Couple of notices for your members: Earth Day and WCAA letter

Dear Colleagues,
The planetary right to a healthy environment and the related notion of
sustainability was a key concept emerging from the 1990 global Earth Day
activism and subsequent 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de
Janerio. The Earth Summit was attended by representatives of 172
governments and 2,400 NGOs, who, concerned about the relationship between
economic development and environmental degradation, adopted three major
agreements (Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development,
the Statement of Forest Principles), and two legally-binding conventions
(the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United
Nations Convention on Biological Diversity). A number of anthropologists
attended that Summit to support initiatives to protect livelihood
resources and serve as advocates with and for indigenous peoples. The
American Anthropological Association, for example, sent one delegate (and
subsequently sought consultative status with the UN so it can engage in
future events and negotiations). Many other anthropologists attended the
1992 Earth Summit as civil society delegates, representatives of NGOs (for
example, members of the Cultural Survival and Survival International
delegations), or official delegates of their nation.
Two decades later, the number of anthropologists involved in scholarly
advocacy in one form or another on these matters numbers the thousands. To
gauge some sense of current interests and scholar advocate pursuits, I am
doing an informal poll to determine who in the anthropology community has
plans (or hopes) to attend the UN Earth Summit (Rio+20) conference this
June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro.
If this is you, can you write to me directly with:
1. the name of your accredited organization;
2. where your formal presence will take place (governmental meetings?
civil society/alternative conference? side events?);
3. your scholar/advocacy agenda; and,
4. whether your primary affiliation with professional anthropology
associations?
And please do distribute this query, with my apologies to readers who
encounter through multiple cross-listings.
yours truly
Barbara Rose Johnston
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Political Ecology, Santa Cruz,
California
and American Anthropologist Associate Editor for Public Anthropology
e-mail: <mailto:bjohnston@igc.org>bjohnston@igc.org
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The WCAA has a new Chair, Michal Buchowski. The outgoing Chair, Thomas
Reuter, has written an open letter for all involved with the WCAA and all
members of associations who are members of the WCAA. It serves as a good
concise analysis of the WCAA's 8yrs of life and its potential for the
future. Please take a look at
www.wcaanet.org/news.shtml