Since the beginning of Covid-19, the challenges facing humanity have become more urgent.
In recent decades, the labor movement, along with social movements and environmental organizations, has condemned the unsustainability of the neoliberal model that caused health, social, ecological, and climate crises.
We have been pointing out alternative ways to this model-now they are becoming more urgent.
This Series of articles Published in collaboration with Dalia Gebrial and Harpreet Kaur Paul and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in London.It first appeared in a Global Green New Deal Outlook.
transition
But we also find ourselves in a moment of systemic debate, where old answers are disguised as sustainable and offered and emphasized as a way out of crisis.
When the world needs a different way out, wrong solutions masquerading as “green economy” may appear with great strength and resources.
One sector that has invested heavily in wrong solutions is the mining industry. Facing the affected communities, workers, and biodiversity, automation, IT, and labor subcontracting are being presented to shareholders as answers to the irresponsible and cruel performance of these companies.
The rupture of the Vale dam in Bento Rodrigues (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) dumped 75 million liters of toxic tailings mud, destroyed entire communities, caused irreversible environmental damage, and claimed 278 lives and 12 people Missing, most of them-ly workers. To this day, families are still seeking justice and compensation for crimes.
At the same time, in its institutional marketing, the company stated that it “will invest at least US$2 billion to reduce the company’s carbon emissions by 33% by 2030. This is the largest investment in the history of mining to address climate change.” This is A transition that is not simple at all.
Worker
Together with agriculture and cattle breeding, this sector is responsible for the recent increase in deforestation, conflict and pollution in the Amazon region.
Keeping the same agricultural and mining systems, but no workers, is considered the answer to this crisis. In this way, while production increases, employment opportunities decrease, and communities are threatened and harassed.
This is why trade unions and social movements are working to ratify a binding treaty that holds companies accountable and responds to those affected by environmental crimes and human rights violations.
An effective transition cannot allow companies to present themselves as sustainable while destroying the environment, exploiting, and killing workers.
Aboriginal
Given the scale of this challenge, we have been working to make these changes in the official space of the UN climate negotiations and our international coalition through global agreements.
These transformations must be achieved through the integration of anti-hegemonic groups that brought suggestions from workers, women, blacks, indigenous peoples, and communities.
In addition to responding to the challenges of new and old work forms and instability, the labor movement also needs to incorporate feminist and anti-racist ecological socialism into the struggle for development models.
Together, we can get rid of this failed model and build a system that focuses on life, employment, and democracy.
This author
Daniel Machado Gaio is the National Environment Minister of the Single Center for Workers (Cut) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Translated by Michael Fox.
