 Global Just Recovery Gathering. Thank you very much. My name is Ilan Zugman. I am from Brazil. I am the regional director of 350 for Latin America. And it's a pleasure to have you all here today with us. We are obviously facing big crisis. We are facing many crisis and all of those crisis, they are directly related in the way that we are treating nature. The deepest roots of those crisis are in our relationship of nature. We are in this continuing war with nature. People are disconnected with nature, are disconnected with their lands, with their territories. So, this panel, we really want to be able to speak about that, about how we can improve our connections with nature. Here with us today, we have Adriana Calderon. She is a young climate activist from Mexico. She is from Fridays for Future Mexico and also one of the coordinators of the MAPA, which is the most affected people and areas. It is also an initiative from the youth. We also have here with us, Feznin Essob. She is a South African, born and based. She is an expert on climate, energy, poverty, and social justice issues. She is the founding director of the Energy Democracy Initiative in South Africa and the executive director of CUN, the Climate Action Network, which is the biggest network of climate organizations. Ayutton Krenak is a Brazilian, an indigenous writer, an ecologist, and human rights activist. Dr. Vandana Shiva. She is an Indian physicist, writer, and social activist. At the core of her activism, there are the counter-development in favor of people-centered participatory process, support to grassroots networks, women rights, and ecology. Because of all of her amazing work, she has received a big amount of prizes. For example, the Order of the Golden Ark, the Global 500 Award of the UN, Earth Day International, and also the Right Life Good Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prizes. Based on your contexts, in your experiences, areas of work, how can we postpone the end of the world and recover our people and the planet from so many crises? When I first came with the question of how to postpone the end of the world, I definitely initially thought, like, how am I connected with nature? How are the people I know are connected with nature? And I mean, the first thing that came to my mind was, I have a garden, and that was all that occurred to me. I have a garden, and it's like, is that enough for me, for my friends to be connected with nature, to have a garden? And I said no. But since we are kids here in Mexico, we are thought that that's enough. And that, like, when we are thought that taking out a flower from the plant, it's not going to, like, cause any trouble. Like, if I could a plant, if I could a tree, no one is going to bother, no one's going to tell me anything. I'm going to, like, get away from that. And, I mean, the end of the world right now, it's we don't have enough trees, we don't have enough water, we don't have enough resources. So, yes, I first come with that term, and then I started thinking again and again, like, how these facts that I just, that people and kids are not thought to care about the environment by cutting, like, letting them cut in flowers, letting them cut trees, letting them, like, grab the grass by their convenience. I started thinking, how this critical thinking that we have when we are, like, children grows with us and counts with us. And we grow and we start seeing nature not only as how nature is supposed to be, not as appreciated as the nature of it, but we see it as a resource. And here's when we have that trouble, that nature is seen as resource, but young people by, not only young people, by kids, by adults that grew with this mind of, I can cut a plant and no one is going to care. And if people grew with this thought, it was easy for them to consider that as nature is a resource, I am available to take nature from those who are taking care of it, or I'm available to take nature and I'm available to dispose from it and do whatever I want with nature and, you know, like, just take it because I think it's mine. So I believe that these adults who grew with this mindset also are the ones that have become governments, like important people in the government and people that make policies and people that take advantage of the loopholes of the loud to take the indigenous land. And when we are not taught to educate from nature, we are, we grow and we take nature. For example, here in Mexico, it's really prevalent. The fact that nature is taken from our indigenous people. We have an example of many, many activists that have died protecting their lands because it's theirs and they have been taking care of it and they have been like, because they know that our nature is theirs for take care and that nature is going to give them food, it's going to give them shelter, it's going to give them a home and they take care of their land and defend them because it's theirs for right. And the government, as they think their nature is theirs and they can take it, come and just murder them and silent them because they are protecting what belongs to them. And we have many examples in here in my city, we have the case of Samuel Flores, who was a protector of the place called Gwekska, which now is becoming a thermoelectric. And yes, it's really sad because he was killed outside of his home. He was killed only for protecting their land and their health of their people because a thermoelectric will cause so much damage to them. And yes, I think selling land and like people not appreciating the indigenous cultures and like here in Mexico, we have this thought about indigenous cultures are not like are below us, you know, like many people think that indigenous cultures are also disposable as nature. So we think that nature and indigenous come together, but they come together as disposable. And this is a bad thing because people, governments, everyone starts seeing their nature and indigenous people as disposable and they start silencing them and they start selling their land, selling their nature, selling their like stuff. And for me, what I will