Category Archives: Rio+20

Rio+20 – China pledges green support

By Henricus Peters on | Leave a Comment

Wen Jiabao vows country will play a greater role in the promotion of the green agenda. Chen Weihua reports from Rio de Janeiro – in today’s China Daily.   

With its traffic snarl-ups, shantytowns and the breathtaking views from atop Corcovado Mountain with its giant statue of Jesus Christ, the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro — the venue of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20 — is a study in the contrasts and challenges facing sustainable development and a better future.

At the conference, which ended on June 22, the global picture for sustainable development looked depressing. The challenges facing the planet are the most critical in history: pollution, poverty, the population explosion, climate change, desertification, inequality and the loss of biodiversity. Yet, the greatest challenge of all appeared to be the lack of strong global will to accept responsibility and tackle the crisis.

A large part of the problem was that both developing and developed economies were simply not on the same page. While developed nations pushed for a greener economic structure, many developing countries put the reduction of poverty at the top of their agenda, along with other basic social and economic programs. Some believe that developed countries and major corporations are using the green economy as an excuse to pursue profits and manipulate the global economy.

Happy versus unhappy

From the outset, the focus of Rio+20 was the outcome document called The Future We Want, an initiative that is supposed to pilot the world on a path to sustainable development.

However, despite a year of negotiations and days of horse-trading at the conference, nations ultimately remained sharply divided on the text. The Brazilian government, which was responsible for pushing the document through the 193 nations, had to present a watered-down version to ensure it passed prior to the arrival of heads of state and government leaders for the summit. The resulting document prompted both praise and criticism from the 45,000-plus people attending the mega-conference.

The UN hailed the final agreement, saying that it will advance action on sustainable development. Governments, civil society, multilateral development banks and businesses all pledged to help shape a more sustainable future.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who earlier had harsh words about the international community’s lack of commitment, described Rio+20 as providing a solid platform on which to build. “Rio+20 has affirmed fundamental principles, renewed essential commitments, and given us a new direction,” he said.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff called the outcome document “a great step forward”, adding “I am convinced that this conference will have the effect of bringing about sweeping change.”

Sha Zukang, secretary-general of Rio+20 and UN undersecretary for economic and social affairs, was also full of praise: “I have not the slightest doubt that the outcome document you have adopted will provide an enduring legacy for this historic Rio+20 conference: The Future We Want,” he said.

“You, the world’s leaders, have renewed your political commitment to sustainable development. You signed up to a framework for action that will drive us forward. Together, we can take great pride in this extraordinary accomplishment,” added Sha.

However, despite the official pronouncements, on the final day of the conference Sha was forced to admit that no one was happy with the outcome. “Our job is to make everyone equally unhappy. If one party is happy and others are not happy, then no, he won’t be happy either. Equally unhappy means equally happy,” he said.

One decidedly unhappy sector consisted of NGOs, which voiced their frustration about the outcome document and the conference.

CARE, a humanitarian organization that fights global poverty, said Rio+20 had failed those most in need. “Millions of poor people now have to pick up the pieces from the mess the world leaders left behind here in Rio. World leaders did not come to Rio prepared, and (they) failed to deliver any clear vision or solutions to eradicate poverty and stop environmental degradation,” said Kit Vaughan, CARE’s coordinator of climate change advocacy.

Jim Leape, director-general of the World Wildlife Fund, said Rio+20 was a conference “to address the pressing challenge of building a future that can sustain us”.

“Unfortunately, the world leaders who gathered here lost sight of that urgent purpose. The result is a squandered opportunity — an agreement that does not set the world on a path toward sustainable development,” he said.

China’s hopes and challenges

Meanwhile, the conference made clear that China has become a major stakeholder in sustainable development. “An unsustainable world means an unsustainable China; an unsustainable China means an unsustainable world,” said Veerle Vandeweerd, director of the UN Development Programme’s environment and energy group.

Premier Wen Jiabao was among the 100-plus heads of state who attended the conference. Just hours after his arrival on June 20, Wen said that as a major developing country, China will play a more active role in promoting sustainable development. “Countries must share the common responsibility of protecting our planet, while recognizing that they are at different stages and levels of development,” he said.

Du Ying, head of the Chinese preparatory committee for Rio+20, said that one of the summit’s successes was that it didn’t renege on the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, such as the principle of “common, but differentiated responsibilities”.

