RIO DE JANEIRO, 14 June 2012 (IRIN) – \u201cThe pace is too slow\u201d and \u201cthere is a lack of urgency\u201d, grumbled a negotiator as preparatory talks on the final political outcome document limped back into motion on 13 June at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known Rio+20, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. <\/p>\n
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\u201cWe have just a week to go before the conference starts officially [on 20 June],\u201d said Sha Zukang, UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, and secretary-general of Rio+20. Officials, NGOs and members of other lobby groups have three days in which to work out their differences before heads of state make a final decision on accepting the document. <\/p>\n
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But with less than a week to go, there are still disagreements over the parameters of the main issues on the Rio+20 agenda – the green economy, the institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD), and the more recently introduced sustainable development goals (SDGs). <\/p>\n
Senior officials have been talking about \u201cconcrete decisions\u201d and the need to come up with a \u201cbinding agreement\u201d. Sha indicated that Rio\u2019s outcome would be about voluntary commitments that countries are willing to make to set themselves on a sustainable development path. <\/p>\n
Tara Rao, the lead author of a paper on a Southern perspective of a green economy for the Danish 92 Group, an association of 22 Danish NGOs, noted: \u201cThe day countries\u2019 finance ministers and heads of state participate in these talks\u2026 would be an indication that they are serious about commitments. At the moment sustainable development is still seen as an environmental issue, and countries are represented by their environment or foreign affairs ministers.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sustainable development – a term coined by the UN some 20 years ago – means that countries should achieve development and economic growth without compromising the environment or the wellbeing of their people. <\/p>\n
But on the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Summit, officials at the conference say Rio+20 should be seen as \u201cthe beginning of the process to draft a sustainable development pathway for countries\u201d. Besides, Sha pointed out, many issues (such as technology transfer from the developed to the developing world to enable them to become greener) have remained stuck in the UN climate change talks, the last round of which was held in Durban, South Africa, in 2011. Until those were resolved it would be difficult for countries to move forward. <\/p>\n
\u201cRio+20 is more about aspirations and not actions, as such,\u201d said Saleemul Huq, a climate change scientist at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a UK-based policy think-tank. <\/p>\n
IRIN spoke to NGOs and think-tanks about their sense of unresolved issues, and asked them to list three things that they hoped the world could draw from Rio+20. <\/p>\n
The sticky issues<\/strong> <\/p>\n 1) Defining a green economy. \u201cMost would define this as an approach towards the economy that can deliver growth, whilst being socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable,\u201d said Dirk Willem te Velde, head of the International Development Group at the UK think-tank, Overseas Development Institute (ODI).<\/p><\/div>\n Harjeet Singh, of ActionAid International, said there were fundamental differences between the rich and the poor world on how to implement actions towards achieving a \u201cgreen economy\u201d. In the developing world, green technology was one of the ways to get onto a sustainable development path, but it needed technology from the developed countries to do this. <\/p>\n Most of the technology is patented and costs money, and poor countries would like the rich ones to help out. But rich countries argue that most of the technology is in the hands of the private sector and they need to be mobilized. <\/p>\n 2) The institutional framework for sustainable development. This has to do with who or what will ensure that countries follow the new development model. Among the suggestions on the table is the need to upgrade organizations such as the UN Environment Programme into a fully fledged agency like the World Health Organization – with some teeth – said Rao. <\/p>\n There is also a need to develop a global body, \u201cwell-placed to monitor progress on the new Sustainable Development Goals, bringing the economic, social and environmental aspects of development together. It is all about long-term thinking, and how developed countries and international organizations should help low-income countries with appropriate measuring of progress,\u201d said ODI\u2019s te Velde. <\/p>\n 3) Defining SDGs. The debate is around whether SDGs should be phased in once the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) arrives in 2015, or whether it should it be a parallel process. \u201cOne element of this complexity is that the MDGs define the relationship between aid donors and recipients, while SDGs are relevant for all countries, including the large number of middle-income countries that were marginal to MDGs,\u201d said Tom Bigg, who is leading the IIED at Rio+20. <\/p>\n He said there was \u201creal concern\u201d among the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) \u201cthat this new focus will shift attention from their urgent and continued development challenges, so finding ways to address these in combination, without weakening the significance of either, is a priority. <\/p>\n \u201cIt will also take several years to translate broad declaratory goals into detailed targets and measures of progress that are useful at global \/ regional \/ national \/ sub-national levels. And agreement to a shared set of limits, and the implicit commitment to greater equity in access to scarce resources is hugely difficult politically, so this isn\u2019t going to be a straightforward process,\u201d he noted.<\/p><\/div>\n 1. \u201cA sense of changing world order – middle-income countries being much more assertive in setting out what they want from the multilateral system. <\/p>\n 2. \u201cA sense of how much is possible without global consensus – much as in the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), there\u2019s a huge amount that can be learnt from other countries \/ contexts, and Rio should provide a space in which this kind of learning and sharing can take place. <\/p>\n 3. \u201cA sense of how far there is to go before entrenched drivers of unsustainability are challenged and changed, but also that there\u2019s an agenda for change which can grow in strength and influence, not least because the impacts of unsustainability will increasingly affect us all.\u201d <\/p>\n Harjeet Singh, Action Aid International<\/strong> <\/p>\n 1. \u201cReaffirm the Rio 1992 principles, such as common but differentiated responsibilities, equity and historical responsibility, which developed countries at UNFCCC are trying hard to throw out of the window. <\/p>\n 2. \u201cRecognize that the current exploitative market-led economic model is affecting all three pillars (social, economic and environmental) of sustainable development, and we need a paradigm shift from the business-as-usual approach and to adopt \/ strengthen a human-rights-based approach to development. <\/p>\n 3. \u201cReiterate and remind the rich countries of the responsibility and obligation to provide \u201cmeans of the implementation\u201d (finance, technology, and capacity building) to the developing countries to adopt a low-carbon pathway to sustainable development and deal with \/ adapt to the impacts of climate change.\u201d <\/p>\n Dirk Willem te Velde: <\/p>\n \u201cTo some extent Rio is already a success, as it is helping countries and people to think long-term.\u201d <\/p>\n 1) Realize the threat posed by environmental problems, which will undermine inclusive and sustainable growth. <\/p>\n 2) Begin to formulate SDGs. <\/p>\n 3) Design economic policies that can realize the opportunities of moving towards a new model of inclusive and sustainable growth, e.g. by scaling up payments for ecosystem services in cases where they work. <\/p>\n Sameer Dossani, Advocacy Coordinator, ActionAid International. <\/p>\n \u201cAt this stage, we have very few expectations in terms of the official outcomes. Most countries seem bent on ensuring that the status quo will continue.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201dRio +20 may serve as a kind of wake-up call to citizens, who should be angry that not enough has been done in the 20 years since the first Earth Summit. When citizens start demanding that their governments represent the best interests of everyone on the planet, not just domestic business interests, then we will start to see a change.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n
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