say that is like how can we postpone the end of the world here? I would say that acknowledging our indigenous people rights and making governments like acknowledge their rights too. So they have to write to protect our lands. They have to write to get the lands and like say them because it's theirs. And also we need to educate children on how nature is not disposable and our people are no disposable. Thank you, Adriana. And that's really inspiring. And again, I also would like to thank 350 for inviting me to this event and to be on a panel with such amazing and inspiring people. It's a real privilege and an honor. I like you, Ilan. I've also read many of Vandana's books as a younger person, no longer young, inspired me very much. And of course, the whole concept of environmental democracy is something that I've drawn from in my life and the work that I do. So just building off what Adriana started to touch on, I think that of course, to prevent the end of the world, would have to come from us, the people. And that should be the starting point and to do so through people's power, building that power and using that power to change the systems that's causing these crises that might result in the end of the world. And it is only through our power, I think, collectively and in a united way that, and imagining what a future could look like that is not like today, that I think we can change things. And I say that because that is the experience in South Africa. It was through the power of people, mass movements that we were able to defeat apartheid and win our freedom. Of course, there are still challenges, but we won our freedom and we defeated apartheid. And so with those lessons, I've always believed in people's power. And so that's the starting point, I think. And how do people have power? I mean, I think that the kind of political systems we have in the world today, the kinds of leaders that we elect that have taken us even further down this path, as we've seen through last year, the increasing anti-democratic tendencies and narrow nationalisms that are emerging, those leaders are elected by people. And so as citizens, we have to use our power to change not only the leadership, but the kind of political systems that underpin this kind of shift and backwardness, not progress that we are witnessing today. I think that the... So that is the first thing I'd like to suggest that we actually have to do the hard work of organising people collectively united around a vision, but willing to collectively change these political systems, economic systems, social systems. The second way in which I think that we the people can also exercise our power is as consumers, for example. We have power as consumers, and right now we absolutely willingly accept that dirty polluting industries have the social licence to continue to do what they're doing, whether that's fossil fuels or highly industrialised agriculture, the way we use our land, et cetera, and Adriana spoke about that. And so as consumers, we also have the power to change things and to challenge the existing models of unsustainable production and consumption and just the high levels of greed associated with that, the kind of extractivism that comes with all of that. And then the final way I think we should look at how we the people can prevent the end of the world is through our own behaviours and through our own lifestyles, recognising, of course, that that is differentiated. It's not those who are living in poverty that's the cause of these crises. We have to be clear that those who are rich, wealthy have taken up most of the carbon as the highest carbon footprints in the world, and that kind of inequality between rich and poor is also found in the way we're experiencing the environmental crises, the social crises, et cetera. So yes, I think I would like to suggest from my perspective that the way we prevent the end of the world is through our power, through our agency, and through a commitment to change things for the better. Thank you to Elan, and thank you Adriana, thank you Tasneem. First time I'm meeting you and my loving greetings, Ayotan, we've met before. In both from my own life's experience, my thinking as well as the ecological perspective of the Indian civilization and really old civilization that has sustained itself, the world as Gaia, the world as Pachamama, the world as Vasundara, and who he's not going anywhere. She's not ending, she's here. She's evolved four billion years and she can tolerate a few more decades of the greed, the irresponsibility of colonization, the stupidity of industrialism, with all its myths of efficiency, productivity has spent last three and a half decades trying to show how when they talk about more productive agriculture as industrial agriculture, every calculation is wrong. How the very idea of growth and GDP is fixed from the very beginning by hiding the true productivities and creativities of nature of people. So the earth will carry on, she'll keep evolving. I think the issue of the end of the world is about end of the particular world that evolved over 200,000 years and allowed our species to evolve. So it could be an end of what, when there's some arrogant people who say when they talk about the Anthropocene, they assume forever after man will dominate. No, if man dominates another decade, the ecological space for man is over, other species will continue. So the end of the world is really about will our species continue? Or is this an extinction moment? And that is why the issue of justice combined with the issue of a love for living and a determination to resist everything that is creating war against life on this planet. I think that is what we must, not just postpone, we must end it. Because when Gandhi fought, whether it was the Indian laws of separation in South Africa with his first Satya Greya, the refusal to cooperate and they had to give up those laws, he started the fight in 1906 by 1911, those laws were withdrawn. Then he came to India and then he did a civil disobedience with salt and with the Indigo and every other non-corporation. So we