Nevertheless, the group’s experts warn that the social movements should pay attention to the UN developments on technological solutions. They also made clear that the Rio de Janeiro texts are worrying in terms of geoengineering, a technology proposed to manage climate.

The ETC group, present in Mexico and Canada, among other countries, works on issues related to new technologies and their impacts on local communities and biodiversity. Pat Mooney and Silvia Ribeiro, two of its main representatives, are following the UN negotiations in Rio and are also actively participating in the Peoples Summit. This summit is taking place in parallel to the UN talks and is organized by several social movements and organizations of Brazil and other countries. Real
World Radio interviewed Mooney and Ribeiro.

The interviewees highlighted that the texts negotiated in the framework of the UN include technology as a solution to the different crises faced by humanity. There is a kind of "technological optimism", they said. The ETC Group is worried about biotechnology, nanotechnology, geoengineering and Terminator technology proposals, among others. The US and Canada appear to be their main promoters.

Nevertheless, the members of the organization said that there are paragraphs in the texts that warn about the need to assess new technologies at national, regional and international level due to their unforeseen impacts and their consequences on health, environment and diversity.

In addition, they said that the texts lack clarity in terms of geoengineering and that there are no bans, although the moratorium against ocean fertilization is reaffirmed. In this way, the ETC group highlighted that they strongly support a moratorium against the Terminator technology (of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity) which causes second generation seeds to be sterile.

But there is no time for social movements to rest, said the experts. We need to be alert because 20 years ago, such risky technologies as the ones that are currently proposed today weren’t known, they said.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real.