In 2012, in Rio, Governments will again try to muster the political will to move us on to a more sustainable path. It will convene forty years after Stockholm, the first United Nations environment conference, twenty-five years after the ground breaking Brundtland Report, twenty years after the last Rio Earth Summit, and ten years after the Johannesburg World Summit in Sustainable Development.<\/p>\n
In September 2007, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, speaking at the UN General Assembly, proposed a new Earth Summit and said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf 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\u2019s degradation,\u201d<\/p>\n
If we look back to the first Rio Conference in 1992, a number of successful outcomes can be identified. The Rio event created a deadline for ongoing negotiations on two multilateral environmental agreements: the Conventions on Climate Change and Biological Diversity. Delegates in Rio agreed to negotiate additional MEAs: the Desertification Convention and the Straddling Fish Stocks Agreement. Agenda 21 \u2013 the blueprint for creating a sustainable planet in the 21st century, with 40 chapters covering the main challenges facing our ability to live sustainably on the planet \u2013 was negotiated specifically for the Summit. In addition, the Rio Declaration \u2013 a set of 27 principles that have found their way into domestic law in many countries \u2013 and the Forestry Principles \u2013 an attempt to guide us all to manage the decreasing forests in a more sustainable way \u2013 were adopted. And, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development was created to track implementation of the Rio agreements. Finally, the Rio Earth Summit created a role for stakeholders in developing policy and implementing the agreements.<\/p>\n
Ten years later, in Johannesburg, the world tried to correct the direction that we were on. The original vision of the 2002 outcome was a New Deal between developed and developing countries. The final outcome did not achieve that goal, though, and in the end we had to be satisfied with a few additional targets, perhaps the most significant being the sanitation target.<\/p>\n
That brings us back to the aftermath of the Brazilian President\u2019s speech. On 4 November 2008, the G77 and China tabled a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a new Earth Summit. This represented the first time that the call for a Summit on sustainable development has come from developing countries.<\/p>\n
On 12-13 November 2008, Stakeholder Forum hosted the first workshop on Earth Summit 2012, which was attended by government representatives, civil society and intergovernmental organisations. The outcome of the workshop was the Donostia Declaration, endorsing a Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012 \u2013 the Declaration was translated into five languages and served as an invaluable resource to inform the advocacy of stakeholders all over the world. Developed countries were not ready to discuss a new Summit in December 2008. They deferred the decision to the 2009 UN General Assembly.<\/p>\n
The Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n In 2009, it became clearer to governments and stakeholders that the Summit could have a significant role in reframing the economic debate around a \u201cgreen new deal.\u201d As countries published their recovery packages from the financial crisis, HSBC reviewed them to see how green they were and there were some very heartening results. China\u2019s recovery package was, according to HSBC, 35% green. The European Community\u2019s was 53% and, amazingly, South Korea\u2019s was 83%. At least the discussion on sustainable development was being listened to by the finance and development ministries. It was as if we were now back to addressing the Stockholm Summit\u2019s themes of \u201dLimits to Growth,\u201d now knowing more clearly that these limits are not as far in future as we had thought \u2013 the most obvious ones being climate change and ecosystem loss.<\/p>\n Added to this was a new discourse emerging around environmental security issues. Our newspapers and media are full of terms such as Energy Security, Climate Security, Food Security, Health Security and Water Security.<\/p>\n The Agenda<\/strong><\/p>\n The Summit agenda, as drafted in the UN General Assembly resolution, suggests delegates should consider:<\/p>\n The Opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n The Summit offers additional opportunities to those identified in the GA resolution, including:<\/p>\n A convention on Corporate Accountability, possibly bringing together the new ISO 260000 standard and the OECD guidelines; and<\/p>\n<\/li>\n The Rio Spirit<\/strong><\/p>\n Stakeholder Forum, Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for Sustainable Development and Environment (FBOMS) – Latin America, Environment and Development Action Africa (ENDA) \u2013 Africa, and Participatory Research Information Asia (PRIA) – Asia have created a partnership to mobilise stakeholders for the Summit. Leaving Rio in 2012, we hope we will all be full of the \u2018Rio Spirit,\u2019 ready to be part of the answer, part of the engine of implementation, part of a global community that has agreed to work together to make this planet a sustainable one for all. Whatever happens in Rio, we have to change the way we are living on this planet. To, as WWF has said, be part of \u2018One Planet Living.\u2019 This idea was perhaps put best by Robert Kennedy in 1968, when he said: \u201ca revolution is coming, <\/strong>a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; Compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough\u2014 But a revolution is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the latest MEA Bulletin for the IISD Felix Dodds of Stakeholder Forum provides a brief synopsis of developments in international sustainable development since the Rio Earth Summit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthsummit2012.stakeholderforum.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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A convention on Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration: access to information, participation and justice in the area of environment.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\nA new role for stakeholders in engaging in policy agreements and in partnership for implementation<\/p>\n