Is the G20 taking over the Earth Summit agenda?

[Isis Karinna Alvarez]

cross-posted from climateconnections.org

Press statement by the Civil Society Facilitating Committee of the Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit, June 16, 2012:

It’s no coincidence that the G20 summit is taking place in Mexico on June 18-19, two days before the Rio+20 summit. Both summits are certainly very different events, above all in terms of legitimacy, transparency and multilateralism.

When the G20 announced that one of the five priorities for the summit agenda this year would be what they called “green growth,” a threat began to be revealed that is now apparent. The presence in Mexico of the presidents of the major economies, many of whom will not be in Rio, reinforces the news that the major decisions to be made at Rio+20 were already defined and packaged for the G20 meetings. So the world’s powers will once again be taking the route of imposing their dominant logic [on the UN summit].

The social movements and civil society organizations who are now carrying out the Peoples’ Summit in Rio de Janeiro condemn and denounce this action, which not only reinforces the economic system that is promoting the monetarization of nature, but also its shameless capture of the world’s democracies.

The consequences of this antidemocratic, predatory and profit-hungry attitude on the part of the most-developed nations’ governments, at the service of their corporations, will be dramatic for the future of the world and its population.

In contrast, the Peoples’ Summit reaffirms its struggle against the privatization and commodification of nature, and for social and environmental justice, global democratic governance and the defense of the commons.