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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Highlighting the Amazon’s Diversity

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 2 2007 (IPS) - The international council of the World Social Forum met this week in the northern Brazilian city of Belem to plan the next steps to be taken by global activists, including the eighth edition of the WSF, to be held in January 2009 in Brazil’s Amazon region.

The Monday through Thursday meeting drew more than 100 representatives from across the globe.

The participants also discussed the Global Day of Mobilisation and Action, which will consist of thousands of protests and demonstrations on Jan. 26, 2008, instead of the typical huge annual international gatherings, several of which have been held in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil.

The WSF was originally founded as a kind of counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, held at the same time in the Swiss resort town of Davos. While the economic forum brings together business and political leaders from around the globe, the WSF draws mainly civil society representatives who reject globalisation in its current form.

Initially convened in 2001 in Porto Alegre by local civic organisations, the annual forum travelled to Mumbai, India, in 2004. It was then held in several venues in 2006: Bamako, Mali; Caracas, Venezuela; and Karachi, Pakistan. And in 2007, it was hosted in Nairobi, Kenya.

From now on, the WSF will be held every two years instead of annually.

The international council decided to meet this week in Belem in support of the city of 1.4 million which has been chosen as the site for the 2009 WSF, said Cándido Grzybowski, one of the main organisers of the forum and director-general of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE).

"It was encouraging to see the strength of the Amazon social movements and organisations, which will ensure the success of the Forum in Belem," Grzybowski told IPS. The participating groups have already made progress "in terms of both organisation and ideas" since the international council selected the site of the next centralised edition of the WSF last May, he added.

The city was chosen with the aim of highlighting the importance of the Amazon jungle region for the entire world. Belem is the eastern gateway to the Amazon jungle, which is shared by eight South American countries.

The ongoing deforestation of the Amazon jungle, which harbours much of the world’s biological diversity and is known as the "world’s lungs", has long been a source of global concern for environmentalists and the public at large.

Grzybowski said the global meeting will also seek to bring visibility to the diversity of the population in the Amazon region, which is comprised of indigenous groups, "palenques" or "quilombos" (communities originally founded by escaped African slaves) and riverbank-dwellers, not to mention rural labourers who are exploited in modern-day slavery conditions.

The Amazon jungle region is also shared by French Guiana, whose status as a remnant of colonialism will be an important issue at the WSF in Belem, he added.

The agenda will not only include the question of the independence of French Guiana, but also "the consequences of its position for the rest of Latin America, especially the other Amazon jungle countries," Jean Michel Auboint, a trade unionist and human rights activist from the French overseas department, told IPS.

As illustrations of negative effects, he mentioned militarisation, the appropriation of traditional knowledge and natural resources by the colonial power, and restrictions on freedom of circulation, which is a cultural tradition among local communities, like native groups or residents of "quilombos".

"Indigenous people do not have full legal rights in French Guiana," said Auboint.

The birthplace of the WSF, Porto Alegre, is also known for pioneering the concept of the participatory budget, in which local residents decide how to allocate part of the city budget.

While discussing the Jan. 26, 2008 worldwide mobilisation, the international council found that the activities held will vary widely. In Belem, seminars will be organised, as well as two large demonstrations under the WSF slogan "Another World Is Possible".

In Rio de Janeiro, the activities will put an emphasis on the need to improve security in the city, and will culminate in a show on the beach, while a four-day conference focusing on the right to education will be held in Sao Paulo.

Seminars and campaigns will also be held in other Brazilian cities, announced WSF organiser Salete Valesan of the Paulo Freire Institute.

Communication must play a key role in the current process of dispersal of WSF activities, in order to bring visibility to the phenomenon and establish connections between the multiple activities that will take place across the globe.

To that end, the international council approved the creation of an interactive web site – http://www.fsm2008.net – to provide a variety of audiovisual and other tools for reporting on the numerous demonstrations and other activities, Antonio Martins with the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC Brazil), told IPS.

Each and every organisation, "no matter how small," will be able to provide information about its activities. Another initiative invites both professionals and amateurs to upload videos of up to a minute in length to build "a collective audiovisual history" of the Global Day of Mobilisation and Action, which will actually begin before Jan. 26 and continue afterwards in some places around the world.

The international council made "huge strides" this week in organising the next WSF, said Grzybowski.

It decided, for example, to create a liaison group made up of 11 members and five substitutes, which will have a gender balance and will represent all of the continents, to take over from the Brazilian organisers who up to now have been in charge of the movement’s administrative questions.

In addition, progress was made towards coming up with a permanent fundraising plan, in order to secure financing not only for activities, but to ensure the sustainability of the process, with a view to overcoming the financial and organisational difficulties that crop up with every edition of the Forum, said Grzybowski.