Spotlight Rio+20: A Hard Slog Towards Sustainability

Lyuba Zarsky

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 series.

The Buddhists say enlightenment—the ability to see clearly and act appropriately– is to be found in the “middle path” between grasping and pushing away, expectation and aversion.

Attitudes about the likely outcomes of the Rio+20 Conference seem to fall into one camp or the other.  Some grasp towards hope that the “outcome document” produced via intense negotiations by 191 countries—what UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon called a “historic agreement”– will translate into a global action plan for a green economy.  Others, like the NGO leader Antonio Tujan Jr, find the agreement repulsive,  “an empty coffin” in which the sustainable development promises of the first Rio conference will be buried. Many grumbled even before it began that the Conference would be a waste of time, a global gabfest akin to fiddling while the planet burns.

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Spotlight Rio+20: Green from the Grassroots

Elinor Ostrom, guest blogger

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 series.

Elinor Ostrom, a Nobel laureate in economics, was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Planet Under Pressure conference and Professor of Political Science and Senior Co-Research Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. She passed away on June 12, 2012. This article was published that day by Project Syndicate.

Much is riding on the United Nations Rio+20 summit. Many are billing it as Plan A for Planet Earth and want leaders bound to a single international agreement to protect our life-support system and prevent a global humanitarian crisis.

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Spotlight Rio+20: From Top-Down to Bottom-Up: New Directions for Climate at Rio+20

Kristen Sheeran, guest blogger

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 series.

In 2009, I published a book with Graciela Chichilnisky, Saving Kyoto (New Holland 2009), that argued passionately for preserving the economic and political architecture of the only international treaty on climate change the world has known – the Kyoto Protocol. The book was timely: the countdown to compliance with Kyoto’s mandated emissions targets had begun; the international community was gathering that year in Copenhagen to negotiate the next round of climate commitments; and there was hope that the Obama administration could usher the U.S. back to the negotiating table in earnest. More importantly from my perspective, however, was the growing realization that the window of opportunity for stabilizing the earth’s climate system was rapidly coming to a close. The urgency of the crisis demanded immediate, extensive emissions reductions. And I firmly believed that a coordinated international effort that mandated reductions from world’s largest emitters was the fairest and most efficient way to stave off climate disaster.

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Spotlight Rio+20: South American Governments in Rio: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Eduardo Gudynas, guest blogger

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 series.

South American governments will attend the Rio +20 conference in a very strained environment: while at the national level, almost every country has undergone a weakening of its environmental management systems, at the international level, countries do not coordinate their positions. Particularly since such contradictions seem to go unnoticed by international analysts, especially from the English language media, it is necessary to explicitly describe them. Five key issues are presented below.

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Spotlight Rio+20: Beyond Rio+20

Sunita Narain

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 series.

It was June of 1992. The location was Rio de Janeiro. The occasion was the world conference on environment and development. A large number of people had come out on the streets. They were protesting the arrival of George Bush senior, the then president of the US. Just before coming to the conference, Bush had visited a local shopping centre, urging people to buy more so that the increased consumption could rescue his country from financial crisis. Protesters were angered by his statement that “the American lifestyle is not negotiable”. People wanted change in the way the world did business with the environment. They demanded that Bush should sign the climate convention and agree to tough emission reductions. The mood was expectant, upbeat and pushy.

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Spotlight Rio+20: Desert Year:$3 Trillion Thought Experiment for Rio+20

Skip Laitner, guest blogger

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 series.

Because I roam the desert a lot, the UV Index is something I pay attention to.  It is an international standard that measures the strength of ultraviolet radiation from the sun at a given time and place. Canada was the first to adopt such an index in 1992. The U.S. followed in 1994, as have any subsequent number of countries since that time.  Today the World Health Organization (WHO) has standardized the UV Index by replacing the many different regional methods that otherwise provided an inconsistent set of results.

A UV index of zero is essentially a nighttime reading.  An index of 10 (highlighted by the color red) roughly corresponds to the midday sun beating down on the earth through a clear sky.  Here on the desert we often hit the extreme, at noon, with index of 11.  That is the color purple and not really all that uncommon.  And as I reflected on the thought experiment I am about to describe, yes, I was out on the desert floor at roughly the time when the UV Index hit purple.

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Spotlight G-20 & Rio+20: The G-20 Casts a Long Shadow over Rio

Peter Riggs, guest blogger

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 and Spotlight G-20 series.

What is the relation between the Rio+20 Earth Summit and the upcoming G-20 summit in Mexico?   These two events occur back-to-back, and both are at the ‘heads of state’ level.  This month should be an opportunity for serious international course-correction, right?

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Spotlight G-20 & Rio+20: The G-20 Casts a Long Shadow over Rio

Peter Riggs, guest blogger

Part of the Triple Crisis Spotlight Rio+20 and Spotlight G-20 series.

What is the relation between the Rio+20 Earth Summit and the upcoming G-20 summit in Mexico?   These two events occur back-to-back, and both are at the ‘heads of state’ level.  This month should be an opportunity for serious international course-correction, right?

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Spotlight Rio+20: Rich nations backtracking as Rio Summit nears

Martin Khor

Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development culminates in a meeting this month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil just after the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit and the adoption of Agenda 21. The Spotlight Rio+20 series, which this post begins, invites our bloggers and other experts to analyze different aspects of the sustainable development negotiations, and how these, in turn affect the bigger picture of finance, development, and the environment. To find our latest material in this series, please click on the Spotlight Rio+20 category. You can also follow TCB on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

As the Rio summit on sustainable development nears, governments have yet to agree on most issues, while rich countries are backtracking on the original principles and commitments made 20 years ago.

With only ten days to go before the start of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, the countries are still far from agreeing on what to say in a summit declaration or plan of action. The final meeting to prepare for the Conference last week in UN headquarters in New York made some progress to narrow the gaps, but it was not enough.

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