10:06:14 Pascal Canfin
There's a quote from Oscar Wilde saying :
« Cynics know the price of everything but the value of nothing »
I'm not a cynic but i think that knowing the price of nature
is also to acknowledge its value,
because, nowadays, in our system,
one can regret it, but what is not counted does not count.
10:07:54 Gilles bœuf
By 2048 we are going to the point where the final fish is pulled out of ocean.
The behaviour of humans today is such that we can begin to realise
how we are destroying ecosystems, polluting them, disrupting them or over-exploiting them,
so that we get to an ambiguous moment in the history of the planet
where we got from having a maximum of species
to one where we are destroying them much faster than they can recover.
10:09:19 Bonneuil
There is a real increase in human geological activity around the globe.
The pace at which species extinguish is 100 to 1000 times faster
than the geological average during the last 500 000 years. (attention, pour le marché US 500.000 s’écrit 500,000 –avec virgule, mais pas pour d’autres marchés, je suggère de laisser un espace)
The last time such a violent biodiversity crisis took place, was 65 million years ago.
10:10:04 Pablo solon
Human beings have existed for millions of years,
but this process of destruction dates from only last hundred and fifty years.
Put another way, it isn't human beings that are destroying nature,
but rather the economic system.
10:19:31Pablo solon
Some species will be more lucrative than others.
They will be the ones to attract the greatest investment, while the other types of plants and animals will be less attractive, representing a much smaller flux of investment. That means the first group will be favoured
while the second will be much more likely to disappear.
10:23:13 AZAM
Nature was not produced to be sold. Many objects are manufactured so that they can be sold. It’s their fate, so to speak. Nature was not produced to be sold; it is not just another economic good. Nature has no intrinsic economic value that one should make visible, that one should reveal. And that would be revealed by the market. This it what we hear nowadays, from those who want to merchandize ecosystem services, merchandize nature. This idea that there is some kind of intrinsic value, forgotten by all, invisible, that one has to reveal.
10:27:50 Pablo solon
To consider nature as a capital is nonsense.
It means using nature the way one uses a technology, to invest and make more profit
That is what they are suggesting they are insane.
10:28:53 bonneuil
The ten years between 1965 and 75, was a decade of advancement in environmental regulations.
There was a whole series of laws put in place to protect the quality of water, air, green spaces and species.
This scared a certain number of industrial organisations and lobbyists who tried to put in place a counter movement to block these environmental advances.
This is what American Historians call « the Environmental Backlash ».
So from the moment Reagan arrived at the White house, he puts in place a policy of reversing environmental regulations.
The EPA sees its budget slashed by between 20 and 25%,
he confides the management to one of his close relations who is to ask to organize the breakage.
He softens all the regulations that protect forests and air and airborne pollutants.
From 1991 the first mitigation banks, firstly dealing with habitat diversity
then with species are set up around this idea of no net loss.
10:35:45 Pablo SOLON
It is a really perverse sort of logic.
It means those who have money can buy these certificates
and then destroy Nature.
These biodiversity certificates
are in reality a licence to pollute and destroy natural habitats.
That is why these mechanisms are so perverse. Instead of preserving Nature, they are responsible for exactly the opposite.
Because the one who has money has no problem
he buys these certificates
and in this way he justifies the destruction of Nature.
10:44:24 AZAM
I think that States, nowadays, consider environment as something too expensive, and the environmental policies, well, we’ll consider them later. So they have abandoned any kind of ecological concern, but they have not abandoned the economic concern, though. And the environmental crisis is an economic opportunity. States are implementing tools in order to transform this obstacle to economic opportunities for the private sector.
10:47:27 sarah Benabou
At Rio+20, there were more than 2 700 (idem pour le nombre) representatives from the private sector.
There was the CEO of Unilever and Puma, people from Coca-Cola, Shell, Rio Tinto
Dow chemical developed Agent Orange in partnership with Monsanto.
This herbicide caused millions of cancers and birth defects in people exposed to it.