didn't postpone the end of imperialism. We ended imperialism. So if your affection, if action, the power of the people like that Nying talks about, if that's effective, then you don't just postpone it, you'll get rid of the empire. An empire that is really engaged in our times in ecocide and genocide on a planetary scale. When I started to save seeds, when I realized the corporations like Monsanto wanted to own seed and have GMOs and they were talked about by the year 2000, it'll all be us. Well, they've destroyed a large part of Brazil and they're destroying the Amazon for GMO soya with me new mates. The GMO is efficient and will save the forest. Now Amazon is disappearing not because of the small farms and not because of indigenous people. They have sustained their farming, forestry, agroforestry, agroecology for thousands of years as records go. But the good thing is we didn't just postpone the bio imperialism of Monsanto, we ended it. They haven't managed to spread beyond four crops about seven or eight countries and most of the world is GMO free and the movement for GMO free is going. And when you join the consumer movement, it's going to grow more because now they want new GMOs with gene editing where the information technology and the Microsofts and the big gates join hands with the Monsantos. And the movement for no patents and seed which is where I started. I said, you don't invent the seed, how can you take a claim to patenting it? That movement is also growing. So we are not just postponing the end of the particular world in which the human species can survive. We have to end it in the next decade because that's the window we have. All the scientific evidence is showing us that if we don't change direction within the next decade then extinction is a predictable outcome. And Adriana talked about the gut. And we have an underestimation of how everything grows beginning with the small. The seed becomes the tree. The seed becomes the plant. The anti-apartheid movement began with particular actions in particular places. And it was the spinning wheel that became instrument of freedom in everyone's hands. So gardens I think are a very powerful imagination. For many reasons, when the Paris agreement was wavering I remember we planted a garden in Paris and said the governments will fail. But we cannot fail the earth and we made a pact. We said we're going to grow gardens everywhere because either we'll have a poisoned earth, a devastated earth, a deforested earth, a desertified earth or we'll have gardens everywhere. And that is not just the postponement but changing the tide because the tide must change. The earth cannot bear more ecocide, more indigenous people, more farmers cannot bear more genocide. Vandana, you can share with us all these technological limitations through a computer screen, our visit, your visit. You've already been with us here in Brazil in the 90s, then in the successive decades of the Bill of Diversity conventions. These environments have always been very propitious so that we can share ideas. And I'm very happy to hear Adriana because she's the voice of a generation. She's the voice of a generation that is making observations about this world that her generation has inherited. Her generation gained this impenetrable world. It came ready. And I have observed that we are with the capacity to deliver the delivery of worlds. So there are many deliveries. There are many worlds. Some of the most recent thinkers who debate the climate issue suggest that we have many worlds and that the climate issue still exists. Open to other perspectives, beyond what Vandana brought us very well, that the world is not anthropocentric. The world we are talking about is not this park of human diversions. We are talking about the biosphere of the planet Earth. The biosphere of the planet Earth is self-regenerative. It regenerates. Don't worry, Adriana. That little flower and this wonderful organism that is Gaia they regenerate. They are self-regenerating. The issue is that humans, this estimated humanity today of 7 billion, 8 billion people, they are on the way of extinction. They will enter the list of species of extinction by stupidity. The notification is extinct by stupidity, because our ancestors left us many instructions on how to live on the planet. Our ancestors led us to a wonderful garden which is the very organism that lives on Earth. This wonderful garden has nothing left, nothing is missing. Humans, with their fury, with their curiosity, are furrowing the Earth, crossing the organism of the Earth with waves. We live the 20th century as a civilization of the oil. So the civilization of the oil it enchanted us from the oil. I have to be a little more than the oil, because everywhere I look there is oil. There is oil in the car, there is oil in the house, there is oil in the cell phone, there is oil on top of my head, there is oil under me. I am in a state of oil and I wanted to know if I can take responsibility for this absurd, scandalous and irresponsible oil spill. Because this fuel, this fossil material should have been there for millions of years. It has been preserved in ideal conditions, due to a Covid vaccine. Now the Covid vaccine has to be at 70 degrees Celsius so that it does not spoil. The oil should be at least 1 billion degrees Celsius in the background of the Earth so that it does not spoil. These imbeciles that brought it to the pond are responsible for genocides. They are responsible for genocides. They are genocides. They kill whales, elephants, polar bears. They kill ants and bees. They kill life. So they are the leaders in the necropolitics in a way of operating the governance of the world in the death device. The death device is in action. It is not particular in any government. It is not the government of Mexico, not the government of Brazil, nor of the United States of Russia. It is a way of operating on the planet that humans gave a license, gave a scandalous license so that corporations instituted these leaders and the leaders disguised as governors, presidents and ministers are fake. They are no one. They are