The contrast could not have been greater. I had spent the whole day attending the Rio+20 Business Day, held in a luxury hotel on the beach side, listening to one business speaker after the other argue that voluntary initiatives by industry, if scaled up, are the solution to the world’s social and environmental crisis. When I took the bus back to the other side of Rio de Janeiro, I didn’t get off in time and found myself in an unknown street, where my attention was caught by drumming and a loud amplified voice. In the square nextdoor there was a demonstration, a thousand or more people

The UN's Rio+20 summit this week will be the target of unprecedented levels of industry activity, including lobbying and greenwash. At the same time, there is growing critique of the corporate capture of the UN - with UN agencies appearing to endorse greenwashing without any criticism.This article is also available in French.

Highways cutting through protected nature areas in Europe? Privatised forests and ugly houses in what was until now a common area of natural beauty? As long as the company building it pays to 'protect' other area in a remote place. This is what biodiversity offsets are about. Just one of the things the European Commission is proposing together with business under the name of green economy. Twenty years after the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, governments will once again converge on Rio for the third UN Summit on Sustainable Development from the 20-22 June.

In the build-up to Rio+20, the European Parliament played host to the “first ever European Week of the Bee and Pollination” from 3 to 6 June. Events included a high-profile conference inside the European Parliament and a large flower garden in front of the Parliament building. The conference in the Parliament was hosted by conservative MEP Gaston Franco, and held under the patronage of Commissioner Potocnik. It even featured ‘honey tasting with beekeepers’. Both events prominently carried the logos of the UNEP and the ‘Bees Biodiversity Network’. The conference invitation also featured the

Mella Frewen, lobby chief at food industry lobbygroup FoodDrinkEurope (previously known as the CIAA) and former Monsanto employee was on the list of 14 potential candidates, from which 7 will have to be selected to replace half of the EFSA management board members this summer. Frewen has been the chief lobbyist at FDE since 2007 where she actively lobbied for instance to allow contamination of the food chain with genetically engineered plants which were not authorised in Europe.

The European Commission's Hugo-Maria Schally kicked off the debate arguing that the 'green economy' is about how societies use 'natural capital'. He considered this agenda to be win-win, with no-one losing out, neither rich or poor countries [watch all the speakers online here].

A solidarity rally to the Irish people was held yesterday in Brussels on the call of Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), la Centrale Nationale des Employés (CNE), Comités Action Europe (CAE) and Ander Europa. Demonstrators underlined their intention to stand with the Irish people against the blackmail operation launched by governments and the leadership of EU to force them to vote in favour of a Treaty establishing austerity as the permanent economic policy in Europe.

It is generally not a good idea to develop climate policy with the banks, whether its with a few of them or with them all. However, this was the essence of a debate which took place recently concerning a meeting scheduled between a high-level official from DG Clima and the carbon traders lobby, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). Peter Zapfel, a key man at the Commission responsible for the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the EU flagship climate policy, had scheduled a private briefing with IETA to discuss the Commission's planned measures to boost carbon prices. Zapfel

A year ago, on May 10th 2011, the Spanish activist and writer Ramón Fernández Durán died. Together with the Transnational Institute and Ecologistas en Acción, Corporate Europe Observatory has just published an English edition of his last book, the Breakdown of Global Capitalism. Here Belen Balanya talks about why the book is so important, and shares her memories of the author.

As a member of the 'Troika', the European Commission (with the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank) has been responsible for setting the loan conditions for Greece, Portugal and other countries receiving rescue loans in the context of the sovereign debt crisis. These conditions, which have been widely criticised for the emphasis on cutting public budgets, include in the cases of Greece and Portugal large-scale privatisation of public services, including water utilities. We believe that this privatisation conditionality is unacceptable and seriously undermines the right to