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

[Isobel and Jim Bishop]

Dear Herman,
Thank you for the sound of hope here.
I am reminded of the phrase' world wide and history long' we often used.
I feel able to hold up my head again..
Shalom,
Isobel Bishop.
On 20/07/2012, at 10:19 AM, Herman Greene wrote:

> 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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