The Jubilee South network, since its founding in 1999, took on the task of contributing to a deepening of the relation between the illegitimate financial debt claimed of our countries, and the generation of historic, social, and ecological debts. From the beginning of the colonial era, the global North - through its governments, corporations, and financial institutions - has exploited and plundered the wealth, nature, knowledge, work, and life of South peoples.

 

In this direction that we have been moving, together with allied networks and movements, the recognition of Ecological Debt assumed greater priority given its worsening.  The undertaking of megaprojects and megaevents by governments and transnational and translatina corporations, financed through processes of public indebtedness promoted by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and private banks, has given rise to countless impacts, many of them irreversible, on ecosystems, the climate, the biodiversity of the planet, and the rights of communities, persons, and Nature.

 

The concept of Ecological Debt was first strengthened with the observation of the North’s historical responsibility for environmental degradation in the United Nations’ Conference on the Environment and Development - Rio ‘92 -.  Later, by incorporation of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This principle has remained a dead letter, however, given that those guilty of the problem, those responsible for generating the Climate Debt, continue to evade their historic and present responsibilities.

 

Climate discussions at the 15th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC (COP 15) in Copenhagen (2009), and the agreement sealed later at COP16 in Cancun (2010), together with other processes of international negotiation, have unmasked the corporate capture of these multilateral spaces.  They confirmed the power of the market and the geopolitical interests of the big powers over the decisions of the vast majority of countries of the periphery, leaving totally aside the democratic right of peoples to express themselves and be taken into account  in decision-making that affects them directly. They ignored, for instance, the Cochabamba Peoples’ Agreements which resulted from the Global Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Nature (2010), in which more than 35,000 representatives of social movements and organizations from 140 countries participated.

 

South country governments, in the climate negotiations, have not sustained a solid political position vis à vis the more industrialized countries, in order to highlight their responsibility in the worsening of this crisis and in giving rise to this debt to Nature and peoples, particularly in the global South.  It was the Bolivian government, together with a few others, that dared to demand that the North settle the enormous Ecological Debt that it has with the South, rather than continue to demand payment of a notably illegitimate financial debt.  But it was marginalized and virtually excluded from the framework negotiations.

 

Given present perspectives, there is no reason to think that the COP 17 in Durban (Decembr 2011) will in any way modify the trend toward increasingly mercantilized negotiations that neglect the real causes of global warming and are rolling-back any form of emissions reduction commitments that would be sufficient and binding.  On the contrary, human rights and the rights of nature find themselves in a state of tremendous defenselessness and vulnerability in the face of the agreements that are being sought and whose implementation via a proliferation of “false solutions” will only worsen, not resolve, the problem.

 

 

Since the ‘70s, the capitalist system has been searching for new ways to overcome its crises of overproduction, overvaluation of capital, economic growth, and diminishing profit rates.  Some of these ¨solutions¨ have been structural adjustment plans, privatizations, indiscriminate market openings, perpetual profiteering from usurious processes of indebtedness, and the constant plundering of human labour and the material bases, principally in South countries, needed in order to guarantee growth and capitalist accumulation.  This is a typical neoliberal process known as “take, don´t make”, but even so it is not sufficient.  Today, not only do they want to expand these same policies but they want also to profit off the economic, food, and ecological crisis they have provoked, through the creation of new commodities and the application of “false solutions” to climate change.

 

This implies a process of extreme commodification and mercantilization of nature, including its cycles and functions which are the basis of life itself. Forests, water, even the air we breathe are transformed into commodities to be sold according to the rules of the market. This will have a huge impact on biodiversity, the land, and life, above all of indigenous peoples, peasant and traditional communities.  In their territories, these populations already face daily environmental conflicts with businesses and governments in order to defend and secure a different relationship with nature:  one of complementarity, interdependence, and solidarity, rather than exploitation, depredation, and plunder.

 

These processes of mercantilization are accompanied by a further financialization of nature, whereby any and everything can be bought or sold in any international market or exchange.  In this new phase of capitalism, for example, with its carbon markets, Programs for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs), Environmental Services and the like, aboriginal peoples, peasants, afrodescendants and other populations become the suppliers of a new kind of salaried labour, their forests are transformed into commodites, and nature and its processes become mere “environmental services”.