dolls like that doll theater. There are presidents and first ministers. These people have nothing. It is fantasy. So if you suffer, they will all be dismantled. But our ancestrality the heritage that we could activate as a powerful device remembering Mahatma Gandhi, remembering our dear Mandela in Africa, remembering other women and men who thought about the world in an inspired way this ancestral device it is deactivated temporarily. It is deactivated temporarily because we are accepting the transformation of citizen in consumer. Tasmin pointed out the possibility to interact in this global process of the consumer place taking attitude in relation to what the market plays on us as a desire, the production of desire of needs we do not have these needs. They are created by the market. So how do we do to perceive a place of citizenship and not inhabit the place of the consumer? The consumer is an idiot. The consumer is a drug addict. The consumer is already a drug addict. We do not need to be citizens. I want a citizen of the American continent. I want a citizen of Asia. I want a citizen of the European continent to dialogue with us. I do not want a consumer. You have noticed that in the pandemic you will not watch miserable countries launching a rocket into space and putting in orbit a new satellite and building a kind of spa in Mars. Look, the desire is already there. There are many people who want not to spend holidays in Mars. If you have already been able to awaken the desire in an infinity of idiots who will buy a ticket to go to Mars, it is because the power of the market and the idea of the consumer is captured by a miserable materialist perspective. We have to escape from the miserable materialist perspective. We have to recover the dream of our ancestors and we have to be again sing, dance, sustain the sky, create a planetary atmosphere where each people sitting in cultural heritage thinking about the world as a common heritage and we need to put in question the logic of globalization. The logic of globalization closed a circuit at the end of the 70s, 80s and all over the world even the children and the young who were born in the 90s they didn't even see the mechanism that closes this great riot which is globalization and puts us all inside a kind of horror circus. The corporations only want to activate the horror circus, people. The corporations after they have destroyed the terrestrial ecosystem in March. They are irresponsible, they are criminal and we should hunt the social license of these corporations continuing to manipulate the regional governments. And we should point out who are the dolls manipulated by the corporations. The Vandana already sees a clue. Some dolls are so active that it seems that they are the ones that control the corporations. But in fact, it is an ambiguity so that we don't know who sends who. If the Microsoft is associated with the corporations that control the planet and if both are associated with the urban industry everything is founded in a kind of global Covid. So we will have a global test that is produced exactly by selfishness by the gain in the list of billionaires. One year there is a magazine that publishes the list of the biggest billionaires. Take that list and invite them to talk. Those guys, ask them those trillionaires can call Bill Gates to invite his colleagues and say let's go to a desert island and we will talk about globalization, end of the world the end of the world Spaß, art fairies in the cosmos discussed other ideas with him because they need solidarity, love they need a hug Poor prisoners There are activities This is where I'm sitting now, which is the indigenous reserve where the Krenak people live. So I'm in an old house. 500 meters from here, there is a river, which is that river that the mine was razed with mud and in the next few years we will continue to do the sailing of the river body. My first activity now is sailing the body of a river. The second is to relate to the people who do the same thing in other places in the world, including with Adriana, who watched the gardens and the little flowers that are running. And finally, I'm not in front of a global network. I'm more and more feeling that I need to work locally. I'm talking about this goal because I can't handle the whole world. Even with the help of the internet, I think it's very exhaustive. That's it. So my commitment is both continuing my commitment of the last five decades of hugging the earth. You know, my life began with the Chipco movement and the forest movement in my mountains of the Himalaya. And I think we need a Chipco. Hugging means Chipco at a time. And I think we all should send a note to Bill Gates. You know, you're desperate, you're so poor Bill Gates, you need a Chipco from the earth defenders. And it's an action we could take together. I definitely will continue exposing the falsehoods about GMOs as a miracle they failed and that needs to be exposed. Continuing to work with the GMO free movement. And I want to congratulate Mexico that it has taken the courageous step to say we'll end glyphosate, we'll end GMOs and of course the pressure is intense. And of course life is not an invention. To continue defending the integrity of life, which means integrity of seeds and their freedom. But it also means resisting the new ways of patenting, which is by using digital mapping as if it's the creation of the seed. So these are new colonialism. You know, the colonizers behave as if they had created the land which they took over. The new colonizers behave as if having a digital technology in hand means they can take over the natural world. I will continue my work through Navdanya, the movement that I started in 87 to promote biodiversity conservation and agroecology as solutions to extinction. Climate change, the deforestation crisis, the desertification crisis, deforestation because our work is shown. We can on the same small piece of land by protecting biodiversity, as we've done in indigenous cultures, growing a food for two times the human population. We don't need to invade the Amazon. Hands off the