[Oe List ...] My report on Rio+20

[Herman Greene]

Here's the report I wrote on Rio+20:

 

 

NOTES FROM RIO+20: WHY IT DIDN'T FAIL

By Herman F. Greene

I was in Rio from June 13-22 for the UN Conference on Sustainable
Development (Rio+20) and events preceding it. The prevailing sentiment is
that Rio+20 was a failure. Scott Simon of NPR described it as the biggest UN
conference ever and perhaps one of its biggest duds. The New York Times
quoted a representative of CARE as saying it was "nothing more than a
political charade," and a representative of Greenpeace as declaring it "a
failure of epic proportions." When the official outcome document from
Rio+20, titled "The Future We Want," is not rejected outright, tepid
assessments are generally given such as "it partially salvaged prior
commitments, but offered little new."

 

Evaluating Rio+20 as a failure has consequences. For some, the "failure" of
Rio+20 underscores the weakness or the UN processes as a whole. Because
blame for the alleged failure has largely been placed on "governments," the
faith of some in the ability of governmental and intergovernmental
organizations to address major problems has fallen. In the United States,
where the event was seldom reported, summary reports of failure may lead
some to say, "I didn't know about it and it wasn't important anyway."

 

My view of the conference is, however, different. I had to educate myself to
understand the UN sustainable development process, of which Rio+20 is only
the latest chapter in a 40-year long and continuing history. I began to
engage directly in this process in October 2011 in order to promote
formation of an International Ethics Panel on Ecological Civilization
(IEPEC), a panel first proposed by Professor Ryoichi Yamamoto at a September
2011 conference in Tokyo. Returning from that conference, I learned Rio+20
was the place to take this idea as many NGOs and some governments were
emphasizing the need for new ethical structures in UN governance in
connection with one of Rio+20's two major themes, "Institutional Framework
for Sustainable Development."

 

In the course of attending three preparatory events in New York and the
final Rio+20 conference, I have learned the UN's sustainable development
process is not primarily about the environment. It is about how the peoples
of the world, as a whole, can improve their lives and the forms of
development that are most appropriate for achieving this. Environment comes
in because it must: after all Earth is the living planet and resource base
on which humans depend both physically and culturally. Economics enters
because our current understanding of social development is dominated by it
and by certain established conventions, such as GDP, neo-liberalism,
globalization, and industrialization, all of which were questioned in the
Rio+20 debates, especially in relation to the conference's other major
theme, "The Green Economy in the Context of Poverty Eradication and
Sustainable Development.

 

I have learned that equity and security, in unfamiliar ways, are at the
heart of every sustainable development debate. Small island states ask if it
is equitable that they should be flooded due to global warming and rising
seas attributable to the actions of others. The President of Ecuador raises
the question how much should his country be paid to leave rainforests intact
in order to produce oxygen for the world. The "Green Economy," is viewed by
many in the Global South (the term commonly used in place of the "Third
World") as a further expansion of global capitalism, the commodification of
nature and a threat to indigenous people. Security becomes a question for
many of whether they will have enough food to eat in a world, soon to be
populated by 9 billion people, facing erosion of land, desertification and
land grabs by both foreign governments and corporations. Subsistence farmers
wonder why they must enter the monetary economy to become "sustainable" or
"be lifted out of poverty," and why their occupation of land for centuries
does not constitute "title."

 

I have learned that civil society, largely composed of nonprofit
organizations (also called nongovernmental organizations or NGOs) and given
quite limited official status, by holding to ideals of the future,
commenting on intergovernmental negotiations and making their voices heard,
are collectively a major force in the UN sustainable development process.
Yet I have also learned that, now more than ever, government is the
indispensable actor in bringing about the future we want.

 

With this growing knowledge, I have come to understand Rio+20 as not being a
failure. The language of outcome documents in UN conferences such as Rio+20
are arrived at by consensus. Thus, the outcome document of Rio+20 reflected
where there was and was not a global consensus on future commitments. The
current financial crisis (and related national and regional politics) hung
like a shadow over the proceedings. While progress on new commitments would
have been preferable, the central issue in the proceedings became whether
governments would preserve the basic principles of sustainable development
adopted at the First Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, principles such as social
equity, gender equality, common but differentiated responsibilities
(requiring greater responsibility for developed countries), human rights
(including, heretofore unrecognized rights to clean, drinkable water, basic
sanitation, food security, a minimum standard of living, and a social
protection floor), the polluter pays, the precautionary principle and the
right to development (the right of all peoples to develop their own
resources for their own needs, interests, and cultures). The reaffirmation
of these principles became the limited success of the governmental portion
of Rio+20.

 

The greater achievements came in the civil society portion. More than 30,000
civil society representatives participated in the official Rio+20 conference
and 100,000 more in the concurrent People's Summit and protest marches.
There were also large concurrent business and professional gatherings in
Rio, such as Business Action for Sustainable Development Business Day and
the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental
Sustainability. Knowing of the limitations of the official outcome document,
activists released 14 People's Sustainability Treaties and a People's
Sustainability Manifesto. President Rousseff of Brazil was justified in
calling Rio+20 the most participatory conference in history and "a global
expression of democracy."

 

People who gathered in Rio knew the official results of the conference would
be limited. They came nevertheless to network and to set the stage for the
next phase of the UN sustainable development process, the shaping of the
post 2015-development agenda in which the present Millennium Development
Goals will be integrated into broader and more ambitious sustainable
development goals. Those from civil society left to form a global citizens'
movement to take action now for sustainable development and to develop the
political will for global policy change. Rio+20 was not an end, rather it
was a new beginning. 

 

Herman

_____________________________________________

Herman Greene

2516 Winningham Drive

Chapel Hill, NC 27516

919-929-4116 (h)

919-624-0579 (c)

919-942-4358 (f)

Skype: hgreene-nc

hfgreene at mindspring.com 

 

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