[WSF-Discuss] World Social Forum 2009 Calls for Climate Justice and “Living” Economies

[CACIM]

World Social Forum 2009 Calls for Climate Justice and “Living” Economies

March 5, 2009 in Environment <http://en.wordpress.com/tag/environment/>, Global
Development <http://en.wordpress.com/tag/global-development/> | by Sarah
Frazer <http://aidemocracy.wordpress.com/author/sarahfrazer/>

@
http://aidemocracy.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/world-social-forum-2009-calls-for-climate-justice-and-living-economies/

Over the past two months, things have been pretty rough for us non-profits.
Many organizations have faced reduced funding, pay cuts, and a scaling down
of programs.  But as I look around, when I take a moment to step out of the
non-profit bubble of D.C., I still see good energy, unstoppable energy,
coalescing and gaining momentum for global justice.
[image: marcha-41]

João Martins, CARE Brasil

One example is the World Social Forum.  Last week, I attended a report back
at the Center for International Environmental Law on the happenings of the 2009
World Social Forum <http://www.fsm2009amazonia.org.br/?set_language=en>,
held earlier this year in Belém, Pará, Brazil.

Having come across the World Social Forum while conducting an independent
study on social movement theory in college, I wanted to find a way to bring
the World Social Forum to you—the AIDemocracy network.  Unable to attend the
Forum myself, a member of a partner organization agreed to do some
photographing and reporting for us here on the blog.  Unfortunately for us
(and for her), things didn’t exactly go according to plan, and her
frustration at the rampant disorganization she encountered in Belém
precluded her desire to talk further about the Forum.

But you see, the World Social Forum is not your average conference, and
definitely not like the well-funded World Conferences of the UN.  You kind
of have to know what you’re in for.

First held in 2001, in opposition to the closed-door discussions of the
World Economic Forum taking place in Davos, Switzerland, the founding
movements of the World Social Forum gathered in Porto Alegre, Brazil (home
of the participative municipal budget) to propose alternatives to the
neoliberal, free market globalization that they saw as infringing upon their
communities.  From its inception, the WSF has defined itself as

“an opened space – plural, diverse, non-governmental and non-partisan – that
stimulates the decentralized debate, reflection, proposals building,
experiences exchange and alliances among movements and organizations engaged
in concrete actions towards a more solidary, democratic and fair world.”

Its slogan, “Another World is Possible,” has been described by author Thomas
Ponniah as “our generations way of stating ‘I have a dream’.”

However, despite the Forum’s idealism, coordinating logistics for hundreds
of simultaneous self-organized workshops, seminars, panels, and performances
for several hundred thousand people, spanning multiple cultures and
languages, and over a five-day period is no easy undertaking.  The
disorganization is inevitable.  But there is no other convergence like it,
neither in size nor content.  Some even say that the dedication of
Forum-goers over the past eight years, undeterred by its inherent
disorganization, is a testament of the resiliency of its message.

So what is the message?  Responding to today’s economic, climate, and
cultural crisis, this year’s assemblies developed several public
declarations<http://www.fsm2009amazonia.org.br/programme/alliance-day/results-of-assemblies>,
including one on climate justice, which called for a globalization of
peoples’ everyday strategies for protecting the environment, wellbeing,
local energy, food, water, and trade systems as real solutions to climate
chaos.  Facing continued savanization of the Amazon, violence, and
contamination of resources due to logging, cattle ranching, agro-industry
and oil drilling (for two great films on this issue look up the rubber
tappers movement and a film called*Trinkets and Beads* about indigenous
territory in Ecuador), an entire day of the Forum’s agenda was dedicated to
Pan-Amazonian issues and the struggles of indigenous actors living within
its forests.  Over 1,000 members of indigenous groups gathered in the early
morning before the opening ceremony, creating ahuman banner that read “SOS
Amazon.” <http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45575>

According to the report back I attended, the predominant dialogue among
indigenous representation at the Forum was not about mitigation and
adaptation, as many D.C.-based NGOs may have you think, but about access to
territorial and resource rights, such as land, water, and food sovereignty.
There was a widespread rejection of market-based solutions to climate
change, such as the cap and trade policies proposed by Washington, based on
the critique that these policies encourage a mere outsourcing of pollution.
Alternative proposals included a carbon tax, which could tax polluters into
finding more ecologically friendly alternatives, and the possibility of
shifting U.S. government subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energies.
While it sounds like Obama has a move on the latter, we still lack the
political will for the former.

Other concerns included IIRSA, a regional South American infrastructure
project designed to facilitate market integration and (here comes the
critique) resource extraction, as well as misguided programs that rewarded
governments and not indigenous people for the protection and stewardship of
forests.

Through critics have often assailed the World Social Forum for its ambiguous
identity and absence of a concrete platform for action, this year’s Forum
conveyed a key message: our current model of civilization in crisis because
it has severed itself from Life, without which we can never aspire to
sustainability or peaceful ways of living and interacting.

I also recently had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Vandana
Shiva<http://www.navdanya.org/> speak
at a local poets café.  In her words, we’ve falling to pursuing either
“dying” or “killing” economies—the “dying” being banks, and the “killing”
being industrial agribusiness, which is instigating an every increasing
number of suicides among Indian farmers.  We need to recreate “living
economies,” in which life stems not from profit, but from sovereign and
local systems that are connected to the wellbeing of the Earth and its human
population.

Returning now to my opening point about energy.  Yes!  This *is* an exciting
moment, we *all* feel it.  Even Beyoncé, after her performance at the
Neighborhood Inaugural Ball, described President Obama’s inauguration as the
most important event of her life: “He makes me want to be smarter, he makes
me want to be more involved.”  But we must more than swoon over this
moment.  We must make it a deep and broad-based revolution in the American
way of life and in the way we understand our relationship and responsibility
to others.  The World Social Forum represents one of the spaces where this
is happening, and I encourage you all to read, be inspired, rally your
communities, and never settle for less than your ideals for the common good.
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