The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, popularly known as Rio+20, ended in failure in Rio de Janeiro on June 21st 2012. The purpose of the conference was to see how the global community could promote development or prosperity for the poor of the world without destroying the global environment. This is not the first time that these issues have been discussed.
In 1972 the Club of Rome published the book Limits to Growth. The book examined whether the life-sustainable role of the biosphere was being undermined by the demands which people in the affluent world were making on the natural resources of planet earth. The interconnection between human development and the finite resources of planet earth got another airing in discussions carried out by the World Commission on Environment and Development under the leadership of Gro Harlem Brundtland in the 1980s. These discussions culminated in the publication of a landmark report entitled Our Common Future. The book championed “sustainable development” which it defined as “meeting the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. [1]
The next chapter in the development/ecology debate took place at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and poor countries spoke of rights that poor people had to develop. This would mean more affluent countries would have to lessen their impact on the planet, otherwise human demands on the planet would destroy vital, life-support systems. The conference was popularly known as the “Earth Summit.” Political leaders from across the world, as well as environment and development activists, and a huge press corps assembled in Rio to discuss the future direction of planet earth. At the 1992 conference, what we now call the Civil Society Organisation, in the areas of peace, justice and ecology met in Aterro do Flamengo a park in down town Rio, whereas the politicians were holed-up in a conference centre about 25 miles from Rio.
Many of the speeches which were made at the conference were well-crafted and seemed to indicate that political leaders were beginning to understand that continual economic growth on a finite planet could not be achieved without destroying the environment. Some seemed to understand that the human-industrial economy is a subsystem of the larger, finite non-expanding earth. But on closer analysis most adhered to the assumptions of neo-classical economics that well-being can only be achieved by continued economic growth. Rich countries were not willing to reduce their standard of living so that poorer countries could have more access to resources. President George Bush Sr. told his audience at Rio the American way of life was not up for negotiation.
Some success was achieved at Rio. The leaders approved what became known as the Rio Declaration. This is a set of principles which were designed to guide future multilateral environment agreements. The conference also gave rise to some very important environmental agreements – the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Conference on Biodiversity. Agenda 21, which was supposed to guide development and environment decisions at local and national level, failed to have the impact it should have had in redirecting local and national economies. On the broader stage, the conference endorsed the “polluter pays” principle, the right to development for all people and the common but differentiated responsibilities between poor and rich countries to address issues of environmental degradation. On a per capita basis, the Chinese emit only one-fifth of the average person in the US. Within 15 years China will outstrip the US as the biggest economy on the planet.
See next news item below for further reflections …
[1] Our Common Future, 1987, Oxford University Press, New York, page 8.