Given its size and rapid growth during the past 30 years, China faces huge challenges in virtually every field of sustainable development discussed at Rio+20, even though the country’s 12th Five-Year Plan has been described as “a green plan”. Wang Weizhong, vice-minister of science and technology, said at the conference that China is slowing its economic growth for the sake of sustainable development.

The China Pavilion in Athletes’ Park, a 10-minute walk from the main venue at Riocentro, hosted many side events about China and received 10,000 visitors. On the last day of the conference, Yin Hong, deputy administrator of the State Forestry Administration, addressed a roomful of visitors and outlined China’s progress during the past 20 years but also emphasized the tough challenges ahead.

She rolled out a blueprint showing specific targets for the expansion of nature reserves, wetlands and forested areas, in addition to plans for the reduction of desertification in China by 2020.

Chinese NGOs and corporations released the first civil society report on the country’s sustainable development over the past 20 years and Chinese college students joined young people from around the globe to tell the world exactly what sort of future they want.

Side events

Despite the frustration and disappointment about the lack of progress at the conference itself, one bright spot was the array of more than 500 side events covering sustainable development and ranging from protection of the oceans and public participation.

Nikhil Seth, director of the division for sustainable development at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that educating the public and spreading the sustainable development message around the world is vital to put the mission into action.

The Sustainable Development Learning course was a capacity-building event, consisting of a number of classes about crucial aspects of sustainable development. Attendees received a certificate after each class.

“This is the place we can exchange and talk about our experiences, get new ideas and pass those experiences onto our country and our region,” said Maryam Safari, head of the international department at the Charitable Institute for Protecting Social Victims.

However, not everybody stayed in the classrooms. Many took to the streets. The biggest protest was staged on June 20 when thousands of protestors — estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000 — marched in the city center. Organized by some 200 grassroots organizations attending the “People’s Summit”, protestors denounced low wages and the plight of indigenous peoples, the deforestation of the Amazon and the unscrupulous entrepreneurs they believe are attempting to hijack the green economy.

In light of the protests emphasizing the lack of confidence in the traditional structures, Zhang Jianyu, head of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Beijing office, questioned whether the traditional multilateral governance framework is still suited to current social conditions. “There is apparently something lacking in this top-down structure when NGOs, corporations and grassroots organizations have to become increasingly active,” he said.

Contact the reporter at chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

Source : http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-06/29/content_15534416.htm

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Rio+20: Biggest ever UN summit ends with faint glimmer of hope

By Henricus Peters on | 1 Comment

The biggest ever United Nations conference on the environment has been condemned as a ‘hoax’ by UK charities for spending millions of taxpayers’ money to do little more than come up with a list of aspirations on saving the planet without any concrete action. From ‘The Daily Telegraph’

More than 150,000 people crowded into hotels on the famous Copacabana strip and even paid for space in converted office and ‘love motels’ for the eagerly anticipated conference 20 years on from the original 1992 Earth Summit.

The jamboree cost the Brazilian Government pounds 134million and each country hundreds of thousands to pay for flights and accommodation. The 50 strong UK delegation will have cost at least pounds 100,000. The UN, that is paid for by taxpayers around the world, will have had to fork out for helping poorer countries and officials attend.

The conference also emitted 5,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, despite calling for a reduction in global greenhouse gases.

It was hoped that ‘Rio+20 would come up with a new UN resolution to shift the world economy from polluting fossil fuels to green energy like wind and solar.

But as rain swept across Rio at the end of the summit, civil society groups were left angry and disillusione

The final document, called The Future We Want, calls on the world to shift to a ‘green economy’ and to phase out fossil fuels but there is no timetable for action.

The principle of Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs has been agreed but there is no detail, despite countries including the UK calling for clear targets on ending food waste, water pollution and overfishing.

Efforts to limit global population growth by calling for improved access to free contraception were watered down by protests from the Vatican.

Barbara Stocking, the head of Oxfam, who was part of the UK delegation attending meetings with ministers, said it was “shamefully devoid of progress”.

“Rio will go down as the hoax summit,” she said. “They came, they talked, but they failed to act. We elect governments to tackle the issues that we can’t tackle alone. But they are not providing the leadership the world desperately needs. Paralysed by inertia and in hock to vested interests, too many are unable to join up the dots and solve the connected crises of environment, equity and economy.”

