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Published on Thursday, December 29, 2011 by SciDev.net
NEW DEHLI - The global push towards a 'green economy' risks being hijacked by large corporate monopolies trying to gain control over natural resources, a report has warned.
There is a growing emphasis on the concept of a green economy in the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), in June 2012, in Brazil. A green economy is widely seen as a way of tackling environmental challenges including climate change, failing fisheries andwater security.
But a report released earlier this month (14 December) has warned that global companies, positioning themselves for a post-petrochemical future, may use the idea as a pretext for gaining control over biomass resources, which would eventually replace petroleum as the feedstock for energy and for industrial products.
The report, published by an international nongovernmental organisation Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Conservation (ETC Group), in Canada, says that most of this biomass is in developing countries, where it is managed by poor peasants, forest dwellers, fishing communities and livestock-owners whose livelihoods depend on them.
The report urges developing countries to craft policies that will protect them from such encroachments.
If they do not, they risk being "seduced" by the promise of quick green techno-fixes, which appear as "a politically expedient" alternative plan to save the climate, the report says, because "techno fixes are not capable of addressing systemic problems of poverty, hunger and environmental crises".
"In the absence of effective and socially responsive governance and government oversight, the bio-based economy will result in further environmental degradation, unprecedented loss of biodiversity and the loss of remaining commons," it says.
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