Vandana Shiva - Earth Democracy and the Rights of Mother Earth
January 10, 2012 The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. - Albert Einstein
In 2012, the world community will gather in Rio to discuss global environmental issues, just as the citizens and movements of the world gathered in Rio for the Earth Summit back in 1992.
The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution in 2009 to hold this upcoming conference twenty years after the Earth Summit. Member states agreed that the Rio+20 Summit would focus on “green economy within the context of sustainable development and poverty” and “institutional framework for sustainable development.”
But what is the “green economy” and what is the “institutional framework for sustainable development”? If the answers are offered in the old paradigm of the market-driven solutions that have failed to protect the earth, “green economy” will mean more of the same. It will mean more carbon trading, which has failed to reduce emissions. It will mean more commodification of food and water, land and biodiversity, which has failed to reduce hunger and thirst, poverty and ecological degradation and has instead increased it.
Read More:
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/earth-democracy-and-the-rights-of-mother-earth