The road to Rio+20: The Green Economy Debate

TNI Fellows Meeting 2011

30 June 2011

Praful Bidwai

Olivier Hoedeman

Gonzalo Berrón

Yao Graham

June 2012 will see a 20 year review of the famous 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The buzzword for the Rio+20 conference is "green economy" but what does this mean in practice?

In June 2011, TNI brought together its Fellows and other activists and engaged academics to discuss critical global issues including the Arab Spring, the global resource grab and climate justice.

Critiquing the Green Economy

	The talk may be of a "green economy" but the reality in Africa is of a new scramble for resources by former colonial powers and new emerging economies, with few benefits for the majority of Africans, says Yao Graham of the Third World Network. >Watch video interview

	Brian Ashley, editor of Amandla magazine in South Africa argues that the environmental crisis can not be separated from the economic crisis - which is why movements in South Africa are pushing a campaign for one million climate jobs. >Watch video interview

	The replacement of sustainable development with the new concept of "green economy" reflects a major growth in corporate power since 1992 and a widespread acceptance in corporate solutions to the climate crisis despite their patent failure to deliver in recent decades. >Watch video presentations

	Gonzalo Berron, political advisor for the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas shares plans by Brazilian civil society for Rio+20, which will tap into growing national debate on the development path for the country >Watch video presentation

The first two video interviews are courtesy of Broker Online

About the authors

Praful Bidwai

Praful Bidwai is a political columnist, social science researcher, and activist on issues of human rights, the environment, global justice and peace. He currently holds the Durgabai Deshmukh Chair in Social Development, Equity and Human Security at the Council for Social Development, Delhi, affiliated to the Indian Council for Social Science Research.

A former Senior Editor of The Times of India, Bidwai is one of South Asia’s most widely published columnists, whose articles appear in more than 25 newspapers and magazines. He is also frequently published by The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique and Il Manifesto.

Bidwai is a founder-member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India). He received the Sean MacBride International Peace Prize, 2000 of the International Peace Bureau, Geneva & London.

He was a Senior Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Bidwai is the co-author, with Achin Vanaik, of South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, a radical critique of the nuclearisation of India and Pakistan and of reliance on nuclear weapons for security.

Olivier Hoedeman

Olivier Hoedeman (Dutch/Danish, MA Political Science), is the research and campaign co-ordinator at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an Brussels-based civil society group targeting the threats to democracy, equity, social justice and the environment posed by the economic and political power of corporations and their lobby groups. CEO co-organises the water project with TNI.

Gonzalo Berrón

Gonzalo Berrón, TNI Associate Fellow, has played a leading role in coordinating Latin American movements resisting corporate "Free Trade Agreements." He has been an integral part of ongoing discussions with civil society and progressive governments on building alternative just regional trade and financial architecture in Latin America.

Berron worked as Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, and was until recently with the International Office of Central Única dos Trabalhadores - CUT (Unique Workers' Center), Brazil. Though Argentinian, he has been based in Brazil for many years.

Recent publications from Environmental Justice

A Landmark Victory for Justice: Biowatch’s Battle with the South African State and Monsanto Published by Biowatch South Africa, this is a book about access to information, the right to know, and action in the public’s interest – a must-read for anyone campaigning for environmental or social justice.	Protecting carbon to destroy forests This paper provides historical background and reports of experiences on the ground to show how land and nature enclosures are central to REDD+, and why it therefore cannot be fixed.
Myth Busting: EU's Emissions Trading System Since the adoption of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), emissions have risen and the price of consumer energy went up along with the profits of many industrial actors.	Accounting for carbon, depoliticising plunder The EU aspires to global leadership in developing ‘sustainable biofuels’, arguing they can substitute for fossil fuels, but the result has been dispossession of rural communities throughout the South.