An update
By Nathan Thanki
Earth in brackets, as a team or as an online presence, does not exist in a void. We actually exist inside the very warm embrace of College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. A small, young school (350 students, 40 odd faculty, founded 1969) that offers one (or infinite, depending on who you ask) major: human ecology. Right now is not the time to enter the labyrinth of explaining human ecology. I’ll save that for my junior year. Nor is it the time to openly advertise COA; for that you may visit coa.edu. The purpose of this blog is to update you wonderful readers on what the next year, and specifically the next nine weeks, has in store for [Earth].
With a lot of energy and attention around this project after Durban—despite the bitter disappointments suffered—and with the storm brewing over Rio+20, now would be the time to really take our little endeavour to another level. So we applied and were accepted to COA’s sustainable business programme—giving us the much needed time, resources and funds to make the most of all that energy.
Our hope is to reach more people. We know you’re out there—rabble-rousers, change-makers, informed radicals, human ecologists. The language of power that exists in the UN is deliberately obtuse, to prevent our meaningful involvement. We think can translate that language enough to inform. Our hope is to be a dissenting voice, a force for positive change that highlights injustices and their solutions; our hope is to empower and embolden youth activism.
Some of what we are going to do over the next term is long overdue and relatively uncomplicated (I say that now). This entire website could do with a facelift, a reorganizing. As our content grows, better categorization is needed. To be a resource for others at COA and further afield, earthinbrackets.org has to become more user friendly; easier to navigate and interact with. To this end, your thoughts and feedback would be much appreciated. Also, not everybody enjoys reading, surprising as that may be. We’re hoping to incorporate different modes of expression: to that end, keep your eyes open for a feature length documentary about our time at the climate negotiations in Durban, as well as video updates from Bonn and Rio. Getting the word out there will take some work on advertisements, and building up some promotional and educational material (check out our ‘what is climate justice’ primer booklet/pdf).
Then again, some of what we hope to achieve is a lot more long-term and harder to accomplish quickly. The challenge of sustainability looms large for our project as it does for the human civilization project. We need to ensure that the enthusiasm for [Earth] remains and a good way to do that is to strengthen ties to the curriculum. Contribute to the project as part of class! The harder part of sustainability is the financial side. How can we maintain a presence at the UN circus as it travels around the world bringing empty promises and great fanfare? It takes money. So far things have more or less worked out thanks to the generosity of COA (and the Davis family especially, who many of us owe a lot to) but we cannot rely on the existing channels indefinitely. ‘Networking’ is a term that makes me cringe, but we’ll be doing a lot of that too. As they say, a problem shared is a problem halved, so we’re eager to build new bridges and strengthen existing connections among youth activists. Ours is a collaborative worldview, not a competitive one.
With all this in mind, don’t be surprised to see some changes to the site, to see more of us or hear from us. And don’t hesitate to get in touch with comments or ideas. You can email me directly – nthanki@coa.edu. Easy as you go.
By Julian Velez
This is a reflection of my time in the Sustainable Development negotiations that took place in New York City. These negotiations are called the “informal-informal negotiations”; they are a build up to the Rio+20 summit. I speak of Food Sovereignty as a refreshing term that contrasts with the concepts and environment that is present in this UN process.
I find the process of the UN so detached from the people and the places that are in most need and are more affected by all the adverse effects of this unsustainable society created on structures of inequity and unbalance at all levels, economic, social, environmental, political, spiritual, etc.
These negotiations happen within a space where the language that is spoken is the language of policy and politics: technical and cold as it comes out of the mouths of politicians and princes that most of the time don’t represent the needs of their people and our environment.
It has been twenty long years of discussions that don’t come down to concrete actions. Actions needed for a true change to benefit the world’s poor and our natural environment. Discussions that have not manifested in implementation of principles and plans that they set themselves.
Sometimes it looks like kids not being able to reach agreement and not being able to follow their own rules: the bullies bully instead of sharing, and the bullied don’t stand strong and united. It becomes a vicious cycle of inequity that impacts the people most in need, those least represented with the least voice.
If I don’t know real hunger, how I can truly fight for food justice? Our politicians are much farther from this reality, so how can they advocate for this when it is so foreign and isolated from the UN negotiations?
Then the people like me that have the resources to attend these meetings do not have a proper space to speak and be heard. Civil society sits and observes while the words reflecting human rights and justice are deleted, and then we have two minutes to complain and demand our needs. And we are supposed to feel grateful and satisfied with our chance to participate. Moreover the meetings where all the real decisions take place are closed to civil society.
