Rio+20 Portal

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Call for Participation for the Peoples Summit for Sustainable Development

The Brazilian Civil Society Facilitating Committee for Rio+20, which congregates different networks and non-governmental organizations and Brazilian social movements from different areas, including environmentalists, rural and urban workers, women, youth, popular movements, entrepreneurs of solidarity economy, among others, calls civil society organizations and social and popular movements from all across the world to join the process that will lead to the autonomous and plural event, the Peoples Summit for Sustainable Development – Rio+20, in June 2012, which will take place together with the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD 2012), also called Rio+20.

We call attention for the important mobilization and building of autonomous civil society strategies that consider initiatives and processes of the organizations and social movements, as well as the influence on the official process that takes place at the heart of the UN. Twenty years ago, Brazilian organizations and social movements, supported by different international movements and networks, came together to face the challenge of promoting the Global Forum 1992, a true citizen global forum, which opened space and visibility for social actors in this debate and also for social control of the emerging themes of Rio-92. That moment set the beginning of a cycle of UN Conferences on Sustainable Development, as a result of the alerts and demands of a social and environmental movement that had turned out to be planetary.

The situation of the planet and the world population is serious. Poverty, misery and inequality persist and are reproduced, exacerbated by the environmental and climate crises. The despoilment of the planet goes together with the marginalization and extermination of many peoples and social groups. While we face a civilization crisis, governments and many sectors of national societies, attached to immediate benefit and blind to the future, cling to a model of economy, governance and values that are old-fashioned and paralyzing.

The official Rio+20 event will discuss green economy and international governance for sustainable development. It is high time for economic systems to incorporate principles, values and tools that ensure justice and social equity, as well as environmental sustainability and integrity. To build global governance in the transition to an including economy, that is fair and respects ecologic processes and limits is also our concern, but our perspectives are certainly different from those supported by the majority of governments, trading and financing corporations and industrial and agricultural sectors. While some of the dominant groups recognize the need for deep and urgent changes, we see large corporations, governments and international conferences putting the market as the single central player, weakening the role of the public power.

A sincere assessment of the commitments on sustainable development by the UN Conferences would show, despite of some specific advance, the governments failure to trigger the deep and necessary changes that cannot be postponed once more to a distant future. It is up to organized civil society to call the world’s attention on the gravity of the deadlock humanity is facing and also on the impossibility of the dominant economic, political and cultural systems to point out outcomes for the crisis.

But it is also its responsibility to define and show other possible ways. If there’s a risk of transforming the agenda of sustainable development into a stage to re-invent the dominant economic system, that only relies on market opportunities and makes the structural causes of environmental degradation and social inequalities even worse, there is also the emergence of a new paradigm. This comes from a global movement that recognizes the umbilical link of humanity with nature and the populations who develop in harmony with Mother Earth and teach us that another way is possible, enhancing the vision of sustainability for another model of society, based on other production and consumption patterns, on social, environmental, economic, political and gender justice, on the sovereignty of peoples and the solidarity among peoples and individuals, and free of all kinds of domination.

Thus, the Brazilian Facilitator Committee calls all civil society networks and social movements of the country, the region and the world, to turn the Rio+20 into:

An opportunity for local, sector, national and global processes of political discussion: so as to turn the Rio+20 into a climax point of this process, which shall keep on strengthening a huge movement of social transformation;

A process-event with own identity: so as to highlight the role of several civil society groups and peoples of the planet, their struggle for rights and social and environmental justice; to strengthen cooperation, plural organization, unity and integration within the diversities of civil society;

A moment of strengthening the social and environmental struggle: so as to show the challenges of the city of Rio de Janeiro as a place of struggle, conflicts and dreams and which is being a laboratory of large interventions for the Soccer World Cup of 2014 and the Olympic Games of 2016;

A great opportunity for social mobilization: so as to debate, build actions and make the Rio+20 lead to a paradigm change and to an effective implementation of sustainable development.

The Facilitating Committee will enhance Brazilian dialogues and networking, and will work together with partners, networks and civil society organizations wishing to engage in the preparation of an international participative and plural event during Rio+20.