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NEW DEADLINE: 28^h of February

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OPEN LETTER

TO THE SECRETARIAT OF THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY

AND THE GOVERNMENTS OF JAPAN, INDIA, NORWAY, SWEDEN AND ECUADOR

On 6 to 9 March 2012 the Global Dialogue Seminar on Scaling Up Finance for Biodiversity, co-hosted by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Governments of Ecuador, India, Japan, Norway and Sweden, will be held in Quito, Ecuador with the aim of exploring financial mechanisms and resources for biodiversity. This is part of an agreement among the signatory countries to the Convention on Biological Diversity to mobilize financing to facilitate implementation of a strategic plan and the achievement of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, in which Strategic Goal D aims to enhance the benefits from biodiversity as a commodity and from environmental services. The meeting in Quito is one more step in this direction.

In the midst of the current environmental, financial and economic crisis, biodiversity has gained enormous importance because of the role it can play for the “green economy”, which will be consolidated through the agreements reached at the upcoming Rio+20 summit. This economic proposal is nothing more than a new face for capitalism, through which biodiversity, water, soils, biogeochemical cycles, photosynthesis, and all the other functions and structures of nature can be converted into commodities.

Forming part of this process are the false solutions to climate change such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and so-called TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). A tangled web of proposals that essentially seek control over land, forests, water and biodiversity as means to compensate for the loss of biodiversity or as raw materials for new technologies.

In practice, they promote the implementation of neoliberal measures to address the climate problem, biodiversity management and protection of forests. They extol the paradigm that the solution lies in the market, in property rights, in the proper assignment of prices and the commodification of all of nature, traditional knowledge and cultures associated with it, to the detriment of justice, sovereignty and respect for human rights and the rights of nature.

At the meeting in Quito, as well as during the run-up to Rio+20 and at the CBD COP-11 in India, steps will be taken to define the financial instruments, policies and public-private partnerships needed to achieve the biggest land grab and trampling of people’s rights ever seen in the history of humanity. Due to the scale and sphere of action, what is proposed will have devastating effects on territories and rights.

Just as the Green Climate Fund is aimed at promoting market mechanisms to ineffectively confront the climate crisis, financing for biodiversity is being diverted towards means of privatization and control of biodiversity.

With the same discourses of poverty relief, conservation and sustainability that have benefited the industrial, military and financial sectors, they are once again trying to convince us that the “green economy”, promoted by the same actors, is the solution.

In view of this situation, we the undersigned organizations, networks and social movements urge the governments hosting the meeting in Quito to stop the commodification of nature; likewise, we call on the participants in the meeting to prevent the further advance of the green economy that is being hatched and to act instead in line with models of society that differ from the capitalist system and are built on the principles of community and on relationships with nature based on the protection of life.

—

To sign on to the letter please write to:

iramos@accionecologica.org

with a copy to:

ivonney@accionecologica.org

or through our website: www.accionecologica.org

CBD letter quito final

1. Today we are facing great risks — even a civilization crisis – manifest in many dimensions and exacerbated by unprecedented inequalities. Systems and institutions that sustain life and societies – such as food and energy production, climate, water and biodiversity, even economic and democratic institutions – are under attack or in a state of collapse.

1. In the 1980s, faced with a crisis of profitability, capitalism launched a massive offensive against workers and peoples, seeking to increase profits by expanding markets and reducing costs through trade and financial liberalization, flexibilisation of labour and privatization of the state sector. This massive ‘structural adjustment’ became known as the Washington Consensus.

1. Today, faced with an even more complex and deeper crisis, capitalism is launching a fresh attack that combines the old austerity measures of the Washington Consensus — as we are witnessing in Europe – with an offensive to create new sources of profit and growth through the “Green Economy” agenda. Although capitalism has always been based on the exploitation of labour and nature, this latest phase of capitalist expansion seeks to exploit and profit by putting a price value on the essential life-giving capacities of nature.

1. The Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit of 1992 institutionalized important bases for international cooperation on sustainable development, such as polluter pays, common but differentiated responsibilities and the precautionary principle. But Rio also institutionalized the concept of “sustainable development” based on unlimited “growth”. In 1992, the Rio Conventions acknowledged for the first time the rights of Indigenous communities and their central contributions to the preservation of biodiversity.  But, in the same documents, the industrialized countries and corporations were guaranteed intellectual property rights to the seeds and genetic resources they stole throughout centuries of colonial domination.

1. Twenty years later, in 2012, the plunder continues. The “Green Economy” agenda is an attempt to expand the reach of finance capital and integrate into the market all that remains of nature. It aims to do this by putting a monetary “value” or a “price” on biomass, biodiversity and the functions of the ecosystems – such as storing carbon, pollinating crops, or filtering water — in order to integrate these “services” as tradable units in the financial market.

