27 Mar 2012

UN / RIO+20

At a press conference today called “Civil Society Coalitions React to Governments’ Progress at Rio+20 Negotiations” executive director Sascha Gabizon from Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) expressed outrage that G-77 leaders “deleted” gender equality and women’s rights land tenure saying women are the majority of the poor “they own less than one percent of assets worldwide, the poor need rights.” UNTV

Posted at: March 27, 2012 6:28 pm

Duration: 03:32

Available in: SD

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STORY: UN / RIO+20
TRT: 3.32
SOURCE: UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 27 MARCH 2012, NEW YORK

SHOTLIST:

FILE – 2011, UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK CITY

1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters

27 MARCH 2012, NEW YORK

2. Wide shot, press conference 
3. Cutaway, journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Anil Naidoo, Blue Planet Project, Council of Canadians:
"We want to send a very strong message here, we will not stand by as a few states challenge hard-won and established human rights. Under attack in our view are the human rights to a healthy environment, water and sanitation, food, development health and others as well, as long-standing principles along with equity and inclusion. These are not aspirational, nor optional and cannot be deferred to the market. This is our message."
5. Cutaway, journalists
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Sascha Gabizon, Executive Director, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF):
"We are outraged; we are shock about what is happening at the negotiations. We know that yesterday G-77 deleted gender equality and women's rights land tenure. Women are the majority of the poor. They own less than 1 percent of assets worldwide. Many live from land and resources for which they don't have to pay, but must show that they own them and when the mining company or a bio-fuel company comes to purchase these resources on which their entirely livelihood depends, or to take away the forests from where they obtain their livelihood or fishing grounds, then they have the only recourse is rights. Women and the poor need rights."
7. Cutaway, journalists
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Tim Gore, Oxfam:
"What we think is needed is a vision for the future to reorient the global economy around the needs of the poorest to meet those needs within their environmental limits of this planet and we also need to shift radically to a much fairer food system to provide food in a way that protects and promotes the interest of the poorest farmers, particularly women and its more sustainable within critical and environmental limits."
9. Cutaway, journalists
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Anil Naidoo, Blue Planet Project, Council of Canadians:
"I am concerned, I will put it very clearly on the table, that the green economy is being used as it's being called as a 'wolf in sheep clothing' or a Trojan horse, that this is becoming more of an economic agreement in the negative sense of the word, kind of a 'WTO for the environment' and they need to remove the safeguards if they want to move very far with this."
11. Cutaway, journalists
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Tim Gore, Oxfam:
"We have a real problem because we know that climate change is going to devastate the agriculture the small-holder farmers rely on and yet we don't have the scientific data that we need at a scale close enough to the experiences of farmers to be able to tell them what exactly will mean for their crops in their localities. So we need a whole global collaboration around data collection, information sharing, and technology transfer to make sure that we reorder our economy around the poorest so that some of the things that we hope will come out from Rio." 
13. Cutaway, journalist
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Nathalie Rey, Greenpeace International:
"It's important, going to be very important that we get renewed vigour by governments for sustainable development, an increase in political will and that they don't just leave it all to the private sector to solve everything. I mean we don't want this sort of going through the motions, business as usual, just the renewal of existing commitments and we really need to see some concrete actions coming out of Rio."
15. Wide shot, press conference

STORYLINE:

A group of independent experts from civil society expressed concern today (27 March) at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York regarding attempts to remove references to human rights during negotiations on the outcome document for the upcoming Rio+20 conference to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Before talks resumed this week on the outcome document for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, as Rio+20 is formally called, countries submitted new comments since the initial round of talks in January. Reacting to state negotiations a group of non-governmental organizations created a petition last week aimed at gaining consensus on rights-based approach to the Rio+20 outcome. Already 400 organizations have signed on.

Reading the petition today, Anil Naidoo, from the Council of Canadians said, "We will not stand by as a few states challenge hard-won and established human rights."

He said that the human rights to a healthy environment, water and sanitation, food, development and health, among others, were "under attack" as long-standing principles along with equity and inclusion. He added that those rights were "not aspirational, nor optional and cannot be deferred to the market."

Sascha Gabizon from Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) expressed outrage that G-77 leaders "deleted" gender equality and women's rights land tenure, from the text under negotiation, saying women are the majority of the poor "they own less than one percent of assets worldwide, the poor need rights."

Tim Gore of Oxfam International stressed the need for a vision for the future, "to reorient the global economy around the needs of the poorest and to meet those needs within the environmental limits of this planet." He also said that there was a need to, "shift radically to a much fairer food system to provide food in a way that protects and promotes the interest of the poorest farmers, particularly women, and its more sustainable within critical and environmental limits".

Anil Naidoo also expressed his concern over the way the "green economy is being used, as it's being called, as a 'wolf and sheep clothing,' or a Trojan horse." He cautioned that the result of the conference risked becoming "more of an economic agreement in the negative sense of the word."

Tim Gore said that while it was clear that climate change was going to devastate the kind of agriculture farmers currently relied on, a lack of data hampered efforts to change this.

"We don't have the scientific data that we need at a scale close enough to the experiences of farmers to be able to tell them what exactly it will mean for their crops in their localities so we need a whole global collaboration around data collection," he explained.

Nathalie Rey from Greenpeace International said it would be very important to get "renewed vigour by governments for sustainable development." Political will was needed to ensure that it wasn't just left to the private sector to solve everything.

Filed under Climate change Recent UNTV - United Nations Television.