And so the world left Rio once again – this time leaving us all a little underwhelmend. In 1992, six major agreements came out of the Rio summit, three of which were legally binding: on climate change, biological diversity and desertification.
On this occasion, we have the "Future We Want", a 49 page document with a lot of words with at best, some baby steps towards saving the planet and, at worst, confirming a future we really didn't want.
This week, I thought I would reflect on Rio, what our response should be and highlight some of the major global challenges that need attention right now. I shall also consider what it now means for action here at home: for politicians, business, civil society organsiations like the RSPB and individuals. While the RSPB is underwhelmed by the conference, it has, as I expected, provided us all a chance to reflect on what we need to do to reinvigorate action to help us deliver the twin goals of sustainable development: a fair and just society that lives within environmental limits. It's just a shame that having reflected, politicians were unable to do anything about it.
My intention is to keep the debate going. 50,000 people descending on Rio for ten days was unlikely to ever fix the world’s major social and environmental challenges. But it would calamitous if people now went back to business as usual. The agreement has too few commitments and too many opportunities for nations to do nothing. This is just not good enough.
Politicians need to recognise the inadequacy of this agreement and think afresh about what we need to do to allow our species to live in harmony with nature.
So what did Rio achieve?
Today, I’ll focus on the substance of what was agreed and relate this back to what we, as part of BirdLife International, were seeking (which I highlighted here).
In summary, there are some positive words (for example in the biodiversity section or green economy below). But the final agreement is largely a text of recommitments rather than new commitments. There are a few new initiatives but these are largely to plug gaps in delays because ambitious agreement could not be reached.
The RSPB and Birdlife International wanted...
...a green economy in the context of sustainable development. We did not get this. The text says the green economy prescriptions should be underpinned by Rio principles (good); that corporations will be invited but not mandated (bad) to report on their environmental and social impact of their operations; that there should be “Urgent action” on unsustainable production and consumption (good), but gives no details or timetable on how this can be achieved (bad); integrating environmental factors into decision making should take place “where national circumstances and conditions allow" (awful); that we need for broader measures of progress to complement GDP and asks for UN statisticians to begin work on this issue (good but support from nations was weak); that there is a recommitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and subsidies that contribute to overfishing but the language is incredibly weak (bad). In addition to the text, Nick Clegg announced at the conference that UK will be the first country in the world to force major companies to measure their Carbon footprint (good). Alas Bristish businesses have reacted by calling for a cut in green taxes.
...better protection for our oceans. The ocean text is very weak, particularly because of the refusal to start negotiations on the implementing agreement for high seas biodiversity but also because the maximum sustainable yield paragraph is essentially just a re-commitment to the aim already agreed at WSSD in 2002. Instead of negotiating an implementing agreement to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that would address sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, including effective safeguard for ecologically and biologically sensitive areas it looks like Rio+20 will pass the buck to UNCLOS to take forward.
...progress on agreeing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with biodiversity at their heart. The intention was to try to find a way to agree binding goals to replace the millennium development goals which expire in 2015. There is acceptance that having a clear statement of intent on social and environment crises is important. However, Rio failed to agree how SDGs would be set up. This should worry our Prime Minister, David Cameron, as he (with the Presidents of Indonesia and Liberia) will be co-chairing a process to agree the post-2015 framework for international development.
...a framework for action. I think it is difficult to find anything in the document that fits the bill. If we want to drive change, then documents like the one agreed at Rio are woefully insufficient. But, we cannot expect mutli-lateral environmental agreements to save the world on their own. Action within countries, within grassroots communities and constituencies, and by businesses, civil society organisations, individuals and yes domestic governments count much more. And it is this that I shall turn to this tomorrow.
What did you think about what was agreed in Rio?
It would be great to hear your views.
What a waste of time all these meetings are,nothing ever gets agreed and if things get worse the politicians blame other politicians or other countries.Atypical example is the financial crisis.Nick Clegg is probably the worst one pretending to be the good guy knowing he has no power but thinks it will make him look good,if he got power he would soon change his tune.
Thanks for the comments. I plan to keep this debate going this week and recognise, Jay, that we are probably going to do a fair bit more ourselves if we are going to make progress.
I had a feeling that this summit would be similar to the international meetings about the eurozone crisis: lots of talk but nothing really getting done. Probably only when our planet has been totally ruined will politicians realize that maybe they should have done a bit more. Of course by then it will be too late...
This conference certainly seems to have some similarities to this summer, namely a bit of a wash out. However we have at least more summers in the future when the chances are for better weather. In contrast, we have very few furure chances left to save our planet.
Having said that, on the face of it, it does not seem too practical to hope to have all the nations present at Rio to sign up to thess vital topics over three days. I assume much detailed preparation had gone on before hand.
However I do wonder if these issues and conferences are being tackled in the right way. Would it not be better for each nation to produce its own plans and committments as to how it will achieve the items on the UN environmental, sustainability agenda. From that initial step certain nations where appropriate would try to combine their plans into a "Group Plan and committment". (An obvious grouping among many potential ones would be the EU.) The purpose of any international conference would then to be to try to combine these national or multi-national group plans into an international agreement. However if this failed then at least there would be a fall back to the national or multi-national plans from which further efforts could be made in the future. In this way at least there would be something positive to take away from the table rather than the "all or nothing approach" which is so often thwarted by politics and having too many people present.
Perhaps I a too naive on these topics but a different overall approach in the future might be a wise move
I will read some more views during the coming week; just a few thoughts I regard as key;
1) Close the tax havens so that the plundering of the world's resources by the world's corrupt rich elite and adjacent mafia/dicatators/drug barons etc is stopped; transparency and national sovereignty are important; even Tory Sir Simon Jenkins is recognising this.......... this is elementary justice.
2) Stop the trillion pound subsidies to carbon.
3) the economics of scarcity will increasingly work in favour of the imperative of sustainability.