Radio Mundo Real

At the end of the 5th Latin American Meeting of Environmental Education Experiences of the Peoples in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Real World Radio interviewed Juan Francisco Santos of the Education and Promotion Center for Sustainable Development (CEPRODESO).

The outcome of the meeting, but also of the past two years of work by the Cuban organization is highly positive. Juan Francisco said “we are happy because what we designed for over two years came true”.

Because building a space like this, so complex, with diversity of experiences, ideologies, contexts, in a world where we have been so divided was a big challenge for us. And also taking a leap in qualitative terms, aiming more to the collective beings we are and from there implement a new interpretation and signification of what we are doing. We are very pleased to have achieved that”.

CEPRODESO highlighted the need to discuss the why and what for of environmental struggles, mainly after Rio+20 and the Peoples Summit, analyzing the social subject that makes up the networks being built by Latin American societies.

About the outcomes and perspectives brought to the Latin American meeting after Rio+20, Santos said in an interview with our correspondent who participated in the event, Danilo Urrea, that “Rio+20 was a process to experience political growth. We went to Rio, but before we had many sessions and even analyzed the platform of non governmental organizations and the Cuban civil society and made a lot of critiques.
We tried to turn this meeting into the continuation of those things we asked in Rio+20 and in the Peoples Summit to continue building an anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist proposal, against the green economy proposal which is nothing more that a new strategy of capitalism to perpetuate its hegemony”.

In terms of the future work after the Latin American meeting, and the network-building goals to continue the popular environmental education process, Juan Francisco said: “we know what we can do, however, it takes a lot of discussions and thought because this is not about any type of continuity. Nevertheless, we are not taking full advantage of the spaces we have today in our networks, and this is important. Because networks where people don´t have contact with each other and share experiences are not networks. Therefore, I believe continuity lies there, in strengthening senses and the political influence of networks”, concluded Juan Francisco Santos.

Photo: www.cmlk.org