We sit and watch how concepts like resilience come to the text. Resilience entails that everyone accepts current condition of the developing world as a burden, which they should learn how to carry. Did the world’s poor have a say in deciding whether or not to carry the burden of their condition?
I have noticed how these negotiations affect myself and my teammates. I feel detached from reality and from a certain level of humanity. And I see how we become snappy, technical, cold, impatient, righteous, and arrogant instead of being inclusive and open to hear others. This process distances us from our humanity and from being kind to each other.
We had the chance to speak to Azra Sayeed from Roots for Equity and she came like a breath of fresh air and a wake up call for the team and I. She came and knocked on our doors to remind us that there are real people that die of hunger and that those people are not us; and that oppression and poverty is a real condition, not a term, or a statistic or a GDP number. Like her organization, there are other NGOs that fight for food sovereignty, contrasting with the term or thematic issue of food security that is used in the context of the sustainable development discussions.
The term food security refers mainly to the production aspect of food and more specifically the amount of production. The problem is not that there is not enough food but that many people don’t have access to good, safe food, land, water or energy. The issue is much broader and the concept of food sovereignty embraces this.
Food sovereignty is to have access to land to grow food for your subsistence; with your own technologies and traditional ways; your own seed; access to water and energy; and a local market that doesn’t have to be bound to the rules and the control of the global market. Furthermore, food sovereignty must include independence from the oppressing corporate structures in order to live with dignity in your own ways; to empower the local community’s culture so a communal fabric can support the members in a more sustainable and whole way. This is a much more whole perspective than solutions that will not change the structures weaving this reality of food insecurity and poverty.
Food sovereignty is a term that brings back a sense of humanity and community to the table, which I think are two essential things for the negotiating process and to achieve sustainable development.
Ken Cline
If I hear the term “water- energy-food nexus” again I might scream. Yes they are related but the connections are not ecological ones; they are a mantra of convenience. More accurately, they are placed together as an excuse to maintain the status quo in terms of large dams. I listen to the head of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) talk about how they are concerned about food security in Africa and how we need more dams to stave off shortages. Then the International Commission of Large Dams (ICOLD) jumps in and talks about the need for more infrastructure (i.e. dams.) Adapting the slogans of water/social activists, the speaker intones “Water is life but without infrastructure it is not enough.” And then there are the lamentations about climate change. “We will need more storage (i.e. dams) in the face of climate change. Adaptation requires storage to make us resilient and dams are renewable power. There is no other way.”
So Africa is hungry because it is under-dammed, South America cannot reach its full development because it is under-dammed, and we are on the way to climate Armageddon because we are under-dammed. If you listen to the conversations in the hallways and some of the sessions at the World Water Forum you would soon realize that dams are the answer, regardless of the question.
But are they? Most dams, especially large ones really only reallocate resources. The benefits of a free flowing river and flood regime are transformed into kilowatts and benefit people who work in factories far away. In some sense the energy is renewable, but the people’s lives, customs, and culture are not. Nor is the complex ecosystem that is destroyed. There is potential in hydropower and irrigation to help us transition to a more sustainable economy, but large dams are not the way to do it. Large dams make members of ICOLD and ICID rich and powerful, meet the needs of short-sighted or corrupt politicians, and move resources from minorities and rural people into the cities, however, they do not meet the needs of the people who live in the valleys or in the land that has been “grabbed” away by outside investors. They are not green.
For the next World Water Forum I want an ICAD – an International Commission Against Dams.
By: The Informal-informals [Earth] Team
Earth in Brackets has critically examined the history of sustainable development negotiations, outcome documents, and implementation, and has found it to be, with the exception of small gains made in the implementation of Agenda 21, uninspiring. Current institutions under the UN lack the coherence, jurisdiction and consistency to fully address issues of sustainable development, and there has not been sufficient action addressing these issues. As time progresses, the interconnected crises the world is facing are accumulating and intensifying, making them ever more difficult to combat. The Millenium Development Goals, while ambitious, seem to have been forgotten about and are unlikely to be completed by 2015. Implementation of Agenda 21 has been highly unsatisfactory. Now, there is The Future We Want, a document we find to be lacking in ambition, and which is, despite some participants’ best efforts, being increasingly diluted in the negotiations precluding the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
Therefore, as international youth from [Earth] and the College of the Atlantic, and as voices of the future with a vested interest in the outcome of UNCSD, we have developed The Future We Really Want. We stress that The Future We Really Want is not an all-encompassing final document, but rather a reflection of the work of a focused group of individuals over the course of a concentrated study on the Rio process. It includes some, but not all, of the issues, goals, and actions that we are most passionate about, and that we believe are critical for consideration if there is to be true progress towards sustainable development. It is part of our platform for dialogue and change, both in our own communities, and the greater community of our allies and those with whom we must work harder to collaborate and whom we welcome into productive discussions.