Dow chemical is also implicated in the Bhopal catastrophe in India, through Union Carbide, a business it purchased.
10:50:40 Pablo solon
Is it possible to continue pushing economic growth at the same time as preserving nature ?
No, that is not possible.
Growth is limited by the regenerative capacity of our planet,
and we have already passed that limit.
So why do they want us to believe in this lie ?
Because capital needs to believe.
Because if we turn to capital and say « that's it, we can't grow any more » that will spark a crisis.
The United Nations is becoming the promoters of worldwide private investment. I fundamentally disagree with this part played by the UN.
10:57:27 conducteur train vale
"Here in the region, everybody wants to work for Vale. So did I. And I was lucky enough to start working on the train. »
10:58:11 PUBLIC EYE PEOPLE AWARD
Vale, from Brazil, is the winner of the 2012 Public Eye Award
10:59:57 joselma
This is how my lungs are…
This is our future if we stay here : death.
I would like them to understand that we are fighting for our right to live.
All humans have the right to live.
We are born to live. God has created us so that we have life in abundance.
What we have here is pollution in abundance.
10:59:47 joselma
Ça c’est la poussière qui vient des usines, tous les jours, c’est impossible que tout reste propre ... On nettoie, aujourd’hui par exemple, j’ai nettoyé ce matin, et là, c’est déjà comme ça
That’s the dust which comes from the factories every day so it’s impossible to keep everything clean. We try to clean, I cleaned this morning for example, and it’s already like this.
et ma mère, qui n’a jamais fumé, a les poumons comme ça.
And my mother who has never smoked, has lungs like this.
Alors il nous a dit d’aller ailleurs car on n’allait pas pouvoir continuer à vivre comme ça
So, he told us to move out, because we could not live this way.
11:00:34 joaquim
My wife had a good health, and then after moving here, after three years, she started having breast cancer. She went to the hospital to have surgery and they removed her bosom. The doctor asked us if we lived near a steel mill where there was pollution, we answered yes.
11:01:31 ITV GUILLERMO
Alors le fait que la «Vale» ait investi, ait placé en Bourse cette responsabilité environnementale comme une nouvelle forme pour recueillir des fonds, il est évident que cette préoccupation est bien plus financière qu’environnementale.
The fact that Vale put this environmental responsibility on the stock exchange as a new way of making money makes it clear that their motivation is financial, not environmental.
11:02:09 marcos
Look, here we can see that the soil is very poor and the earth is solid. To give birth to life, earth has to be porous. Because what is the main purpose of earth? It is to stock water. If it doesn’t stock water, the biological process cannot take place. The microorganisms cannot work. So this whole process taking place here will lead to what we call a desert, a green desert.
The first thing we notice here, is a different smell, first the colour, the smell of earth, a smell of life. We can see that the earth is different from what we saw before. It’s an arable soil. We can see here countless roots of other kinds of trees. So this makes the lands arable, this soil can absorb water and offers the best conditions for microorganisms to work. This dead matter that we see here will become life again.
11:08:14 BALDUS
By buying these certificates, we can compensate this excessive C02 emission in Europe, and contribute to the climate protection in a sustainable way.
In Uganda, on the 5 000 (idem pour le nombre) hectares where we have planted trees, about 1 million tons of carbon are stocked, and this amounts to quantity of C02 produced by 100000 people in central Europe for a year.
11:09:32 Pablo solon
Actually, what is sold on the market is papers. Papers that indicate that, by buying them, you acquire 20 tons of CO2 that you can toss out in the nature, because on the other side of the world, there is a forest that absorbs these 20 tons of CO2.
11:10:18 ouganda village 1
When they arrived at the very beginning, they introduced themselves as our kind neighbours. But does one really need a Kalashnikov to expel one’s “neighbour”? Can one still consider him as a neighbour?
11:10:48 village 2
At least they could come in peace without arresting us, as we are not violent and do not have weapons to resist them. We could find a mutual agreement. But to lock someone in without letting him cultivate is only promoting poverty.
