Mother Earth will avenge Summit fudge - group
Date: 06-Sep-02
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
"It's appalling, appalling. There has been no progress at all," Tom Goldtooth, the national director of the U.S. Indigenous Environmental Network advocacy group, told Reuters.
"Unfortunately we have to go back to our communities saying it's the 'same old thing'," Goldtooth said on the sidelines of the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Goldtooth, a member of the Dakota nation of north America, said indigenous peoples were often powerless to resist the encroachment of oil and mining companies in their areas and he was disappointed by the summit's decision not to set the world a firm target for alternatives like green energy.
The controversial move was a setback for renewable technologies like solar and wind power and a victory for oil, gas and coal exporting countries, analysts said.
"Energy policy is still promoted by the international financial institutions like the World Bank that fund investment in building large dams that flood very pristine biodiversity - and that's where indigenous peoples live, whether in South America, Canada or here in this country," Goldtooth said.
"Global energy policies really are a form of cultural and ethnic genocide against our people."
He added that he saw no concrete measures in the gathering's agreement that would curb the power of corporations to extract resources from places inhabited by indigenous tribes.
"We should have a voice in this," he said. "The World Bank says indigenous people are the poorest of the poor but indigenous people are marginalised and in some countries indigenous people have no rights."
"Our Mother Earth is going to be taking actions on her own to straighten things and balance things out. Unfortunately it's the human beings who will be the weakest of all of the creatures who will feel the devastation," he said.
"The earth is out of balance and she is going to put her own self to rights."