Nick Clegg, the UK Deputy Prime Minister, admitted he was “disappointed” with the outcome.

He blamed a ‘neocolonial world’ where developing countries that want to continue using fossil fuels to develop, like China and Brazil, have more power than the West and Europe.

He explained that countries like India see the green economy as a “euphemism for protectionism” that will stop them using huge natural resources of coal to grow.

“We no longer live in a neocolonial world where a small number of Governments can get together and write a text and say to the rest of the world you have to accept this,” he said. “The developing world is much more assertive.”

Much of the anger at the conference was directed at world leaders for failing to take the crisis in rising temperatures and loss of species seriously enough. Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Barack Obama, the President of the United States did not even bother to turn up.

However Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, insisted that the conference was a success.

She said that the inclusion of ‘green economy’ in the text has given the concept much more power and will encourage both government and business to start cutting carbon and investing in renewables.

The text also promises to give more money to the UN environment programme to help poorer countries tackle pollution and calls on all nations to start measuring natural capital as well as GDP.

Quoting Steve Jobs, the late head of Apple in saying ‘Don’t think big, think different’’, Ms Clinton said it will be the private sector that will drive the shift to a green economy through innovation and market forces, rather than state intervention.

But Craig Bennet, Friends of the Earth’s Director of Policy and Campaigns, said businesses will only act once Governments give a clean signal.

“These talks have been completely undermined by a dangerous lack of ambition, urgency and political will – and weak politicians too afraid to push for anything tougher.

“World leaders are understandably concerned about the broken economy – but until they stop treating it separately from our social and environmental problems this will never be fixed,” he said.

As storm clouds gathered over Rio, Dame Barbara agreed that Governments have failed to make the agreement strong enough.

But, alongside other NGOs, she vowed that even the weak agreement to sign up to SDGs and start moving towards a green economy could be used to force change.

“It’s been a painful birth but the vision of an ambitious set of goals on environment and development, applicable to all countries, is a solitary light in the fog.”

Source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/9350184/Rio20-Biggest-ever-UN-summit-ends-with-faint-glimmer-of-hope.html

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As Rio+20 summit begins …. Tsunami Debris Crosses Pacific, with Dangers in its trail

By Henricus Peters on | Leave a Comment

Beaches on the West Coast are getting a regular dose of debris from the 2011 tsunami in Japan. The first few items were curiosities — a boat here, a soccer ball there — but as the litter accumulates, officials such as Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire have acknowledged the scale of the problem. Environmental News Network reports.

“We are in for a steady dribble of tsunami debris over the next few years, so any response by us must be well-planned — and it will be,” she said.

Beyond the obvious problem of litter, officials are on the lookout for hidden dangers.

Debris ‘Everywhere’

The tsunami swept an estimated 5 million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean. Japanese scientists guess about 70 percent of that sank right away, which leaves maybe 1.5 million tons still floating around.

“It’s everywhere,” says Carey Morishige, the Pacific Islands coordinator of the marine debris program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s spread out across nearly the entire Pacific Ocean.”

Morishige says the debris can’t really be tracked from above — it’s too hard to see. So her agency uses computer models to predict its movement.

“All marine debris does not move the same,” she says. “It depends on what the particular item is. If it sticks above the water quite a lot, winds tend to move the item faster.”

Source : http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/44559

Posted in: Marine debris, Rio+20, Tsunami

Rio+20: Earth summit dawns with stormier clouds than in 1992

By Henricus Peters on | 1 Comment

John Vidal, Environment Editor of the Guardian who was in Rio for the ’92 Earth summit, looks back at that momentous event, and how the 2012 version compares

Helicopters thundered up and down the chic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. Tanks guarded the bridges and tunnels. The favelas were in lockdown, schools closed and supermarkets stood empty. Unexpectedly, President George H W Bush, flush with success at the collapse of communism, had arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the 1992 Earth summit, the UN’s epic conference on environment and development.

 

The graffiti that I read on the streets of Rio read “Yanqui go home”, but the world had seen nothing like this before; after years of planning, 109 heads of state, 172 countries, 2,500 official delegates, and about 45,000 environmentalists, indigenous peoples, peasants and industrialists came together for the summit. The Dalai Lama meditated with Shirley Maclaine on the beach at dawn, Jane Fonda turned up, as did Pelé, Fidel Castro, great train robber Ronnie Biggs and an obscure US senator called Al Gore.

