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@mindspring.com