Rio+20 Earth Summit: campaigners decry final document
Jonathan Watts and Liz Ford 23 June, 2012
At the end of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, heads of state and ministers from more than 190 nations produced a plan to set global sustainable development goals and other measures to strengthen global environmental management, protect the oceans, improve food security and promote a “green economy”. However, the outcome produced a mixture of doubt, disappointment and division.
After more than a year of negotiations and a ten-day conference, the outcome document – The Future We Want – was strongly criticized by environmentalists and anti-poverty campaigners. They said it didn’t have the detail and ambition needed to solve the problems of a deteriorating environment, increasing inequality and a global population expected to rise from seven billion to nine billion by 2050. But the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, said the document would guide the world on to a more sustainable path: “Our job now is to create a critical mass. The road ahead is long and hard.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was a time to be optimistic. “A more prosperous future is within our reach, a future where all people benefit from sustainable development no matter who they are or where they live.” However, civil society groups and scientists disagreed strongly. Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace called the summit a complete failure. “We didn’t get ‘the future we want’ in Rio, because we do not have the leaders we need. The leaders of the most powerful countries put private profit before people and the planet.”
Rio+20 followed the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which introduced important agreements on climate change and biodiversity, as well as commitments on poverty and social justice. Since then, however, global emissions have risen by 48%, 300 million hectares of forest have been cleared and the population has increased by 1.6 billion people. Despite a reduction in poverty, one in six people are malnourished.
The problems have grown, but nations are less able to deal with them because the EU is in economic crisis, the US has a presidential election, and corporations and civil society have become more powerful as governments have weakened. Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and David Cameron were absent so the BRICS nations dominated the conference.
Brazil pushed through the compromise text and avoided the conflict and chaos of the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. But some saw the conference as a wasted opportunity for political leaders to seek a more ambitious outcome. “Our final document is an opportunity that has been missed. It contributes almost nothing to our struggle to survive as a species,” said the Nicaraguan representative. “We now face a future of increasing natural disasters.” Other delegates expressed disappointment, but said the agreement was a start.
The main outcome of the conference is a plan to set sustainable development goals, but these have not yet been chosen and will be left to an “open working group” of 30 nations to decide upon by September 2013. The new goals will probably lead to disagreements between rich and poor nations. The G77 group of developing countries insists that the goals must include strong social and economic elements, including financing and technology transfer.
The 49-page document contained many other steps. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will get a more secure budget, a broader membership and strong powers to initiate scientific research and coordinate global environment strategies. Rio+20 also established a “high-level” forum to coordinate global sustainable development. Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said it was an agenda for change: “World leaders and governments have today agreed that a move to a green economy offers a key pathway towards a sustainable twenty-first century.”
The green economy was simply named as an “important tool” that countries could use if they wished. Nations agreed to think about ways to place a higher value on nature – for example, alternatives to GDP as a measure of wealth that include more environmental and social factors, and efforts to assess and pay for “environmental services” provided by nature, such as carbon removal and habitat protection.
All 192 governments recognized that “fundamental changes in the way societies consume and produce are essential for achieving global sustainable development”. This appeared to mean different things to different people. EU officials suggest workers could pay less tax and polluters and landfill operators pay more. Hillary Clinton said it should be reflected in the way products are advertised and packaged. All nations “reaffirmed” commitments to phase out harmful fossil fuel subsidies.
These changes will cost money, but nobody wanted to promise any. The G77 said this was a major cause of the weak outcome. Developing countries wanted a $30 billion per year fund to help in the move to sustainability, but in the middle of a financial crisis in Europe, nobody was willing to say how much money they would contribute. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said rich nations had not kept Copenhagen promises on “green funding” and should not criticize others for a lack of ambition: “All countries must take responsibility.”