 

There is no end to the proliferation of  “false solutions” to climate change, generating huge impacts on the most vulnerable communities.  We are seeing entire communities being thrown off their lands.  We are talking about the very concrete life of millions of persons, men and women, in rural as well as urban areas, who are suffering daily from the voracity of capital that affects their lives, customs, knowledge, cultures, and beliefs.  All of this so that the corporations can accumulate more power and multimillionaire profits at the expense of the lives of the weakest and of nature.

 

Over recent decades, the large capitalist corporations, their public and private institutions, as well as their most renowned idealogues and thinkers, promoted ideas that sought to position market solutions as the big solution to the “environmental question”.  At the time of the Stockholm Conference of 1972, “protection” of the “environment” was presented as an obstacle to “development”.  In Rio ’92, visionaries were already suggesting that the corporate world should raise the banner of  “sustainable development” because there was a chance of turning it into good business.  By Rio+10 (Durban, 2002), the concept of  “corporate social responsibility” had become the system´s slogan, selling the private sector as the answer to the environmental crisis and setting the stage for the present proliferation of “false solutions”.

 

 

Additionally, there is an monumental process of  public over-indebtedness of our governments due to the fact that the countries of the North are not fulfilling their obligations with regard to climate change.  The costs of stopping climate change are transferred to South peoples, as are the costs of the economic crisis in the North:  these are crises that the peoples of the South have suffered historically and for which they have already paid several times over with their labour, their wealth, and their lives.

 

The World Bank, despite ever sharper criticism, has emerged unscathed from recent climate negotiations. Indeed, it has strengthened its position in the current context.  It now projects itself as the organism that has the “solution” for the very crisis of which it is one of those primarily responsible.  That is why any participation of this organism is unacceptable, whether in the design or administration of funding, in the negotiations around climate, or the search for solutions to environmental problems.

 

The IFIs should be out of climate altogether.  They promote and finance “solutions” that they indicate are going to resolve the climate problem, brazenly lying as they have done historically with the complicity of governments.  The purported “solutions” now being implemented, such as CDM, REDD+, and others, are going to make the situation even worse and give rise to ever larger Ecological and Climate Debts as well as additional illegitimate financial debt.

 

Faced with this new process of “evergreen indebtedness”, in the present context of worsening global financial and economic crisis, peoples and governments throughout the region must take coordinated, sovereign measures that move us in the direction of transforming the system into one that is truly at the service of the rights of peoples and of nature.

 

 

The peoples of our America, their organizations and social movements, today face the challenges of generating strong popular mobilization and coordinating strategies in order to be able to stand up to the coming voracity of capitalism.

 

As we also follow-up on the UNFCCC negotiations and their  implications nationally, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) - Rio+20 -, that will also have a huge impact on nature, the climate, our economies, and rights, finds us at this crossroads.

 

We face the urgent need to generate a huge popular mobilization, such as we were able to do at another juncture through the Continenal Campaign against the FTAA, in order to confront the advance of big capital, now baptized and marketed under the attractive guise of the “green economy”, or “green new deal”.  They are coming for all that remains for them to dominate: forests, territories, water, the air, biodiversity, seeds, food.

 

This is why we consider that what Rio+20 represents must be addressed far beyond the UN Conference itself.  It will be a moment for governments and the representatives of big international capital to reach agreements, the consequences of which will be felt by the planet and all who inhabit it for years to come. 

 

 

That is why social movements and civil society must assume a clear and forceful protagonism.  Without an articulation of ideas, political praxis, and transformative strategies, we will not rise to the challenges we must now confront.  We are thus committed to ensuring that the Peoples’ Summit for Social and Environmental Justice, against the Mercantilization of Life and Nature and in Defense of the Commons – to be held in Rio de Janeiro at the same time as the UN Conference -, not be just another fair of ideas and activities. It must be developed as an autonomous space, both in relation to the official Conference and the governments gathered there as well as from market forces, at the service of the popular struggles and resistance that are being waged throughout our region and the world over.