Amazon should be a united global call. And putting an end to GMO soil in the Amazon should be part of the GMO free campaign everywhere. I definitely feel not just continuing to resist fossil fuels, but the fossil fuels in hidden form. Chemical agriculture, industrial agriculture, all of the chemicals are fossil fuel derived. All of them. So this, but look at the sways being blocked by a mega container ship. And while I was talking about escaping to Mars, they want people out of the economy. And everything this you used a lovely phrase I had turned the world on a delivery service. Yeah, a world on a delivery service through a container ship that stuck in the sways. No, we can do better by creating living economies by creating living democracies. This is what I've called a democracy. And I think the immediate task for movements like Fridays of the future for 350 is, I really feel addressing false and fake solutions, the fake calculus of net zero, which is I'll continue to pollute and I'll take over the Amazon, and I'll take over the farms, and I'll destroy the small farms. And the, and I think we should stop the language of half for nature. Everything is because of nature. It is all because of nature. The language of half for nature must stop and the language of rewilding should stop. It should become indigenizing because indigenous cultures noon how to live with nature, the colonial cultures created the ecological apartheid. And the other terrible, terrible fakeness that's growing so fast because it's fine and so fast is fake food. We are part of the earth. Nutrition is what flows through the web of life. Real food is what we grow to take care of the earth for care. Real food is what we deserve to eat for our health. So the pandemic, the COVID pandemic is a symptom of food going astray. Correcting that error means let's be truthful about growing our food and eating our food. And that's why coming back to Adriana, the garden is a very powerful place for the revolution. Thanks. So, yeah, like Vandana, I will, my commitment to myself is to remain committed. And, you know, one of my life's work has been to fight for justice in all its forms. And, you know, the work that we do on climate change and to address this climate emergency is fundamentally about justice. It's justice for those who are not responsible for the crisis. Absolutely not responsible, but they bearing the worst burdens of this crisis. It's justice, of course, not that with the arrogance of, you know, that we bring justice to nature, but it is an approach that requires us to be just in our relationship with nature. And I just think that that kind of commitment is something that I will have to always reinvigorate and I get so inspired by being part of this kind of discussion with such amazing committed fellow panelists. And the commitment that I want to make to the movement, if I can be so not sounding immodest, but because I, Elton, I do happen to head a global network, a very large network, and one must not squander the opportunity and privilege to also, you know, build this commitment, this desire and fight for justice to end, as Vandana had so rightly said, the very systems that has caused this huge crisis that we are in right now. That is something that I commit to in terms of the work I do. We started doing it in this network that I now lead by moving from this, you know, we're very policy oriented, but to move from that to looking at building power and connecting with power from the bottom up. So our whole network has shifted to that focus so looking at from local connecting people's doing work on the ground, and then looking at how that can also help build the dynamic of putting pressure in the global space. So that's my commitment that we will fight for justice as a movement. We will continue doing that, and we will do that through continuously building off the power of people and their agency on the ground. So my commitment to the Earth, as Elton and Vandana said, this Earth is not going anywhere. And so it is just for, for me to be cognizant of that, and to be immensely humble in the face of our Earth. Those I think would be the commitments that I can make. And of course, just recognizing the urgency of it all, as Vandana says. There's no, you know, people are talking about, oh, we'll do this by 2050. The people who are making those commitments by 2050 will not maybe be even alive to be held accountable for not fulfilling those commitments. And the science is not talking about, you know, the science is telling us by the end of this decade, if we don't do certain things in radical transformational ways, including addressing our emissions. That means fossil fuels must stop. There's no place for fossil fuels in the future. Not now. It has to stop. And so that is the commitment we have to make. It's not a long term recovery time or, you know, ending time. We have to do it now. I hope to one day get, get like on the table and be as inspiring as you because I am aiming for that. You're inspiring. That to happen. We are inspired by you, Vandana. We are very inspired. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to cry here, but it's a panel. So for me, my commitment will be to educate myself to study to like really, really go through books to everything I have in my like this post out to just become as you and all of you three panelists and keep inspiring you then like make them like stop idolizing capitalism because it's a problem in you that we idolize so much capitalism and this is only leading us to that as we know. And for me, my commitment will be as Vandana said, garden. I will take care of my garden much and like help others to also plant gardens and plant seeds of inspiration in the people I see about changing their perspective. But first I have to like educate myself and yes I commit to do that and to become as all three of you as inspiring as that can be. Thank you so much. Thank you. I propose that we end this beautiful and inspired panel doing what Ayuttham was doing, hugging ourselves as we were hugging our planet and our future. Global Just Recovery Gathering.