Bring back the Rio92 Spirit
UCHITA DE ZOYSA (CONVENER – CLIMATE SUSTAINABILITY PLATFORM)
In 1991, I was part of a small group of civil society members that came to Geneva to attend the second preparatory committee meeting of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). We all quickly found common ground in sustainability to work together, and when we went to the Earth Summit in 1992 we were in one global forum.
As an International NGO Forum we were united to draft the Alternative NGO Treaties, as we all knew that we had to act together to save the earth. Despite our enormous diversity we came together in the true spirit of an Earth Summit. Sadly, the Rio+20 process appears to lack the Rio92 spirit and civil society particularly appears to have forgotten the simple concept of “united we thrive and divided we perish”.
A Low Key Earth Summit
Twenty Years later, another Earth Summit is being organized without many governments, civil society members, stakeholders or the populations of nations knowing much or anything about it. As the self appointed and UN appointed NGO representatives continue to enjoy the perks of conferencing, the rest of the world waits to hear what decisions are being made on their behalf.
People’s representatives from the South are marginalized in this process and have no ways and means to contribute to a decisive global event that may have a determining impact on the future of mankind on earth. Even smaller and poorer governments are in the dark, while another intercessional meeting for Rio+20 is convened.
The success of the earth summit will depend on the ability of the UN secretariat to ensure true global participation and dialogue, and not by adding to the hundreds of already existing international agreements for non-action by nations. If this can not be achieved another ‘last chance to save the earth’, as mentioned in 1992, will be wasted.
Greening the Trade War
The central theme emerging for Rio+20 is the Green Economy. While greening the economy is a process intended to regulate the world’s unsustainable consumption, production and trading, the objective of creating a green economy appears to be focused more on creating new market opportunities. Greening the existing industrial production system will not help green the economy; it will not take us towards a carbon neutral society, nor drive us away from wasteful lifestyles.
The questions that should be asked here include; are we entering into a new phase of a global trading regime that favours the rich and powerful? And are we using the concepts of environmentalism to green wash the black industrial economies?
Poverty Eradication
While discussing sustainability for the past four decades, the world has failed in the eradication of hunger and poverty on earth. Currently, half of the world’s peoples are under the poverty line and are desperately struggling to survive on a daily basis.
Poverty is a result of a hypocritical global governance system. This is a system that has promoted unsustainable production regimes and over-consuming societies to grow further; a system that rewards exploitation by a few and obstructs access to resources by the majority; a system where the unconcerned and non-compassionate continue to decide the destinies of humanity.
If any hope for sustainability is to be drawn in the development processes in the developing countries where the poor reside, poverty needs to be eradicated.
Sustainable Consumption and Production
The prevailing unsustainable consumption and production system is the largest contributing factor to both climate change and poverty on earth and thus requires greater emphasis and focus at the levels of international regulation. If anthropogenic climate change is to be controlled, then developing a regulatory framework for sustainable consumption and production must be a priority as well.
In very simple terms, unsustainable consumption and production needs to be regulated on earth, parallel to emission cuts as a solution to both problems of climate change and poverty.
Climate Sustainability
Climate change is no longer a possibility but a larger reality that has already commenced and is ascending. While the Kyoto Protocol is said to be expiring in 2012, and the world is looking for a new binding agreement in 2012, the Rio+20 UNCSD Summit once again fails to include it in its agenda. Sadly, the Climate Change Convention that was signed at the first Earth Summit in 1992 has become out of reach of the sustainable development programme and has become another separate programme in the UN system.
International Sustainable Development Governance
The current International Environmental Governance (IEG) initiative may be two decades too old. Obviously the UN needs to clean up the big mess of managing the Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA). However, trying to segregate environmental governance would only create another distraction to the sustainability processes and isolate that crucial pillar from economic and social considerations of a way forward on earth.
What we require at this stage is to create more central coordination on sustainable development as a holistic approach towards facing climate change, poverty eradication and global peace on earth. This would be a better strategy to achieve wellbeing and happiness for all on earth.
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