 

On a wave of concern about the state of the world, presidents, prime ministers and even two kings signed up to a legally binding convention on biodiversity, a climate change agreement that led to the Kyoto protocol, a 6,000-page blueprint for action, a six-page philosophical paper linking poverty to environmental degradation, initiatives on forests and new principles to guide world development.

 

The milestone summit set the global green agenda for 20 years and took only a few days for leaders to negotiate. Nowadays, when it takes 15 years to arrive at nowhere in climate negotiations, it seems extraordinary.

 

Twenty years later, Rio is bursting again and on maximum security alert for the follow-up conference, billed as the biggest UN event ever organised. This time, 15,000 soldiers and police are guarding about 130 heads of state and government, as well as ministers and diplomats from 180 countries and at least 50,000 others.

 

But Rio+20 is full of absences. Francois Hollande will be there for France, but Obama, Cameron, Merkel and most other G20 leaders are snubbing it. In 1992, Britain sent newly elected PM John Major, his environment secretary Michael Howard and two other ministers. This time its delegation includes businesses and is led by deputy PM Nick Clegg, with just one other minister. The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) will be represented only by senior officials.

 

 

The excuse given is that the summit is overshadowed by the deepening global financial crisis. The real reason may be that the days of hope and idealism are over. Rich countries have little new to offer and China,Brazil, India and other rapidly emerging economies are now in the development driving seat.

 

Instead of the ambitious, legally binding conventions on offer in 1992, countries have only been asked to lay the foundations for the next 20 years. The UN wants Rio to endorse a UN “green economy roadmap” with environmental goals, targets and deadlines. Developing countries, led by Colombia, prefer new “sustainable development goals” to better protect the environment, guarantee food and power to the poorest, and alleviate poverty. But withnegotiations now effectively over, there is still no political consensus, the poor are mistrustful of the rich and groups like Oxfam fear that new goals could get mixed up with the existing millennium development goals.

 

Getting any agreement at all has proved hard. UN chiefs and the Brazilians are upbeat but sqaubbling governments have fought bitterly over the lead that the rich should give and the money the poor should receive to help them out of destitution. Just as in 1992, when Bush declared that “the American way of life is not negotiable” and reduced the aid package to developing countries to a paltry £6bn, so in 2012 US negotiators, backed by the EU and the G20, have told developing countries to accept the “new global reality” and have refused to give way.

 

But no one in Rio doubts that the talks are even more urgent than in 1992. UNEP director Achim Steiner has warned that pollution is killing millions of people a year, ecosystem decline is increasing, climate change is speeding, and soil and ocean degradation is worsening. “If current trends continue … then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation. Earth systems are being pushed towards their biophysical limits,” he said.

 

“This is urgent. As the people with the least struggle to survive, the consumption habits of the richest are stripping the earth of its resources. The situation is dire. We cannot go on living beyond the earth’s boundaries. The people suffering are the poorest. These are issues that will affect us all for ever,” said Dame Barbara Stocking, Oxfam director.

 

But in the absence of government action, any ambition and optimism is expected to come from the parallel “people’s summit”, the myriad non-governmental groups and the many business meetings which have already started.

 

According to Marina Sylva, former Brazilian environment minister and presidential candidate, Flamingo park in the centre of Rio, where thousands of peasants and social movements are now camping and meeting, should become “the Tahrir square” of NGOs, the disposessed, the indigenous communities, and human rights, ecological and other social justice activists, all wanting more radical change to the world’s economic system to protect the earth. For them, the world leaders in the Rio centro meeting halls only offer green capitalism, nature for sale and more of the same unequality.

 

She said: “They cannot lower expectations in the face of a crisis worsening every day. I hope that Rio+20 will become the Tahrir square of the global environmental crisis and that public opinion will be able to tell leaders that they cannot brush off the science.”

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpts of the speech given by George H W Bush at Rio 1992

 

“Let’s face it, there has been some criticism of the United States. But I must tell you, we come to Rio proud of what we have accomplished and committed to extending the record on American leadership on the environment. In the United States, we have the world’s tightest air quality standards on cars and factories, the most advanced laws for protecting lands and waters, and the most open processes for public participation.

 

“Now for a simple truth: America’s record on environmental protection is second to none. So I did not come here to apologise. We come to press on with deliberate purpose and forceful action. Such action will demonstrate our continuing commitment to leadership and to international co-operation on the environment.

