Rio de Janeiro may be a picturesque holiday destination for some; for others it symbolises international efforts to fix the environment. Although Stockholm should perhaps take pride of place in the development of the green movement, having hosted the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, the really iconic meeting was the first Earth Summit, held in Rio 20 years later.
From this first conference came the Rio declaration, which committed governments to a path of sustainable development (that much misused term), with environmental protection at its heart. This was very influential in a number of respects. For example, in Principle 7, we read “The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit to sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command.” And in Principle 10, “Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level.”
Together, these encapsulate the responsibility the industrialised world took on for achieving sustainable development elsewhere, and the key role which NGOs were increasingly beginning to play. Elsewhere, we find the “polluter pays” principle, explicit statements on the importance of women, the young and indigenous peoples, together with a clear statement of the precautionary principle: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities.” A seminal document indeed.
But this was not the only end result; this highly productive conference also produced the UN convention on climate change, arguably the most influential international agreement of the last half century, as well as conventions on biodiversity and desertification and the Agenda 21 sustainable development roadmap.
The Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (tagged as ‘The Future we Want’) is scheduled to run from 20 to 22 June, in the city where it all began. But the world is a different place now, and the high hopes and aspirations of 1992 – at a time when so much seemed to be changing for the better – cannot be matched at a time of global economic uncertainty. The meeting aims to secure renewed political commitment to sustainable development, and focuses on two themes: a ‘green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication’ and the ‘institutional framework for sustainable development’.
This three day event will be attended by an expected 50,000 delegates representing the major groups listed by the organisers: business and industry, children and youth, farmers, indigenous peoples, local authorities, NGOs, the scientific and technological community, women and workers and trade unions. There will also be many government representatives there, including 130 leaders from the 190 countries participating (but neither the British prime minister nor the German chancellor). This is a massive meeting which can do little other than achieve a political agreement to wording hammered out over many meetings in the preceding months, with many preparatory events starting in Rio itself from 13 June.
The important question is whether these vast, expensive events (and the large, expensive bureaucracies and interest groups which work behind the scenes between the big public conferences) achieve much in real terms. If the various reports and exhortations issued prior to the summit are anything to go by, the answer is that little has been achieved up to now, which gives little optimism that a continuation of the same process will be any more successful.
The Global Economic Outlook, published by the UNEP this week, reports that the ‘World Remains on Unsustainable Track Despite Hundreds of Internationally Agreed Goals and Objectives’ (the headline from the press release). The assessment reported that significant progress had been made in only four of 90 of the most important environmental goals and objectives reviewed. Even worse, “ The report cautions that if humanity does not urgently change its ways, several critical thresholds may be exceeded, beyond which abrupt and generally irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet could occur.” In the words of UNEP head Achim Steiner "If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and 'decoupled', then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation.”
Once again, we hear that we are all doomed, despite the observation of many people lucky enough to live in the developed world that air quality, water quality and overall care of the environment have all improved considerably in their lifetimes. But if both the rapidly developing economies and the least developed countries can become more prosperous, there is no reason why they should not find the same pattern in a generation’s time.
Perhaps the real reason for the apparent failure of 40 or more years of international efforts to promote sustainable development is that such a bloated, top-down approach is very unlikely to succeed in any field. The 500 targets and objectives (of which the 90 are a subset) are more a part of the problem than the solution. Broad agreement on desirable directions may be fine, but binding internationally-agreed goals go too far. The approach has failed to deliver any global emissions reductions and is unlikely to achieve anything much in terms of sustainable development. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
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