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Image credit: Earth Institute, Columbia University
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Fransico, CA—June 13, 2012 — Today, representatives of the San Francisco, CA-based Pachamama Alliance and Portland, OR- based Beyond War will co-host an official side event at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
The event is one of The Pachamama Alliance’s signature Awakening the Dreamer Symposium workshops, with a special emphasis on shifting the unexamined assumption that the world inherently must be filled with war and violent conflict. The goal of the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium is to bring forth an enviormentally sustainble, spiritually fufilling, socially just human presence on Earth, a movement which event organizers believe every human being can and should be a part of.
Over the past few months, The Pachamama Alliance, along with other represenatives from around the world, has been preparing for the Conference, popularly known as Rio+20. The stated purpose of the Conference is to help create policies which can “transition [the globe] to a Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”
Despite the positive spin put on the “Green Economy,” however, sustainability advocates and indigenous peoples, among others, have raised concerns that the proceedings are in danger of “greenwashing” the global economy and further commodifying Nature. Alternative proposals are being put forward, including the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth first drafted in Cochabamba, Bolivia at the 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change.
Rio+20 consists of the United Nations Conference on Sustainble Development (UNCSD) on June 20th - 22nd as well as a plethora of related events in Rio de Janeiro leading up to the event. It is estimated to be the largest conference ever held by the UN, with 50,000 people attending the offical two days of events alone. The final document of the conference will be focused on creating a brighter, greener future based on the Rio+20 conversations. The document, a first draft of which is already available, is based on the “zero draft,” which was created with suggestions from governments and NGOs globally, including The Pachamama Alliance.
For more information about The Pachamama Alliance, visit www.pachamama.org or email communications@pachamama.org.
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Contact: Pat Usner
pat@pachamama.org
415-561-4522 x103
