Rio earth summit 'epic failure' warning

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here" should have been written over the entrance to the  Rio+20 summit. For the draft text reneges on or waters down every principle of the original agreement and adds in a range of market initiatives that will weaken ecosystems and block sustainable development.

A casual and shocking abandonment of the goals set out two decades ago has made the summit worthless. There will no new money to support poorer countries to advance in a sustainable way. The principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) – whereby better off countries have to make a greater reduction in their impact on the planet — is being sidelined and if the US has its way will disappear altogether.

Technology transfer, another key principle 20 years ago, is under attack. The US, EU, Canada and Australia want the whole phrase eliminated from the draft in favour of a focus on the kinds of research and innovation that might be saleable. But, according to the same unholy alliance, research into “planetary boundaries” should definitely not be on the agenda. A coalition of the Holy See and the US wants to delete a sentence giving women a right to reproductive health services i.e. contraception.

The new treaty's true focus is the weasel concept of "Green Economy" — market initiatives that may or may not make any actual contribution to sustainable development, but will be profitable.

The phrase “ecosystem services” has been introduced, reinforcing the idea that nature is nothing more than a source of raw materials for exploitation — but in a kind of green way, you understand. Putting monetary value on forests or clean water systems simply continues the failed idea that established the market in carbon credits.

The section on the health of the oceans has been undermined by the US and Venezuela, because of their involvement in offshore oil. Two actual commitments on deforestation have been deleted, replaced with empty platitudes.

“Rio+20 has turned into an epic failure,” says Greenpeace head Kami Naidoo. “We were promised the ‘future we want’ but are now being presented with a ‘common vision’ of a polluter’s charter that will cook the planet, empty the oceans and wreck the rain forests.”  Jim Leape, head of World Wildlife Fund added: “If they embrace this document, then this will have been a waste of time.”

Well, of course Rio+20 is a waste of time – who actually thought it would be anything else? Not WWF and Greenpeace, who know full well that these summits deliver nothing, but continue to tie those who want action into hoping that this time, finally, they will deliver. That is because they do not see any actual alternative.

But that does not mean that there are no positive documents on the table that could be discuss and adopted in a world where truly democratic decisions were made in the interests of humanity.

The alternative treaty drafted by the plurinational state of Bolivia states that "the capitalist system is the principal cause of the imbalance because it puts the rules of the market and the accumulation of profit above the laws of nature. Nature is not simply a sum of elements, it’s not a source of resources that can be exploited, modified, altered, privatised, commercialised and transformed without any consequences.”

And it adds: “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 challenge, therefore, is how to set about replacing these profit-creating mechanisms with shared progress towards the eradication of poverty, creating rights for human beings and for nature as a whole to halt climate change and restore the planet's ecology to a degree of health.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Secret police defend the status quo

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is a state-sponsored, privately-owned organisation accountable to no one which has been running its own operations, both high profile and undercover, since the 1980s.

Moving forward from its role as a national police force developed during the 1984-5 miners’ strike, ACPO put itself even further outside of state control when in April 1997 It was incorporated as a limited company, one month before the election of the Blair government.

Its dramatic expansion, which saw the infiltration of the climate change movement, took place during the rule of New Labour. ACPO’s operations are funded by the Home Office and tributes levied from the 44 police forces and the income from an annual exhibition.

ACPO describes itself as “an independent, professionally led strategic body” and “in times of national need ACPO - on behalf of all chief officers - coordinates the strategic policing response.” Planting agents inside the environmental movement comes under that heading and is “proportionate to the risk”, according to Liverpool chief constable Jon Murphy. Defending the use of agents, he says:

"There are many people who have got perfectly legitimate concerns about any numbers of issues about which they may wish to protest …Unfortunately, in the midst of some of these groups – recent history would evidence this to be true – there are a small number of people who are intent on causing harm, committing crime and on occasions disabling parts of the national critical infrastructure. That has the potential to deny utilities to hospitals, schools, businesses and your granny."

This is nonsense of course. The state protects infrastructure because it is corporate property. If any part of the state were truly concerned about grannies being without energy, they would do something about energy prices. In the winter months, around nine older people die every day as a result of cold.

Two more undercover cops have been outed. Lynn Watson, real name unknown, claimed to be a care worker from Bournemouth when she appeared in 2003 at a protest at Aldermaston nuclear weapons research unit. She moved to Leeds to become active in groups who used the Common Place social centre.

Jim Boyling, a serving officer in the Metropolitan police, used the identity Jim Sutton to infiltrate Reclaim the Streets and during his five years undercover started a relationship with a fellow activist.

Murphy claims this was a breach of discipline, and that agents are specifically banned from sleeping with the enemy – but presumably acting as an agent provocateur, as Mark Kennedy/Stone is said to have done, is OK.

He was a high profile activist, who trained others to take part in the proposed action at the Ratcliffe-on Soar power station, gathering over 100 people at a nearby school where they were arrested in a dawn raid after he tipped off police.

Of course, the presence of agents is not the reason climate activists have not succeeded in changing Britain’s energy policies. Actions and protests in and of themselves cannot change the basic capitalist power relationships in society. All policing is designed to protect these relationships as part of the work of the state. It is the state itself that we need to transform.

As those who threw down the Berlin wall showed, when a moment of real political transformation arrives, agents can’t prevent it – even in a country where the Stasi was woven into the fabric of society. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be wary of the activities of agents, and expose them when we can.

We can fight for the idea of a sustainable economy and alternative energy strategies most effectively by building People’s Assemblies. Linking the struggle to defend the eco-system with actions to defend livelihoods, jobs and communities is the way forward. The only way we can shift to a green economy is by transcending the profit-driven capitalist economy and that will require mass political action.

Penny Cole
Environment editor