Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade

“After the success achieved with convincing Italians to vote against water privatization, Italian civil society is now calling to action for a broader set of goals on Environmental and Climate justice”, according to the CDCA. This EJOLT partner is also a co-founder of RIGAS, the Italian Network for Environmental and Social Justice. Their press release:

We invite all to join the call “Save ourselves with the Pacha Mama”, following up what emerged from RIGAS national meeting held in July 2011 during the days of the anniversary of the Genoa G8 mobilisation of 2001. “As we saved our Sister Water, so we must save Mother Earth”. This should be the slogan of the days spent at the end of July in Genoa and of that colorful demonstration participated by more than 50.000 people that marched through the streets of the city. We claimed from Genoa that, notwithstanding the criminalisation and violence inflicted during the 2001 G8, the active citizenship is today stronger and more thriving than in those days. The extraordinary victory of the referendum on water management and for the end of nuclear power is another confirmation of that. Those Genoese days helped us to meet up again and to reunite to face a great challenge: save Mother Earth.

The global scientific community is unanimous in believing that, without radical turns, the temperature of our planet will rise to 3-4 degrees, which would be disastrous. And the deadline to avoid this is very tight: about 10 years? The experts affirm that to save us we need to cut 80% of greenhouse gas emissions before 2050. However, the global leaders do not want to hear about it and defeat any attempt to find a solution, from the Kyoto Protocol (1997) to the 16 Conferences of the Parts (COP) held between 1995 and 2010. The failure of COP 15 in Copenhagen 2009 was resounding, despite the participation of more than 15.000 delegates! And last year, the COP in Cancun, Mexico was another flop. Now, we are preparing for COP 17 that will take place in Durban, South Africa. However, the prospects are not so good because governments are prisoners of the economic-financial-agro-industrial powers that gain a huge profit from this system.

Even worse is that they also intend to do business with the ecological crisis, by resorting to the so-called “green economy”, including geo-engineering and nanotechnologies.

The Network for Environmental and Social Justice (RIGAS), which met here in Genoa, invites everyone to get organized at local, regional and national level, as we already did for water. We have almost everyone against us: media, political parties, economic and financial powers. We must, from the bottom-up, get back to talk to the people and help them to understand that the future of humanity itself and of our Common House -the Earth- are challenged. We need to help people realize that our model of development and our lifestyle are two main reasons for global warming and ecological crisis (20% of the people of the world consumes, at an incredible speed, 80% of global resources). If everybody in the world would follow the precepts and the proposals of the global governance, we would need four planets to satisfy the need in resources required by this development model and to dispose of waste produced.

We will protect human lives only if we change the model and make it sustainable.  The safety and the future of many will not depend for sure on the false solutions offered by the World Bank, the multinationals or the governments that pollute the most. False solutions, such as green economy, “carbon market”, “Redd+”, introduce the absurd principle of the ‘right to pollute’ and allow us to speculate with the ecological crisis, increasing the problem instead of solving it. This lethal mix is likely to give the final blow to the ecosystems and to the other living beings on our planet Earth.

Therefore, as a network, we call all to get together, stay connected and inform themselves and the others at different levels. At personal level: changing lifestyle to become more conscious and sober about consuming, working and saving. At local level: pushing administrations for a total recycling of waste and to say “no” to the incinerators, together with an energetic plan based on saving and efficiency. National level: working to create a National Energetic Strategy that could match with the European Plan aiming to reduce more than 30% of greenhouse gas emissions before 2020. European level: supporting the Roadmap presented by the European Commission which planned a reduction in stages of 80% of greenhouse gas emissions before 2050. Global level: creating a Fund to support policies of adaptability and mitigation of climate change for the populations of the south of the world (the most effected) by using 6% of the GDP of the countries that have polluted the most; recognizing the ecological debt contracted by the governments of the north of the world against the south of the world; implementing the commitments undertaken by the developed countries during the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change about technology development and technology transfer; creating a mechanism of participatory monitoring and control of choices based on a multilateral and multidisciplinary approach; signature by developed countries of international agreements that contemplate the definition of climate migrants and recognize their rights. All of this is feasible: the main polluters of the Earth are spending a higher amount of money for their national defense or to save banks and speculators from bankrupt than to face climate change.

Only a large popular movement going further the ideological, political, social and religious divides can overcome that worldwide challenge.

This is an epic moment: it is a matter of life or death for Planet Earth, which cannot handle anymore the madness of this degenerate and destructive system. Time is running out. In December, COP17 will take place in Durban, South Africa. And in June 2012, the UN convened all the nations of the world in Rio, at twenty years from the famous Conference on sustainability held in the Brazilian city in 1992.

We made it for water, we must make it to save our Mother Earth the Pacha Mama.