11:10:35 VILLAGEOIS FEMME
Nous n’avons plus rien a manger, les enfants passent des journées le ventre vide. Il n’y a même plus de quoi payer l’école, nous voulons continuer à cultiver dans les bois.
We are short on food, the kids spend all day with an empty stomach. We can’t even pay school expenses anymore. We are asking to be able to farm in the woods. You might bump into a skinny child who looks scary, well, it’s because of this famine.
11:13:41 PABLO SOLON
Il faut bien comprendre que celui qui investit dans ces certificats ne va pas le faire par générosité mais pour en obtenir un bénéfice. Et comment va-t-il obtenir un bénéfice? En faisant en sorte que la valeur de ces certificats augmente. Et c’est cela même qui fait que ce mécanisme est spéculatif et qu’il ne pourra pas durer.
You have to understand that those who invest in these certificates do it for profit, not out of generosity. How do they make a profit? By having those certificates increase in value. And that shows this method is speculative and that it cannot last.
11:11:57 baldus
We act in a proactive way. We are aware that doing a good action, like planting trees, can generate conflict. We try to step towards people.
11:19:50 GENEVIEVE AZAM (français)
One can see that important propositions are growing in the US, to develop on a large scale, a whole system of by-products, which are insurance products, meant to preserve species and habitats.
Moi j'ai acheté auprès d'une compagnie d'assurance d'un fond financier un titre qui me permet de m'assurer contre le risque de disparition, que je fasse disparaître cette espèce. Et ce titre là je peux le revendre. Et donc il y a un marché secondaire qui ne porte pas sur l'objet initial.
Let's say I purchased a security from an insurance company, which insures me against the risk that I cause the disappearance of a species. Well, I can resell this security on a secondary market, which has nothing to do with the original purpose of the security.
And it doesn't matter if the derivative is linked to birds, rice, petrol or a share . The nature of what the derivative is based on isn’t important, what is important is the return at the end. So if a better return is possible by speculating on, say, the disappearance of a species, then why not?
11:23:46 pascal canfin
If you let financials, investments funds, hedge funds and banks answer the question of “what is the economic value of nature?”, their approach will be a purely financial one, and that is very negative.
But I don’t see why politics could not say yes to an economic value, as it’s the case for most of the goods we produce, but no to speculative values, no to the mechanisms that allow this value to be hijacked by excessive financialization.
11:24:26 pablo solon
The only way we can get out of this environmental crisis is to abandon market logic,
where it's the market that is leading, to enter a logic where it's human conscious that defines and decides what is appropriate to rebalance Nature.
11:25:52 GILLES BŒUF (français)
Quand on fait une prise de sang, vous allez au laboratoire vous faire mesurer vos ions du sang, le sodium, tiens intéressant c'est un ion d'eau de mer, les chlorures, le potassium, le magnesium. Intéressant, pourquoi est-ce qu'on a ça dans notre sang, parce que ça vient de l'océan ancestral.
l'histoire d'un sang humain il raconte l'histoire de l'océan quand la vie sort de l'océan il y a 440 millions d'années.
Gardons l'humilité on est un morceau d'océan ancestral, cette vie on peut pas s'en passer. On ne mange que du vivant, on ne coopère qu'avec du vivant, si on oublie ça alors c'est un suicide collectif tout simplement. Souvent on me dit oui vous vous battez pour sauver la planète, on sen fout de la planète complètement, on se bat pour garder du bien-être de l'humain sur la planète c'est un petit peu différent finalement.
When you give a blood sample, you go to a laboratory to measure the different ions in the blood. Sodium is interesting because it’s an ion also present in the sea, chlorides, potassium and magnesium too. All of what is found in our blood was also present in the primordial oceans
The history of human blood tells the story of the ocean when life first moved onto the land 440 million years ago.
So let’s be humble, we are just a drop of the primordial ocean. All living things are essential to our subsistence, we need to collaborate with Life. If we forget that, then it's nothing less than collective suicide. People often tell me I'm trying to save the planet, but it’s not the planet we're trying to save but our own well being on it, that is slightly different.