 

The most important priority of Rio+20 is its potential to contribute to the strengthening of the processes of mobilization, formation, and articulation among popular, anticapitalist, and antiimperialist forces, both regionally and throughout the South and globally.  Our objective is to strengthen processes of popular education, making visible the struggles and resistance that are being waged and articulating with other networks and social movements in the building of common perspectives and the capacity to act collectively. 

 

The people and communities most affected by the capitalist system, climate change, the development model, and debt - the heart of the system -, should be the principal protagonists of this process and the Rio+20 Summit.  It is they, together with nature itself, who on a daily basis and with great dignity, are confronting the barbarity of capital and are building, through their efforts and struggles,  that Other possible world.

 

Jubilee South Brazil and Jubilee South/Americas have been working hard as part of the Brazilian Civil Society Rio+20 Facilitating Committee (CFSC) - together with other organizations, networks, and movements - in order to build a Peoples´ Summit in which those who are most affected by the present situation are the protagonists.  Together we can weave the threads of a new civilization that makes a definitive break with capitalism.

 

For these reasons and in the face of this situation, we call for the strengthening of popular unity:

 

·           to  bring together counterhegemonic forces in order to potencialize our energies, resources, ideas, and perspectives;

·           to project new models of society, post-capitalist, non-extractive, free of all forms of debt, domination, and oppression;

·           to expose the reality that there is no way for capitalism to be either human or green; green will only be the color of the dollars it accumulates at the expense of human life and that of nature;

·           to coordinate efforts to fight for alternatives that move us beyond the present situation, including:

 

v total and unconditional cancellation of illegitimate debts claimed from the peoples and countries of the South and the realization of comprehensive and participatory debt audits;

 

v reparations for historic, social, financial, ecological, and climate debts and the promotion of structural changes in the relations among and within countries such that they become equitable and just;

 

v World Bank out of climate! For climate reparations that mobilize new, additional, and non-debt creating public funds; elimination of the carbon market and of any role for the World Bank and regional or national development banks in climate finance;

 

v demand emissions reductions in Northern countries and acknowledgement of their responsibility for global warming;

 

v rejection of market-based "false solutions", including among others the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), REDD+, nuclear energy, agro-fuels, illegitimate debt;

 

v for the de-financialization of our economies and the closing of International Financial Institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, WTO, and regional banks like the Inter-American Development Bank; demanding an end to impunity and reparations for the crimes committed;

 

v review and reversal of the trade agreements, investment protection treaties, and all forms of application of intellectual property rights and current technological packages - agrochemicals and GMOs - as well as other "false solutions" such as geo-engineering, nanotechnology, terminator technology and the like;

 

v promote the refounding of regulatory institutions and mechanisms so as to end the supremacy of financial interests over human rights and the rights of nature;

 

v ensure access to basic human rights such as health, education, housing, retirement, decent work, water and sanitation, transportation, financial services, telecommunications, energy resources, and natural goods, protecting them from privatization;

 

v leave fossil fuels in the ground and promote a change in the model of production and consumption on the basis of harmony, complementarity, solidarity, and equilibrium among and with all;

 

v ecological restructuring of cities, to combat real estate speculation, environmental injustices, deregulated interurban competition, gentrification, and the displacement of poorer communities within cities;

 

v promote alternative energy sources appropriate to the natural environment, sustainable, clean, renewable, decentralized, diverse, affordable, and respectful of the environment;

 

v recognize and protect the rights of people forced to immigrate due to the causes and impacts of climate change;

 

v guarantee, protect, and defend the territories of indigenous peoples and peasants who maintain ecosystems that protect the climate. Encourage peasant agriculture and agro-ecological production modes. Respect the lifestyles of people and communities in the South and their life choices;

 

v do not allow new projects that aggravate the environmental and climate crisis. It's time to stop the exploitation and oppression of nature and the reproduction of development models imported from the North, to learn from ecologically sustainable communities and peoples, to de-mercantilize life and ensure full reparations for the Ecological Debt;

 

v defend food sovereignty, understood as the right of peoples to control their own seeds, land, water, and food production, and the reversal of the agricultural model based on agro-business and its social, economic, and cultural model of capitalist production with its logic of food for the market. We affirm that monoculture tree plantations are not forests.

 

 

Our world is not for sale, and neither is our dignity, our love for the land, knowledge, and cultures. 

 

 

 

November 15, 2011