With the aim of presenting the main themes of Rio+20, discussing strategies for trade union action, and the role of social movements, the Workers´ Centre of Argentina (CTA) is organizing an event with national and international trade union centres, academia, indigenous and peasant organizations.
The event entitled “International Conference toward Rio+20. Workers´ political vision on development”, will be held on March 28 and 29 in Buenos Aires.
The debates will relate to what type of development is possible and necessary for Argentina and Latin America, will serve to present alternative proposals to be discussed, on the use of natural resources and their sustainable management, on the role of women in resource management, and also to examine how Rio could be an opportunity to revitalize the global movement as well as alliances between different social movements for a sustainable development.
Over the past years the debate on the environment, climate change and sustainable development began to occupy a priority space in the public agenda; it changed from being a marginal issue, limited to only a few specialists, to a debate across all strata of society, and we workers have also had to take on this issue…climate change, the over-exploitation of common goods obligate us to think about other development models that surpass the current one.
We as workers understand that the concept of sustainable development spans four dimensions: the ecological, social, environmental and political, this debate is the one we are delving into at the Conference in Buenos Aires (Adolfo “Fito” Aguirre, Secretary of International Relations, CTA).
The conference agenda is divided into six thematic panels among them “What is Rio+20? Negotiations and policy since Rio 92 and beyond”, “Social movement perspectives”, “Workers and Sustainable Development”, and “Roadmap toward the conference”.
The conference includes the participation of representatives from CTA from various organizations, namely those leading actions on environmental defence in different provinces, trade union organizations in the region as well as at the international level such as ITUC and TUCA, and organizations such as Jubileo Sur and Friends of the Earth.
More information on the event, the programme and the speakers is available here (in Spanish).
Additional coverage of the event is available on the CTA site as well as here, and also on the web site of the Secretary of Environment and Sustainable Development (in Spanish).
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