Social movements will voice their discontent at what they see as capitalist attempts to hijack a proposed green economy when they meet in Rio De Janeiro in a counterpoint to the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development.
Debates, fora, exhibitions and concerts will be held and nearly 200 practical experiments from various countries, including the use of solar energy, will also be on display in tandem
Organisers expect 15,000 people daily at the People’s Summit to be held at the Flamengo Park from tomorrow until June 23.
Under the slogan Come Re-invent the World, the gathering is billed as a counter-summit to the official UN-sponsored Rio+20, which will draw some 116 world leaders between June 20 and 22.
“We know that the official Rio+20 is stalling. Since we expect little headway as far as member countries committing to reducing their CO2 emissions and better preserving biodiversity, the People’s Summit will be the forum where (civil) society can express its discontent,” said Alves Margarido of the organising Institute for Democracy and Sustainability.
The People’s Summit, which is financed by the Brazilian government to the tune of $5 million (€4 million), is an initiative by 200 ecological groups and social movements from around the world, including Greenpeace and Via Campesina (an international peasant movement).
Indigenous and black groups fighting for preservation of their ancestral lands, as well as women and young people, will also take part to rail against mercantilism.
“The summit will be a forum to denounce (the official green economy concept) but we also hope to rally social movements to defend the sovereignty of peoples and their lands against the advance of green capitalism,” said Rui Varres, spokesman for the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST).
Civil society representatives say that the concept of “green economy ” advocated by the official Rio+20 summit is “deceiving and in fact merely represents a new stage of capitalist accumulation”.
“We will come up with the solutions peoples have already found and are fighting to impose, good solutions which counter this green capitalism that is trying to turn nature into tradable financial assets,” Mr Varres said. Debates, fora, exhibitions and concerts will be held, and nearly 200 practical experiments from various countries, including the use of solar energy, will also be on display in tandem with the counter-summit.
Several demonstrations are also planned, including one expected to draw 50,000 people on June 20, when the official Rio+20 gets under way.
On Monday, a women’s march is also scheduled along with a rally to protest against Brazil’s new forest code, which eases restrictions on forest protection and which environmentalists see as a threat to the Amazon rainforest.
“We will draw world attention to this step back in the fight against deforestation,” organisers said.
Summit organisers say they will also use the gathering to assess progress made since the 1992 Earth summit, when civil society was excluded from the debates.