The
Rio +20 UN conference on sustainable
development is over. The conference declaration, titled "The Future We
Want," is a weak and meaningless
document. It aims at the lowest common denominator consensus to say it all, but
to say nothing consequential about how the world will move ahead to deal with
the interlinked crises of economy and ecology. Is this the future we want or
the future we dread?
The final document is being touted
as a victory for the developing world, in particular, for India , because
it reiterates the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. This
guiding principle, hammered out following much acrimony in 1992, establishes
the differentiation of action of different parts of the world. It is clearly
not negotiable. So in that respect, Rio 2012 is a
move ahead. But is this enough?
We need to ask why things have come
to such a pass that, 20 years later, all that the world is doing is to reaffirm
principles that cannot and should not be rewritten. Why does the world,
confronted with the dangers of climate change, destruction of the high seas and
the need to reinvent growth so that it is green and inclusive, do nothing more
than mouth platitudes
about change? Why is the world not willing to act?
The fact is that Rio +20
has come at a bad time. Europe , the environmental missionary, is preoccupied with
domestic financial concerns. The Eurozone is in danger of collapse and
governments now say that austerity and no-growth may not be the way to the
future. They are seeking a new term of industrialization in the face of
crippling unemployment. In the US ,
things are not very different. The
Obama administration is facing an election year and economy is its paramount issue. The US has no time
for global environmental issues. Obama,
who was elected on the promise of change, is shy of even mentioning the word
"climate," it would seem.
More importantly, the US wants to
dismantle the framework that puts it under pressure to act and contribute more
to reduce the global environmental burden. In the US
view, the principle of equity in global negotiations is an albatross that gives
advantage to countries like China
and India .
US wants to rewrite the global agreement on this count. They worked hard to do
this in climate negotiations and succeeded to some extent. Rio +20
was their chance to get rid of the principle of differentiation from where it
was first inscribed. The tried and thankfully failed.
But as a result every other agenda at Rio +20
was a victim of the first.
The
second key aim was to establish the concept of green economy and to use
sustainable development goals -- not unlike Millennium Development Goals -- to
measure performance against green targets. This agenda was soon lost to
geopolitical tectonic shifts, where the rich world is declining and the poor
world is ascending.
The very idea of green economy was
viewed as a new form of green protectionism and conditionality that would
hinder growth. In the final Rio +20 decision,
the agenda has been tied up in convoluted wordings that will make progress
difficult.
It is also important to note that
the agenda of green economy was floated without a global agreement on its
definition. Industrialized countries look at environmental action as divorced
from concerns of development and social well-being. They see environmental
measures as the icing on the cake of development, already done and delivered. This icing helps improve performance
through efficiency and cleaning up of pollution. Developing and emerging
countries do not have this luxury. They need growth, but this growth must be
equitable and sustainable. Their approach to a green economy will be different.
This is the challenge that Rio +20 should have
faced squarely.
In this way, Rio +20
was the opportunity to tackle what is clearly the most intractable and most
obvious of all issues confronting the world: the current economic growth
paradigm that is consumption-led and is gobbling its way through banks and
thepPlanet. It is now well understood that the world is staring at financial
recession on the one hand and environmental catastrophe on the other. It is
also increasingly understood that the consumption patterns and lifestyle of the
already-rich cannot be afforded by all. So what is the way ahead? How can the
world move towards sustainable production and sustainable consumption while
ensuring growth for all? Rio +20 should have
focused on sustainable development goals to achieve such growth. In addition,
it should have focused on new robust measurement tools to track progress in
well-being, the GDP-plus economy.
Instead, in my view, Rio +20 became the
battleground for what can only be considered an illegitimate fight. And if Rio+20 is a failure because of non-action, then it
is a failure of global leadership that allowed the US and its cronies to try fiddling
with the principle of equity in global action. This deepened the distrust that
destroys global cooperative action.
I returned to Rio
after 20 years to better understand developments that mean so much for the
future of the world. I came back saddened by realization that all these years,
people have grown up but our leaders are still in kindergarten.
Source : HuffPOST