Earth Summit 2012 – Capturing the Spirit of Rio
Wheilstn nearly all the media was focused focussing almost all its attention on on the Copenhagen Climate Change meeting at the end of last year, they missed a rather significant development in international environmental policy – on 24th December 2009, the United Nations General Assembly debated and agreed to a newhold an Earth Summit in 2012, again in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where the landmark Rio Conference on Environment and Development was held twenty years ago. , again in Rio Brazil.
A ‘Rio +20’ Earth Summit in First 2012 was first proposed in 2007 when the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addressed the UN GA and said:
“I propose that we hold a new conference, in 2012, to be hosted by Brazil: the Rio + 20 Conference.
If we want to salvage our common heritage, a new and more balanced distribution of wealth is needed, both internationally and within each country. Social equity is our best weapon against the planet’s degradation,”
It was is clear to President Lula and perhaps toto many others that the world has changed since 2002 and enormously since 1992 when the world agreed to Agenda 21 – the the outcome document from the Rio Earth Summit and a blueprint for creating a sustainable planet in the Twenty-First21st century.
Many of the problems we are now facing are because the agreement from 1992 and 2002, and even 1972 when the first Earth Summit was held, have not been fully implemented by governments. Though the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johanesburg in 2002 sought to address some of the problems in implementation of Agenda 21, many felt that the outcome of the Summit lacked the necessary commitment and conviction to drive forward progress. As a result, we nowThese face challenges are on a number of fronts.
· We are living beyond the carrying capacity of the planet.
· The economic model is not only failing to deliver to enormous numbers of the worlds population,s but is actively and increasing destroying the abilityseriously compromising the possibility for us all to live on this planet together
· Because of the lack of implementation of previous sustainable development agreements there is now an increasing link between environment and security
· Climate change represents an is acceleration the problems we are facing
· The emergence of the G20 and in particular Brazil, South Africa India and China and the BASIC group is rebalancing the debate
· The UN has not the mandate, tools nor institutions needed to address the present and future challenges
What should Rio+20 address?issues should be addressed by an Earth Summit in 2012?
A range of governmental and non-governmental actors have contributed to The governments and stakeholder who have contributed to thinking about what the the kinds of issues that an Earth Summit should address and have come forward with a very ambitious agenda. The UN General Assembly resolution that was passed at the end of last year identifiesy four areas for the Summit to addressof focus for the Summit. These were:are:
· the green economy and poverty alleviation;
· emerging issues;
· institutional framework for sustainable development governance and (sustainable development governance)
· a review of implementation of present agreements.
· emerging issues
The resolution also recognises the key role that stakeholders will It also recognised the key role that stakeholders have and can play in the Summit, both as agents of change and as implementers of sustainable development commitments. The resolution calls for their active engagement in the Summit in reviewing progress made so far and identifying priorities for the future:.
“[The General Assembly] reaffirms the objective of enhancing the participation and effective involvement of civil society and other relevant stakeholders, as well as promoting transparency and broad public participation in the implementation of Agenda 21;”
“[The General Assembly decides] to invite relevant stakeholders to participate fully in the twenty-year review of progress achieved in the implementation of Agenda 21”
What could Rio+20 achieve?
The present economic model is fuelling our dash to disaster as it is built on the assumption of an infinite availability of natural resources. . We have built it on the foundations of using our natural resources as if they are infinite. The principal goals of our economy should be to improve the lives of the people and to free them from want and ignorance – responsible capitalism can produce enough wealth to meet society’s needs equitably, without compromising the planet. Yet the past thirty years have been characterised by irresponsible capitalism, pursuing limitless economic growth at the expense of both society and environment, channelling more and more money into fewer hands, with little or no regard for the natural resource base upon which such wealth is built. , people should be free from want, ignorance, and that responsible capitalism is the best means of producing the wealth required to meet society’s needs. What we have had for over thirty years is irresponsible capitalism.
