#environmental summit

[womxnintheenvrmtalmvmt]

Dana Alston

Dana Alston

Dana Alston (1951-1999) was an environmental justice advocate best known for planning and hosting the 1991 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, a gathering made to redefine environmental issues to include African, Latinx, Native, and Asian Americans from across the 50 states. Following the conference, she attended the 1992 Earth Summit and Global Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Before making waves on the international scale, Alston advocated for people of color in any capacity she held. With countless papers published under her name and connections with organizations reverberating her cause, Alston paved the way for environmental justice to be incorporated into all conversations concerning both institutionalized racism and environmental issues.

 In her early career, Alston received a masters in occupational and environmental health from Columbia University, worked for the Red Cross where she addressed issues rising from toxics and nuclear power problems, and also served as staff on Rural America, an organization made to deal with pesticides and its exposure to farmworkers. She served on the founding board of the Southern Rural Women’s Network which sought to give rural women more power over their economic lives by providing better access to healthcare and education. Alston also directed the Environment, Community Development, and Race Program at the Panos Institute (now known as the Panos Network). The organization was focused on developing countries, but Alston facilitated a program catered to domestic people of color organizations whose niche was environmental justice. It led her to take part in the planning committee for the First National People of Color Environmental Summit in 1991, one of the defining moments in the environmental justice movement. 

Although Alston has made waves in bringing the environmental justice movement to an international scale, many still do not know her name. 

Learn more about her and the Summit here: https://www.reimaginerpe.org/20years/alston

[newstfionline]

Rio+20, the unhappy environmental summit

By Bradley Brooks, AP, Jun 23, 2012 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)--Nobody is happy in Rio.

Not the legion of bleary-eyed government negotiators from 193 nations who met in a failed attempt to find a breakthrough at the United Nations conference on sustainable development.

Not the thousands of activists who decried the three-day summit as dead on arrival. Not even the top U.N. official who organized the international organization's largest-ever event.

"This is an outcome that makes nobody happy. My job was to make everyone equally unhappy," said Sha Zukang, Secretary-General of the conference, nicely summing up the mood.

In the end, this conference was a conference to decide to have more conferences.

That result was hailed as a success by the 100 heads of state who attended. Given how environmental summits have fallen off the cliff in recent years as global economic turmoil squashes political will to take on climate and conservation issues, the mere fact of agreeing to talk again in the future constitutes victory.

Faced with the real prospect of complete failure, negotiators who struggled for months to hammer out a more ambitious final document ended up opting for the lowest common denominator. Just hours before the meeting opened Wednesday, they agreed on a proposal that makes virtually no progress beyond what was signed at the original 1992 Earth Summit.

"We've sunk so low in our expectations that reaffirming what we did 20 years ago is now considered a success," said Martin Khor, executive director of the Geneva-based South Centre and a member of the U.N. Committee on Development Policy.

Indeed, the word "reaffirm" is used 59 times in the 49-page document titled "The Future We Want." They reaffirm the need to achieve sustainable development (but not mandating how); reaffirm commitment to strengthening international cooperation (just not right now); and reaffirm the need to achieve economic stability (with no new funding for the poorest nations).