manning Plaza for a massive march down Market Street.

For more information on Bechtel, visit http://www.globalexchange.org/BechtelAction to download some resources.