Almost 40 years on from the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, we are revisiting the challenge that the Club of Rome posed to the international community in its Limits to Growth report – how can we continue to advance human prosperity in a world with finite resources?We are in many ways back to 1972 and the challenge that the Club of Rome gave to the Stockholm Earth Summit – that of recognising that there are ‘Limits to Growth’.
Rio+20: must give us a new green growth path while recognising that any new form of development must be both sustainable and accessible to all.
The newA host of emerging issues since the Johannesburg Earth Summit ofWorld Summit on Sustainable Development (LINK) in 2002 have been increasingly been filling our newspaper columns. Environment and security issues are becoming increasingly intertwined – the so-called The ‘environmental and- security nexus – covers issues such as climate security, energy security, food security, water security, health security and environmental refugees. The clear relationship between environmental degradation and human security was made even more apparent by the recent earthquake in Haiti, the impacts of which were significantly worsened in one part of the island due to deforestation. Most recently made so obvious by the recent Haiti disaster made worse by the deforestation on part of the island. At the Copenhagen Climate meeting the Bangladesh Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said he expected 20 million environmental refugees to be fleeing his country by 2050 and called on developed countries to take some of them.measures to accommodate some of them.
Rio+20: needs to develop a new blueprint to address the environmental and security nexus challenges and find a positive and encouraging way by which people tocan work together in addressing them.
Climate Change is compounding a whole host of other environmental problems, including ecosystem degradation, water quality and availability and marine and ocean health : facing this multidue of converging problems, the international community must redouble its efforts to address these problems and strive for a meaningful agreement in COP16 in Mexico after the relative failure of Copenhagen. making everything much more difficult and the failure in Copenhagen must redouble all of our efforts. Developed nations have had over twenty years to promote and invest in sustainable development both domestically and through Overseas Development Assistance. Despite an awareness of the increasing threat posed to our environmental support systems by the current development paradigm, little has been achieved, and the lack of both remedial and preventative action at an earlier stage has only increased the scale and cost of the required actions today. It just is not acceptable for countries who have had this long to address the issues to continue to pass on the problems on to their successors. If we are to keep to within a 1.5 degree temperature rise then the current offers on the table are not good enough. Rio+20 will be the next time when Heads of State come together to develop a vision for achieving sustainable development in the 21st century – twenty years from when their predecessors signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Rio+ 20: by 2012 we need to have governments signinggovernments need to sign up to onto a 40% cut in CO2 by 2020 – this will require leadership and now that will need leadership not only from the US, Europe and Russia, but also from China and other members of the BASIC group of countries.
To enable the UN to be able to play its vital role then at least governments need to give it the tools to do this.
Rio+20: needs to at last upgrade UNEP into a UN entity that cann Agency where it will play a role in clustering and focusing providing focus to the vast array of environmental conventions and multilateral agreements. UNEP’s role should be strengthened and in building a strong integrated science base for policy makers to be able to base their decisions on the best available science.
Rio+20: in the area of sustainable developmental governance the Trusteeship Council, should be reformed, as was discussed at Rio in 1992, to become a Ssustainable Ddevelopment Ccouncil, putting sustainable development at its rightful place at the top of the UN system. A Sustainable Development Council created to address new and emerging issues.
The Rio Spirit
Finally, Rio unleashed a global movement of stakeholders who engaged in the globala multilateral and multi-stakeholder dialogue on how we could all be able to live together bettermroe cooperatively, and share the world’s resources more equitably and sustainably.. These stakeholders y brought with themselveswith them a whole range of policy recommendations and also lots of great ideas.
Rio+20: 2012 should also be about stakeholders translating bringing their commitments, ideas, projects experience and energy into concrete commitments to tackle to the challenges that face us. The involvement of stakeholders at all levels enriches our democracy as we move towards a more participatory democracy model. The strengthening of our democracies at all levels must be part of the legacy of the Earth Summit in 2012. a Rio +20.