The UN conference is taking place 20 years after the Summit organized by the UN which focused on the same subject and which also took place in Rio de Janeiro. That’s why it is called “Rio+20”. Bassey was interviewed in the framework of the Peoples Summit that is taking place in parallel to the official summit and which was called by social movements and organizations.

In the interview with Real World Radio, Bassey explained that the principles agreed in 1992 are now threatened by the industrialized countries. Those principles, such as the one of “common but differentiated responsibilities” to face climate change, acknowledged that the Northern countries have been the most responsible for the climate crisis and therefore are the ones that should do the most to address it.

Bassey explained why Friends of the Earth International rejects the concept of “green economy” that the current UN summit wants to strengthen through mechanisms that put a price to the different natural resources. “The critical sentence from the UNEP argument is that if you don’t place a monetary value on anything you are not going to value it, and this is fundamentally wrong. Monetary value does not tell us how valuable everything can be and this is what is wrong with green economy”, said Bassey. “What we are seeing in the green economy concept is that it is very artificial, it is opening up room for more financial speculation, it is going to make people speculate with every aspect of nature: about the air, the water, the soil. (…) Green economy is leading us in the wrong direction”, he added.

Friends of the Earth International is a federation of environmentalist organizations present in almost 80 countries. Its Chair made reference to the role of the federation in Rio. He said: “If you look at the official process you could go out discouraged, but we are looking at the energy on the street, we are speaking with the local people, we are speaking with internationalists who have come from all over the world and we are getting ourselves ready to go home and do more work. So the work is in the grassroots. We are here to talk, to plan, to get energy (…) to mobilize at a national level, mobilize at a regional level and then make things happen globally”, he explained.

He added that Friends of the Earth has a lot to contribute in terms of solutions to the crises that the world is facing, because it works with affected communities that many times are the ones that propose alternative solutions. He said that there isn’t an only solution to these crises, such as the proposal of “green economy” which only aims to profit.

Finally, Bassey highlighted the need of the peoples to escape the oppression of transnational corporations, such as Shell and Monsanto, to recover sovereignty over its political structures and to live in a healthy environment with dignity.

Photo: Real World Radio

NNIMMO BASSEY.mov from Radio Mundo Real on Vimeo.