The event began on Monday and it is being held separate from the Thematic Social Forum (which is part of the World Social Forum process), which begins Tuesday also in Porto Alegre. Real World Radio interviewed Lucia Ortiz, international coordinator of the Economic Justice and Resisting Neoliberalism program of Friends of the Earth. Ortiz is also a member of Nucleo-Friends of the Earth Brazil, one of the calling organizations.

Another participating organization is the National Coordination of Agroecology (ANA), the association for Family Farming and Agroecology (AS-PTA), Núcleo – Friends of the Earth Brazil, FASE, and Siempreviva
Organización Feminista (SOF). International groups like Friends of the Earth from different Latin American countries and the Climate Justice Now! Network and ETC Group will also participate in the seminar.
According to the call “The event aims to add up to the efforts to come up with a critical analysis of green economy and the context for Rio+20”. The aim is to “strengthen the social movements and organizations’ scope of work so that they can contribute to building resistance to the ruling, dominant discourse and to promote alternatives”.

Some of the alternatives are economy of solidarity, feminist economy, agrarian reform and agroecology. Ortiz told Real World Radio that “a false consensus of green economy has been imposed” ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The summit will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June, 20 years after the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in the same city, hence the name Rio+20.

The seminar ends on Tuesday in Porto Alegre. It aimed to present an alternative to the attempts to regulate and legislate the commodification of nature. In fact, the Brazilian government has advanced in this process. Brazil is willing to get involved in “processes that can create the legal architecture to legitimate green capitalism”, Ortiz told Real World Radio in an interview in December. The South American country has many environmental bills, which is actually a drive for the commodification of nature and to portray capitalism as green in this new phase of appropriation of the common goods”.

On Tuesday’s interview the activist said the social movements and organizations from all over the world that attended the seminar in Porto Alegre are trying to take the peoples’ alternatives, already existing ways of economic activity. These groups call for “other forms of organizations that come from the resistance to the big projects such as monoculture plantations and false solutions”, such as the commodification of forests, carbon markets and agrofuels and she described them as “new forms of accumulation of capitalism and instruments of green economy”.

The seminar “In the leadup to Rio+20: For another economy” is being held in parallel to the Social Thematic Forum because there are some major differences in how they interpret the current scenario and the strategies of the calling groups.

Ortiz explained that the calling groups and the participants of the seminar, which have been working together for many years, believe capitalism is the main structural cause of the current global crises and they have a strong anti-systemic approach. They promote real solutions to tackle the root causes of the crises instead of fragmenting reality. Ortiz supports the positions of social movements that carry out struggles in their territories against developmentalist projects of green capitalism. Such is the aim of the strategic alliance of Friends of the Earth and La Via Campesina (international network of peasant organizations) and the constant support of the federation to different organizations of fisherfolk, feminists, trade unions, rural workers, small farmers and indigenous peoples.

She highlighted the importance of talking about alternatives to change the system and to identify the “seeds” to strengthen these alternatives so that they are a real threat to the current system.

Photo: REDES – Amigos de la Tierra Uruguay.