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

Thu Jul 19 17:26:52 PDT 2012

Herman,
Thank you very much for your presence at RIO+20 and your report on it.  Will continue to ponder...
Ellie

-----Original Message-----
From: Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com>
To: 'Order Ecumenical Community' <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Thu, Jul 19, 2012 7:20 pm
Subject: [Oe List ...] My report on Rio+20

Here’s the report I wrote on Rio+20:

NOTESFROM RIO+20: WHY IT DIDN’T FAIL
ByHerman F. Greene
I was in Rio from June 13-22 for the UN Conference onSustainable Development (Rio+20) and eventspreceding it. The prevailing sentiment is that Rio+20was a failure. Scott Simon of NPR described it as the biggest UN conferenceever and perhaps one of its biggest duds. TheNew York Times quoted a representative of CARE as saying it was “nothingmore than a political charade,” and a representative of Greenpeace asdeclaring it “a failure of epic proportions.” When the officialoutcome document from Rio+20, titled“The Future We Want,” is not rejected outright, tepid assessmentsare generally given such as “it partially salvaged prior commitments, butoffered little new.”

Evaluating Rio+20 as a failure hasconsequences. For some, the “failure” of Rio+20underscores the weakness or the UN processes as a whole. Because blame for thealleged failure has largely been placed on “governments,” the faithof some in the ability of governmental and intergovernmental organizations toaddress major problems has fallen. In the United States, where the event was seldomreported, summary reports of failure may lead some to say, “Ididn’t know about it and it wasn’t important anyway.”

My view of the conference is, however, different. I had to educatemyself to understand the UN sustainable development process, of which Rio+20 is only the latest chapter in a 40-year long andcontinuing history. I began to engage directly in this process in October 2011 inorder to promote formation of an International Ethics Panel on EcologicalCivilization (IEPEC), a panel first proposed by Professor Ryoichi Yamamoto at a September 2011 conference in Tokyo. Returning from thatconference, I learned Rio+20 was the place to take this idea as many NGOs andsome governments were emphasizing the need for new ethical structures in UNgovernance in connection with one of Rio+20’s two major themes, “InstitutionalFramework for Sustainable Development.”

In the course of attending three preparatory events in New York and the final Rio+20conference, I have learned the UN’s sustainable development process isnot 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 mostappropriate for achieving this. Environment comes in because it must: after allEarth is the living planet and resource base on which humans depend bothphysically and culturally. Economics enters because our current understandingof social development is dominated by it and by certain establishedconventions, such as GDP, neo-liberalism, globalization, and industrialization,all of which were questioned in the Rio+20 debates, especially in relation tothe conference’s other major theme, “The Green Economy in theContext of Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development.

I have learned that equity and security, in unfamiliar ways, are at theheart of every sustainable development debate. Small island states ask if it isequitable that they should be flooded due to global warming and rising seasattributable to the actions of others. The President of Ecuador raises thequestion how much should his country be paid to leave rainforests intact inorder to produce oxygen for the world. The “Green Economy,” isviewed by many in the Global South (the term commonly used in place of the“Third World”) as a furtherexpansion of global capitalism, the commodification of nature and a threat toindigenous people. Security becomes a question for many of whether they willhave 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 governmentsand corporations. Subsistence farmers wonder why they must enter the monetary economyto 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 nonprofitorganizations (also called nongovernmental organizations or NGOs) and given quitelimited official status, by holding to ideals of the future, commenting onintergovernmental negotiations and making their voices heard, are collectivelya major force in the UN sustainable development process. Yet I have alsolearned that, now more than ever, government is the indispensable actor inbringing about the future we want.

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

The greater achievements came in the civil society portion. More than 30,000civil society representatives participated in the official Rio+20 conference and100,000 more in the concurrent People’s Summit and protest marches. There were also largeconcurrent business and professional gatherings in Rio,such as Business Action for Sustainable Development Business Day and the WorldCongress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability. Knowingof the limitations of the official outcome document, activists released 14People’s Sustainability Treaties and a People’s SustainabilityManifesto. 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 theofficial results of the conference would be limited. They came nevertheless tonetwork and to set the stage for the next phase of the UN sustainable developmentprocess, the shaping of the post 2015-development agenda in which the presentMillennium Development Goals will be integrated into broader and more ambitioussustainable development goals. Those from civil society left to form a globalcitizens’ movement to take action now for sustainable development and todevelop the political will for global policy change. Rio+20was not an end, rather it was a new beginning. 

Herman
_____________________________________________
Herman Greene
2516  Winningham Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-929-4116 (h)
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Skype: hgreene-nc
hfgreene at mindspring.com 

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