The People’s Dialogue, a network representing millions of African and Latin Americans organised in movements of rural women, small scale farmers, peasants, workers, feminist and research formations, is mindful that the discussion on the green economy takes place at the very time that capitalism, a system based on private property and the drive to accumulate more and more – i.e. infinite growth - faces its deepest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s..

The intersecting and reinforcing economic and ecological crises are toxic for the health and livelihoods of poor and working people in Africa, Latin America and across the world. This is what is clear as we evaluate 20 years of the failure of the so called sustainable development paradigm ushered in by the Rio Earth Summit. Almost every ecological, social and economic indicator is worse today than at the time of the adoption of Agenda 21. We are not surprised.