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"Mother Earth not for sale": indigenous peoples protest Amazon destruction, Greenpeace calls for Arctic Sanctuary at Rio +20
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Indigenous protesters gather during a march through the decades-old Vila Autodromo squatter settlement before demonstrating outside an entrance to the Rio + 20 conference in Rio de Janeiro. Residents of the favela are facing possible eviction for construction of an Olympic Park in the area. Evictions are occurring in slums throughout the city amid preparations for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. The protesters oppose Brazil's Amazon forest policies including the controversial Belo Monte dam project. Over 100 heads of state and tens of thousands of participants and protesters have descended on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the June 20-22 high-level portion of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or 'Earth Summit."
Greenpeace calls for Arctic Sanctuary at Rio +20 earth summit
Hollywood stars Robert Redford and Penelope Cruz and former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney are among the first supporters of Greenpeace’s call for an “Arctic Sanctuary,” which would see the Arctic Ocean protected from oil drilling, industrial fishing and military activity.
A United Nations resolution to create global sanctuary around and under the North Pole is the goal of the new campaign, said Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International at the launch of the “Arctic Sanctuary” drive June 21 during the Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“The Arctic is coming under assault and needs people from around the world to stand up and demand action to protect it,” Naidoo said. “A ban on offshore oil drilling and unsustainable fishing would be a huge victory against the forces ranged against this precious region and the four million people who live there. And a sanctuary in the uninhabited area around the pole would in a stroke stop the polluters colonizing the top of the world without infringing on the rights of indigenous communities.”
Now the environmental group wants to find one million people willing to sign an online petition asking for a sanctuary to protect the Arctic Ocean from development and exploitation.
When the petition reaches one million signatures, Greenpeace will put the signed petition and a “‘Flag for the Future’ on the bottom of the ocean at the top of the world.”
“It seems madness that we are willing to go to the ends of the Earth to find the last drops of oil when our best scientific minds are telling us we need to get off fossil fuels to give our children a future. At some time, in some place, we need to take a stand. I believe that time is now and that place is the Arctic,” McCartney said about why he wants to sign the petition.
On its “Save the Arctic” website Greenpace comes up with some scary reasons to support the Arctic Sanctuary concept:
• “The volume of that sea ice measured by satellites in the summer, when it reaches its smallest, has shrunk so fast that scientists say it’s now in a ‘death spiral.’ For over 800,000 years, ice has been a permanent feature of the Arctic Ocean. It’s melting because of our use of dirty fossil fuel energy, and in the near future it could be ice free for the first time since humans walked the Earth. This would be not only devastating for the people, polar bears, narwhals, walruses and other species that live there — but for the rest of us too;”
• “The same dirty energy companies that caused the Arctic to melt in the first place are looking to profit from the disappearing ice. They want to open up a new oil frontier to get at a potential 90 billion barrels of oil. That’s a lot of money to them, but it’s only three years’ worth of oil to the world. To drill in the Arctic, oil companies have to drag icebergs out the way of their rigs and use giant hoses to melt floating ice with warm water. If we let them do this, a catastrophic oil spill is just a matter of time;”
• “Local people have fished sustainably in the Arctic for thousands of years, but that could be threatened if we let giant fishing companies exploit the Arctic ocean. We need a ban on unsustainable industrial fishing in Arctic waters;” and,
• “The United States has spoken of ‘increased military threats in the Arctic’ and Russia has predicted ‘armed intervention’ in the future. Countries are spending billions on Arctic weaponry, threatening the long-term peace of the region. Nuclear-powered ice-breakers, submarines and fighter jets are being purchased by Arctic states with overlapping claims on the area around the North Pole. The best way to maintain the peace there is to make its resources off-limits.”
“Just like in Antarctica, we need an Arctic Ocean dedicated to peace and science. No country owns the Arctic. It should stay that way,” Greenpeace says.
Meanwhile, on June 22, the final day of the summit, representatives of 190 nations in Rio are expected to endorse a lengthy text, called “The Future We Want,” which vows to “free humanity from poverty and hunger as a matter of urgency” and “to achieve sustainable development in all its dimensions.” “This is a very good document, this is the vision on which we can build our dreams, our visions and it is important that the member states are united and work together,” said UN chief Ban Ki-Moon.
However, many, including Bolivian President Evo Morales, criticized the document. Morales called the summit vision as “a new colonialism” that rich nations of the world want to impose on developing countries. “Countries of the North are getting rich through a predatory orgy and are forcing countries of the South to be their poor rangers,” he said. “They want to create intervention mechanisms to monitor and assess our national policies using environmental concerns as an excuse.”
Rio+20, the unhappy environmental summit
RIO DE JANEIRO—It was hard to find a happy soul at the end of the Rio+20 environmental summit.
Not within the legion of bleary-eyed government negotiators from 188 nations who met in a failed attempt to find a breakthrough at the United Nations conference on sustainable development. Not among the thousands of activists who decried the three-day summit that ended late Friday as dead on arrival. Not even in the top U.N. official who organized the international organization's largest-ever event.
In the end, this conference was a conference to decide to have more conferences.
The Group of 77 nations that represents the poorest on the globe maintained their demand that richer nations in Europe and the U.S. recognize their "historic debt" eating up a much greater amount of the globe's resources since the industrial revolution began 250 years ago. They say rich nations should finance environmental improvements in the poorer nations, and also freely transfer technology that would help the developing nations use more renewable energy and build cleaner industrial sectors.
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Photos courtesy KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features, Christophe Simon / AFP / GettyImages
Gallery: Indigenous peoples from Brazil protest at the UN Rio+20 summit
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