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

Sun Jul 29 18:08:44 PDT 2012

Herman, I have been out of town, and just now reading your Rio+20 piece.
It is such a hopeful piece.  Much work to do, but hope filled. Thanks so
much.
Charles Hahn

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com>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*******
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>
> 919-929-4116 (h)****
>
> 919-624-0579 (c)****
>
> 919-942-4358 (f)****
>
> Skype: hgreene-nc****
>
> hfgreene at mindspring.com ****
>
> ** **
> **
>
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