II. What and Who is Behind the Zero Draft?

1. The “zero draft” outcome document for the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development is called “The Future We Want.” [1] At the heart of this short text is the section “The green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”

1. The zero draft – as with all the vicious attacks of capitalism – is full of generalities to hide the real intentions. The ideological force behind the zero draft is the 2011 UNEP report Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication that shows clearly the ultimate goal of achieving “green capitalism”. [2]

1. At a global scale, the “Green Economy” seeks to disassociate economic growth from environmental deterioration through a three-dimensional capitalism that includes physical capital, human capital, and natural capital (rivers, wetlands, forests, coral reefs, biological diversity and other elements). For the “Green Economy,” the food crisis, the climate crisis and the energy crisis share a common characteristic: the failed allocation of capital. As a result, they try to treat nature as capital – “natural capital.” The “Green Economy” considers it essential to put a price on the free services that plants, animals and ecosystems offer to humanity in the name of “conserving” biodiversity, water purification, pollination of plants, the protection of coral reefs and regulation of the climate. For the “Green Economy,” it is necessary to identify the specific functions of ecosystems and biodiversity and assign them a monetary value, evaluate their current status, set a limit after which they will cease to provide services, and concretize in economic terms the cost of their conservation in order to develop a market for each particular environmental service. For the “Green Economy,” the instruments of the market are powerful tools for managing the “economic invisibility of nature.”

1. The main targets of the “Green Economy” are the developing countries, where there is the richest biodiversity. The zero draft even acknowledges that a new round of “structural adjustments” will be necessary: “developing countries are facing great challenges in eradicating poverty and sustaining growth, and a transition to a green economy will require structural adjustments which may involve additional costs to their economies…”.

1. But the “Green Economy” is not a fiction of the future: it is already here. As the zero draft states, “We support policy frameworks and market instruments that effectively slow, halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation”. This is referring to REDD (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation), an initiative of the UNFCCC which consists of isolating and measuring the capacity of forests to capture and store carbon dioxide in order to issue certificates for greenhouse gas emission reductions that can be commercialized and acquired by companies in developed countries that cannot meet their emission reduction commitments. We have already seen that the market for carbon credits based on forests will lead to: a) noncompliance with effective emission reduction commitments by developed countries; b) the bulk of resources being appropriated by intermediaries and financial entities and rarely benefitting countries, Indigenous peoples and forests themselves; c) the generation of speculative bubbles based on the sale and purchase of said certificates; and d) the establishment of new property rights over the capacity of forests to capture carbon dioxide, which will clash with the sovereign rights of States and the Indigenous peoples that live in forests.

1. The postulates promoted under the “Green Economy” are wrong. The current environmental and climate crisis is not a simple market failure. The solution is not to put a price on nature. Nature is not a form of capital. It is wrong to say that we only value that which has a price, an owner, and brings profits. The market mechanisms that permit exchange among human beings and nations have proven incapable of contributing to an equitable distribution of wealth. The main challenge for the eradication of poverty is not to grow forever, but to achieve an equitable distribution of the wealth that is possible under the limits of the Earth system. In a world in which 1% of the population controls 50% of the wealth of the planet, it will not be possible to eradicate poverty or restore harmony with nature.

1. The “Green Economy” agenda is a cynical and opportunistic manipulation of the ecological and social crises. Rather than addressing the real structural causes of inequality and injustices, capital is using “green” language to launch an aggressive new round of expansion. Corporations and the financial sector need governments to institutionalize the new rules of the “Green Economy” to guarantee them against risks and to create the institutional framework for the financialization of nature. Many governments are willing partners in this project as they believe it will stimulate a new phase of growth and accumulation.

1. Indeed, this “Green Economy” is the new Washington Consensus which is to be launched at Rio+20 as the next stage of capitalism to recover lost growth and profits.  This is definitely not the future that WE want.

[1] http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?page=view&type=12&nr=324&menu=23

[2] UNEP, 2011, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication, www.unep.org/greeneconomy

The fundamental flaw at the heart of UNEP’s report “Towards a Green Economy” is its failure to analyse the extraordinarily unequal power relations that exist in today’s world, and the interests at play in the operation of this global economic system.

A text from Edgardo Lander,  TNI November 2011

report green-economy edgardo lander

Edgardo Lander, The Green Economy: the Wolf in Sheep’s clothing, nov 2011

On green capitalism, by Esther Vivas

IBON Policy Brief_Green Economy- Pain or Gain for the Earth’s Poor_2011

IBON document – EDM_Nov-Dec_2011

Green Economy _ Which is the value of nature, by Frei Rodrigo de Castro Amédée Péret