<div>Dear Herman, </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Sustainable Development on the Planet Earth is a mission whose implications are everyone's concern and responsiblity, yet like many impossible tasks need champions to hold the banner so we don't lose our way. Thank you for being the one who is willing to share your reflections on Rio+20 and continue to stand. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Evelyn Kurihara Philbrook<br><br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Jeanette Stanfield <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jstanfield@ica-associates.ca" target="_blank">jstanfield@ica-associates.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<div style="WORD-WRAP:break-word">Dear Herman,
<div>Thank you very much for sharing your reflections on RIo+20. </div>
<div>They very helpfully illuminate the complexity of our real situation as</div>
<div>human beings working toward sustainable development on planet earth. </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Go well, </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Jeanette</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>
<div class="h5">
<div>On 2012-07-19, at 8:19 PM, Herman Greene wrote:</div><br></div></div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:10pt">Here’s the report I wrote on <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20:<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p style="TEXT-ALIGN:center" class="MsoNormal" align="center"><b><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt;FONT-WEIGHT:bold">NOTES FROM <u></u>RIO<u></u>+20: WHY IT DIDN’T FAIL<u></u><u></u></span></font></b></p>
<p style="TEXT-ALIGN:right" class="MsoNormal" align="right"><b><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt;FONT-WEIGHT:bold">By Herman F. Greene<u></u><u></u></span></font></b></p>
<p style="MARGIN-TOP:12pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">I was in Rio from June 13-22 for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (<u></u>Rio<u></u>+20) and events preceding it. The prevailing sentiment is that <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20 was a failure. Scott Simon of NPR described it as the biggest UN conference ever and perhaps one of its biggest duds. <i><span style="FONT-STYLE:italic">The New York Times </span></i>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 <u></u>Rio<u></u>+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.”<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">Evaluating <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20 as a failure has consequences. For some, the “failure” of <u></u>Rio<u></u>+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 <u></u><u></u>United States<u></u><u></u>, 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.”<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">My view of the conference is, however, different. I had to educate myself to understand the UN sustainable development process, of which <u></u>Rio<u></u>+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 <u></u>Ryoichi Yamamoto<u></u> at a September 2011 conference in <u></u><u></u>Tokyo<u></u><u></u>. 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.”<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">In the course of attending three preparatory events in <u></u>New York<u></u> and the final <u></u>Rio<u></u>+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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">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 “<u></u>Third World<u></u>”) 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.”<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">With this growing knowledge, I have come to understand <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20 as not being a failure. The language of outcome documents in UN conferences such as <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20 are arrived at by consensus. Thus, the outcome document of <u></u>Rio<u></u>+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 <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">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 <u></u><u></u>Summit<u></u><u></u> and protest marches. There were also large concurrent business and professional gatherings in <u></u>Rio<u></u>, 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 <span style="LETTER-SPACING:0.1pt">Rousseff of <u></u>Brazil<u></u> was justified in calling <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20 the most participatory conference in history and “a global expression of democracy.”</span><u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE:12pt">People who gathered in <u></u>Rio<u></u> 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. <u></u>Rio<u></u>+20 was not an end, rather it was a new beginning. <u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:10pt">Herman<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<div style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt"><u><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:11pt">_____________________________________________</span></font></u><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:10pt"><u></u><u></u></span></font></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt"><u></u><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:11pt">Herman Greene</span></font><u></u><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt"><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u>2516 Winningham Drive<u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u></span></font><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><font face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:10pt"><u></u><u></u></span></font></div>
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