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A street child in Mumbai, India. Hunger and poor nutrition

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An inconclusive meetingBy KARL WILSON

June 29, 2012 - 12:09pm http://w w w .chinadailyapac.com

They came, they ate and they left. An es timated 50,000 people, including world leaders ,

politicians, scientists, activists and NGOs, descended on Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22 for

the United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit.

It was in Rio in 1992 where world leaders had gathered for the first United Nations Conference

on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit.

This landm ark meeting resul ted in conventions on clim ate change, biodiversity and

desertification.

In the 20 years since that first m eeting, virtually every key indicator has gone backwards,

including greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity. Some would argue it has been two

decades o f failure.

Of the 90 environmental goals , there has been genuine progress on just four, such as fixing

the ozone layer and rem oving lead from fuel.

Greenhouse gas em iss ions have accelerated almos t 40 percent since 1992, and biodiversity

loss has increased a further 10 percent.

Leading conservation organizations are predicting that 25 percent of all mam mals , corals and freshwater fishes globally could be extinct by the end of

the century.

The International Energy Agency says the planet is on course for a three to six degree rise in global temperatures by the end of the century.

At the end of this years s umm it, the bes t the world leaders could do was to agree on a 53-page statement full of promis es but empty in details .

Executive director of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, dubs the statement as the longest s uicide note in history.

It fails on equity; fails on ecology; fails on economy in short it (Rio+20) is a failure of epic proportions. We m ust now work together to form a

movement to tackle the equity, ecology and economic cris es be ing forced on our children. The only outcome of this s umm it is jus tifiable anger, an

anger that we mus t turn into action.

Richard Dennis of the Australia Institute describes Rio+20 as a summ it cemetery.

It is where the hopes of the environment go to die, he tells ABC Radio.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prim e minis ter of Norway and chair of the Brundtland Commis sion, which brought the concept of sustainable

development to world attention 25 years ago, says: The Rio+20 declaration does not do enough to set humanity on a sus tainable path, decades after

it was agreed that this is ess ential for both people and the planet.

I understand the frustration in Rio today, she says in a statement. We can no longer ass ume that our collective actions will not trigger tipping points,

as environmental thresholds a re breached, risking irreversible dam age to both ecosystems and human com munities. These are the facts.

Different actions

Others were, however, more guarded in their criticism.

Climate and sus tainability specialis t with the Australian National University in Canberra, Fitrian Ardiansyah, says two different actions have to be

distinguished those taken by world leaders and those taken by community leaders, corporations, local governments and even some countries.

Even prior to Rio+20, there was a sense world leaders would not agree on anything subs tantive, he tells China Daily Asia Weekly.

Ardiansyah says the real challenge facing wor ld leade rs is trying to gain a bind ing, globa l consensus on ways to save the planet: Because we face so

many different issues from so m any countries, the best world leaders could achieve in Rio was a s tatement of non-binding aspirations .

Away from the main negotiations in R io, he says a grea t deal was s een and heard on how sus tainable development can be done and achieved: So if

we ass ess Rio+20 based on the consens us (or lack of it) achieved by the world leaders, we m ay conclude that it did not reach its goal. But if we see

the dynamics outside and the showcase by different non-state actors (or even state actors individually, bilaterally or at regional level), we can s till be

optimistic.

Financial support for sus tainable development, environmental protection and green economy has been pledged, says Ardiansyah, adding that

collaborative works am ong corporations, NGOs and other institutions have been continued and further promoted. Local governments have also s hown

that they can contribute to this good cause.

In 1992, world leaders pus hed by a lot of organizations agreed on the basic foundation to promote sus tainable development. Since then, many

collaborative works have been created, continued, magnified and replicated.

Sustainable forestry through certification to combat illegal logging is one example. Sustainable marine activities and fisheries and responsibleagriculture have been addressed and p romoted.

Large-scale, medium -scale as well as community-based conservation and sus tainable natural resource management have also been recognized.

Corporations too have been gradually taking part in the cause of sustainable development by changing their policies or increas ing corporate

respons ibility while many governments have increased transparency in such things as environmental management, says Ardiansyah.

The challenge now, according to him , is whether the current rate of change towards sus tainability is fas t and sufficient enough to catch up and reverse

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the damage done to the environment.

Dominic Waughray, senior director and head of environmental initiatives with the World Economic Forum (WEF), says the Rio+20 sum mit was not just

about environmental iss ues. It was also about economic and s ocial iss ues as well, he tells China Daily Asia Weekly.

Many social dimens ions o f the Millennium Development Goals rem ain unm et, he says.

Pressing challenges

While noting some successes in fighting malaria and tuberculosis , Waughray says hunger and poor nutrition among children is still a major concern

in many parts of the world. More attention needs to be paid to gender equality and empowerm ent for women and girls; child m ortality and im proving

maternal health; sanitation and the universal access to HIV/AIDS drugs.

Jobs and incom e inequality have also become pres sing challenges , particularly for many middle-income countries, he says.

According to the WEF, the world faces the challenge of providing 600 m illion jobs in the next decade. At present some 200 mi llion people worldwide

are unemployed, including 75 million young people.

Over 1.5 billion workers are in precarious em ployment in the world today, many of whom are women. Also, 40 million people are es timated to enter the

labor force every year into econom ies that cannot accommodate them.

About 910 million workers earn wages less than $2 per day and in the pas t three years, 55 million more people became working poor. Almost 60

percent of the worlds workers have no secure em ployment contract and 75 percent of the worlds people have no social protection.

On top of this, 1.4 billion people in the developing world still lack access to electricity; over three billion people rely on biomas s for heating and cooking;

over two billion people have no adequate sanitation and close to one billion people do not have clean water.

It is against this challenging social context, Waughray says, that scientists fear human s ocieties are placing s uch press ures on our environmental

systems that we may soon move beyond safe natural boundaries.

According to Kourtnii Brown, program as sociate for The Asia Foundation s environmen t programs in San Francis co, the policies and practices in

support of attaining sustainable development have not kept pace with moun ting pressu res from econom ic growth worldwide or with increasing

demands for finite natural resources in order to pursue s uch growth.

The general policy focus for Asian econom ies in transition is s till on meeting short-term welfare benefits as opposed to medium - to long-term

sustainable development goals, she says.

Developing states argue they, too, have a right to attain industrialized standards of living and that while binding, low-carbon and res ource-efficient

approaches are developed, they should not be required to forfeit their less sus tainable poverty alleviation plans and objectives.

As such, economic growth continues to be driven by the consumption o f environmental cap ital as an in finite public good.

Regardless of these affirmations, Japan, China, South Korea, and Malaysia (among the Asian nations that have passed aggress ive low-carbon,

renewable energy development plans ) seem to agree that going green does not mean sim ply choosing between clean environments or accepting a

less affluent standard of life, says Brown.

Brown believes regulations can s olve problems that markets ignore, and investing in things such as clean air and water have benefits that often

outweigh the costs in terms of healthcare and los t worker productivity.

They are beginning to take the first steps toward enabling a green econom y future and seeking partnerships between the public and private sectors

that have broad advantages for society, the environment, and the competitiveness of their economies , she s ays.

karlwilson@chinadailyapac.com