Below, we present some of the key issues and statements outlined in the document:
Overarching Points
Thematic issues
Read the full text of The Future We Really Want
By Clara de Iturbe
The preceding day felt way too long and the tension in the air you felt when entering the ECOSOC room the morning after said a lot about what was coming next. Lengthy discussions of the Food Security thematic area—whose title has not yet been agreed upon—demonstrated that the North and the South have very specific agendas and that they are not ready to cooperate in certain areas yet. This was obviously predictable and it somehow kept the negotiations real. Israel and its last-minute additions remained obscure to the rest of the people present in the room, since they were yet to be analyzed by the other negotiating parties. These paragraphs will add to the many more that are to be considered, reconsidered and over considered in the next stages of the negotiation.
The rush I was feeling while being surrounded by so much reality, however, was clouded when I stepped back and realized that some vital aspects concerning food security were missing in the discussions. The amendments and new additions by the North and the G77 were many times not only repetitive and whimsical, but also lacking. Many issues were vaguely mentioned, and some major ones were not subject to discussion because they were simply not there at all—not mentioned even by the almighty G77. For instance, neither the text nor the amendments make reference to the food crisis. This is worrying as it should be the core of any proposed text or actions. By analyzing the implications and causes of the food crisis it is possible to figure out where the flaws of the current food system are and open in-depth discussions over what has to be done to overcome it. By forgetting to mention it, they are also forgetting the existing contradiction in the fact that almost one billion people are currently food insecure while the world cereal production showed a historical peak in 2008. Moreover, this obscures the threat of clean biofuels to food prices and the huge political influence that the private sector has in this matter. The lack of reference to the food crisis undermines the importance of price stability and obscures the issue of speculation of food prices raised by the G77—which was rapidly bracketed by Australia.
On a not-so-different note, it seems like they also forgot that not everything concerning food security is about food production. Again, the overemphasis on production, or rather the extreme minimizing of food distribution and consumption patterns makes me wonder what their concept of achieving food security is, especially being clear that malnutrition is a challenge for both North and South. The only vague mention to distribution was proposed by the US yet in a context of sustainability—which is indeed important—but certainly does not address equity.
But let’s suppose for a moment that the negotiators actually cared about the sustainable production and distribution of food. If so, how can we explain that they also forgot to mention meat production—excluding fish? With the North and emerging economies increasing their meat consumption this should be a major area of debate, since this, besides being a great cause of land degradation and GHG emissions, is incredibly energy and water inefficient. Furthermore, the oxymoronic proposal of the US, EU, Norway, NZ and amongst other MDCs of encouraging a sustainable intensification of agriculture that makes charming promises of efficiency and increased yields, makes me worry that it might someday replace sustainable production. Also, only the G77 seemed to remember that this can in no ways be achieved without technology and information transfers and that, in fact, small scale farmers still supply around 70% of the world food while the oligopoly of agricultural technologies and GM seeds is held by only a handful of multinational corporations.
In the document, the US eagerly highlights the importance of agriculture for the Green Economy, but they prefer to forget the G77 appeals to actions at local and national levels. This will continue to create tensions between the countries with acute free-market approaches like the US, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia.
As these issues were being forgotten, many things were going on in the room. Delegations were very vocal: The right to food to which the US, the EU and other MDCs politely opposed; Mexico’s push for protecting traditional farming methods made the EU very uncomfortable; and Japan, surprisingly advocated for a more inclusive and localized food production. So, not all is looking so bad. Regardless of the EU effort to bracket any mention of indigenous farmers–as they consider it an ‘unclear concept’–one vastly addressed point of agreement was gender equality and the integration of other stakeholders in the process. The importance of land tenure was surprisingly mentioned too by an MDC.
I was not expecting that more comprehensive and ‘radical’ concepts like Food Sovereignty be mentioned, but it was very disappointing to find that the core aspects of the food crisis and the underlying inequity in the systems of production, distribution and consumption were not considered. So, I guess this blog entry was about what they forgot to mention, but not only that. It was about the good, bad and the ugly; about what is attainable, and politically unlikely; and about the issues that are so important that they simply prefer to ignore.
