Reeds members representing pedagogic, scientific and academic fields participated in a series of meetings, workshops and presentations in Rio prior to the Rio+20 Earth Summit this past June.

Philippe Roman arrived in Brazil early to join a field trip to Bahia to study issues around uranium mining and eucalyptus plantations. Martin O’Connor, Frances Harrison, Virginia Branco and Pierre Johnson joined Philippe in Rio as the EJOLT presentations and workshops commenced.

The Environmental Justice Organisations Liabilities & Trade project is in the process of collecting 2000 well-documented cases of conflicts against the environment and is creating an atlas of them, writing reports and publishing them in order to increase the visibility of these conflicts. Research by universities and activists is producing documentaries, teaching and policy advice as well as articles and blogs. There are more conflicts these days  due to an increase in social metabolism. More materials are being inputted into the economy so there’s a greater spread of conflicts with associated increased resistance from local communities.

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A workshop on environmental justice, health and risk assessment took place over two days at FIOCRUZ and the national school for public health compound. Roundtables on knowledge production and emblematic struggles took place. Oil, health and environment in Ecuador: the perspective of the affected communities was presented by Adolfo Maldonado, a very moving story of the health effects being suffered there. There is evidence of psychological effects on children who witness the environmental destruction around them. Some examples of the children’s drawings were rather disturbing. These children need to recover relationships with the environment, their senses, other people and find  a productive work, thus transforming their fears into recovery but currently this is difficult while the problems remain. Environmental health and mental health are big topics in Brazil. The social determinants of health cover quality of life, politics and all conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.

Fear is transforming the populations into obedience and is controlling their energy by intimidation, for example, the farmers and mine-workers. In Brazil the state monopoly on petrochemicals and uranium mining is enforced by the military but it is also the regulator who owns the nuclear industry in Brazil.

There is a strong campaign against agrotoxics occurring in Brazil. Since 2008 this country has been the world’s biggest consumer of agrotoxins. Through an alliance of several social movements, unions and researchers from public institutions reporting has focused on the unsustainability of practices and food insecurity for the population.

A discussion on shared knowledge production highlighted the fact that modern science often disqualifies popular knowledge. That must change. Instead we need to build trust relationships with communities via local connections. It’s important to try not to create fear and panic when discussing the problems and to respect the values of others through intercultural dialogue. One of our EJOLT partners Yvonne Yanez from Accion Ecologica was interviewed on the street about the project and her organisation's involvement.

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To view specific cases which are clear examples of the types of conflict occurring in which EJOLT members are active, such as Yasuni ITT in Ecuador, waste wars in Delhi and landgrabbing in Ethiopia go to http://www.ejolt.org/section/resources/videos/

Work package meetings were held. REEDS and the Autonomous University of Barcelona led Work Package 8 on Liabilities & Evaluation, determining progress on case studies as well as planning for a Liabilities and Valuation training workshop in Rome next year.

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Members of REEDS visited, and some participated in, the People’s Summit. The People’s Summit at Rio+20 was for Social and Environmental Justice, against commoditisation of life and in defense of the commons. Included in this event were presentations by NGOs, displays of crafts and wares by indigenous peoples, individual and group awareness-raising of environmental and economic justice issues, a general march and mobilisation. Sadly, two of the activists who spoke out at the People’s Summit were murdered a few days later. http://www.ejolt.org/2012/06/activists-speaking-at-the-peoples-summit-are-killed/

Interesting quotations from the EJOLT presentations and discussions:

“Health is dignity” - an Indian idea.

“Health is a resource, not an objective of daily life.”

“Capitalism takes from people what they have and makes them want what they don’t have”

To follow blogs, access resources and explore the EJOLT project visit www.ejolt.org