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Title: The Rio farce
Author: Revolt
Date: 1992
Language: en
Topics: environmentalism, Brazil
Source: Retrieved on 6th August 2021 from http://www.struggle.ws/africa/safrica/revolt/rio.html
Notes: Published in Revolt no. 2.

Revolt

The Rio farce

The Rio Earth Summit was dominated by the very people responsible for

the global ecological crisis in the first place. Solutions were not,

cannot, and never will be, found by such groups. Grass roots action is

the only answer.

As far as the Greens go, 1992 is being heralded as a turning point. The

Rio Earth Summit managed to assemble the “leaders” of over 100 countries

at a single place at a single time, to discuss the doomsday cause that

the planet is on... but is it all a farce.

For a start, the individuals that sat around the table to discuss

environmental degradation are the very same individuals who have caused

the problem (ie. the state leaders backed, no doubt, by campaign

contributing multinational bosses) . How can the cause of a problem dish

out a solution ... the only logical solution is the elimination of the

cause.

To understand why we are in the situation where the environment is being

threatened at allfronts, one needs to investigate and address the issue

of the global economy, since environmental degradation is in most, if

not all, ways related to the capitalist production and consumption of

material goods.

Economically linked multinational enterprises, transnationals (TNC’s)

control 70% of world trade, 50% of foreign investment and 30% of global

gross domestic product. As they control the markets of almost all

industries ( from the petrochemical, to pharmaceutical to food) they

control the pollution, and associated environmental damage.

20 of the largest pesticide makers control 94% of the world’s

agro-chemical sales, a majority of which is sold to debt ridden third

world countries who have no choice but to purchase due to the

mechanisation policies of the west. In some cases, banned substances

like the dreaded DDT are still being used in third world countries. I

comes as no surprise since the third world is seen as dumping ground for

dangerous products, like drugs, that the west has banned.

TNC’s are responsible for 50% of the world’s greenhouse gas emmisions in

the 6 biggest industrial sectors that together account for more than 80%

of the problem. It is clear why, even after the dangers of CFC’s have

been shown, TNC’s are proposing a gradual phase out programme instead of

an immediate and total ban... PROFIT.

TNC’s are heavily involved in the destruction of tropical forest in

Africa, SE Asia and Latin America. The Rio Farce saw the North dictating

to third world nations to cease activities that have detrimental effects

on the environment while the third world is in a catch 22 situation. It

sees the exploitation of natural resources as one of the ways in which

it can rid itself of the tightening debt noose that the World Bank and

IMF has fixed on it.

The link between the TNC’S, commodity prices and the environment is also

clear. When export commodities, prices drop (rice, coffee, cocoa, sugar

and cotton prices are 20% lower in 1989 then 1980) poor countries earn

less revenue, which means more poverty, less development, and increased

destruction of the environment. In the meantime suit and tie jobs in

Wall Street, Diagonal Street, etc. play juggler with commodity prices to

ensure maximum profit margins ... at any cost.

Of course it is in TNC interest to avoid fundamental changes. Last year

Germany’s powerful chemical industry saw to it that the State failed to

adopt environmental standards; in April Dutch industrialists threatened

to locate out of Holland if the government effected its proposed carbon

law; the Californian based furniture industry took its highly pollutive

factories straight across the border to Mexico where it continued

exploiting the environment and at the same time got a double benefit by

having cheap Mexican labour at its disposal ... thereby exploiting

people as well.

Bush refused to agree to any environemental contraints at the Rio Farce

that would [have] adversely affected US TNC’s.

TNC’s and their governments at Rio undermined any measures limiting

their pollution and timber activities and last year the UN Commission on

TNC’s was axed largely due to TNC pressure.

Clearly a solution to environmental problems cannot and will not be

handed over on a silver platter by governments or [their] TNC allies

(and vice versa) since too many vested interests are involved. Once

again grass roots action from below seems to be the only way to slow

down and hopefully halt the rape of Mother Earth.

To conclude: “The destruction of the planet cannot be stopped by

barricading ourselves against the advancing bulldozers ... we need to be

in the driving seats of these machines and and our destinations should

be the multi-story, multi-million dollar offices of TNC’s and the

Capitol Hills and Union Buildings of the world.”