 

“There are those who say that it takes state control to protect the environment. Well, let them go to eastern Europe, where the poisoned bodies of children now pay for the sins of fallen dictators, and only the new breeze of freedom is allowing for clean-up.

 

“Today we realise that growth is the engine of change and a friend of the environment. Today an unprecedented era of peace, freedom and stability makes concerted action on the environment possible as never before.”

 

Excerpts from Fidel Castro’s 1992 Rio speech

 

“An important biological species – humankind – is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its natural habitat. We are becoming aware of this problem when it is almost too late to prevent it. It must be said that consumer societies are chiefly responsible for this appalling environmental destruction.

 

“With only 20% of the world’s population, they consume two-thirds of all metals and three-fourths of the energy produced worldwide. They have poisoned the seas and the rivers. They have polluted the air. They have weakened and perforated the ozone layer. They have saturated the atmosphere with gases, altering climatic conditions with the catastrophic effects we are already beginning to suffer.

 

“The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding. Billions of tons of fertile soil are washed every year into the sea. Numerous species are becoming extinct. Population pressures and poverty lead to desperate efforts to survive, even at the expense of nature.

 

“Unequal trade, protectionism and the foreign debt assault the ecological balance and promote the destruction of the environment. If we want to save humanity from this self-destruction, wealth and available technologies must be distributed better throughout the planet. Less luxury and less waste in a few countries would mean less poverty and hunger in much of the world.”

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/19/rio-20-earth-summit-1992-2012

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Rio + 20 : Montreal student Jessica Magonet heads to conference

By Henricus Peters on | 1 Comment

 

Montrealer Jessica Magonet was not even born when the first Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago this month.

But next week, when nations meet again for the 20th anniversary of that watershed United Nations conference, Magonet won’t be letting her youth stop her from demanding the world pay attention to her cause.

Magonet, 19, is part of a 14-member youth delegation from across Canada heading to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio + 20, Wednesday to Friday. They will demand that protection of polar regions be among the global commitments that come out of the conference, and that indigenous peoples be involved in development decisions.

Magonet, a law student at McGill University, thinks it’s fitting that young people set part of the agenda at Rio + 20.

“Sustainable development is all about caring about people who are not here yet, so I hope we can represent that symbolically,” she said.

The first Earth Summit brought 172 countries together to create a blueprint for a better world, one with equal rights, less poverty and a healthier environment. Although hopes were high afterward, a recent assessment of progress on 90 environmental goals found that significant progress had been made on only four since 1992.

The world has managed to eliminate production and use of substances that deplete the ozone layer, remove lead from fuel, improve access to clean water and increase research on marine pollution. But the assessment, called the Global Environmental Outlook and released this month, showed that little or no progress has been made on such critical issues as climate change, desertification and drought.

The slow progress since the first Rio conference does not discourage Magonet.

“We have a lot of energy and we are not cynical. We have hope. … This seems to be a very political generation, actually … and with what’s happening at the federal level, people who may have been quiet up until now are becoming more vocal.”

Magonet was referring to Bill C-38 and the sweeping changes it will bring to environmental legislation. She is also concerned that Canada will soon be chairing the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body responsible for Arctic governance that includes representatives of Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and the U.S.

“The current federal government does not have a great environmental record … so there is big concern as Canada is taking over as chair.”

Magonet said her delegation wants the world to recognize that the polar regions are threatened by oil drilling, mining, fishing and marine traffic, and that attention must be focused on sustainability now, before it’s too late.

“A lot of these regions are not governed by any laws because nobody goes there, so there is concern there will be a free-for-all, with no limit on the type or number of ships that can pass through there.

“Indigenous people also must be involved in the sustainable development of these regions.”

Magonet became fascinated with the Arctic when she visited Kuujjuaq and sailed up the east coast of Baffin Island with an organization called Students on Ice in 2010. She was inspired by meeting Inuit elders, hearing their concerns and fears about climate change, and learning from biologists and glacier experts about how the region is changing.

“Visiting the Arctic makes climate change so visceral and human, because what’s happening there is so shocking. They are already talking about adaptation; they’ve had to move beyond prevention and try to live with this new environment.”

For more details on Rio + 20 – click on uncsd2012.org

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Montreal+sudent+Jessica+Magonet+heads+summit/6798882/story.html#ixzz1y9Btq3lw

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