Militant groups to attend Rio +20 meet

ANGELES CITY, Philippines – Members of Philippine peasant organizations led by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and the National Federation of Peasant Women (Amihan) and Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) confirmed that they are in Brazil to participate in the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) in protest of Rio 20+ or the so-called Green Economy of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

Head of the Philippine delegation Lita Mariano of Amihan noted, “20 years ago, capitalist exploiters made use of the same recipe courtesy of the First Rio Earth Summit in 1992.”

Mariano said that the Green Economy agenda in Rio+20 “will continue to and further intensify the policies of liberalization, privatization, deregulation and denationalization of underdeveloped economies.”

According to Pambansang Alyansa ng Lakas ng Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) national chairman Fernando Hicap, the mad rush for Green Economy has prompted President Aquino to offer two of the major fishing areas – the 90,000 hectares of freshwater Laguna Lake and Manila Bay – to Green Economy investors.

“Under the Green Economy inspired public-private partnership (PPP) program, the Aquino government offered to financial investors 54 big ticket projects in Laguna Lake that would initially cost local taxpayers some P400 billion,” the Pamalakaya leader said.

The Laguna Lake Master Plan is a Green Economy development program that hopes to transform the lake fishing environment into a major industrial and commercial hub for foreign and local investments, while a national reclamation plan consisting of 38 land reclamation projects in Manila Bay will eat up 26,234 hectares of foreshore areas and coastal lands under the concept of Green Economy.

“The bankruptcy and sinister agenda of Green Economy is further exposed by the widespread offshore mining activities in the Philippines. The Aquino administration has put on the bidding table over 10 million hectares of ocean waters in Visayas Sea, Palawan Sea, Sulu Sea and other areas in the disputed South China Sea for oil and gas exploration,” Hicap noted.