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| Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Flickr: eflon, 2009) |
The twentieth anniversary of the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1992)
is being celebrated at the United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in June 2012.
More than 120 heads of the state have already committed to participate in the
meeting and it is going to be a watershed event for sustainable development.
A consultation on “Sustainable Development: National and Global Priorities for
Rio+20” is taking place on April 28th in New Delhi. The Consultation seeks to
generate an informed debate on how sustainable development has fared in the
global governance and in India since Rio 1992. Additionally, the conference
will address what priorities the current circumstances dictates, and, in view
of the opportunity that Rio +20 provides, how do we revisit the sustainable
development policies, at national and global levels.
The world has witnessed enormous change since the UNCED in 1992. While poverty
was concentrated in the third world in the 1990s, it is all pervasive now and
the world is in the throes of multiple crises - economic, food, fuel and
environmental. Free trade and market driven strategies have created
unprecedented inequalities and unsustainability of eco-systems. The financial
and governance architecture of the world has increased poverty and hunger,
forced displacement of indigenous and local communities, violations of human
rights and fundamental freedoms and the right to water and sanitation. People
on the margins have no voice and participation in the policymaking and
governance, and continue to suffer and pay for the crises they had least
contributed to. India too faces strong challenges of attacking extreme poverty,
harmonizing growth with nature and environment and ensuring human rights to
food, water and sanitation, and energy and development.
In these circumstances, renewed political commitment to sustainable
development, improved integration of three pillars of sustainable (development,
economic, social and environmental), and technical and financial assistance for
poverty eradication and urgent reforms in the global financial architecture and
trade are more relevant than ever. Rio+20 can give the desired direction to economic
growth, which has till now failed to reflect environmental sustainability and
social inclusiveness.
However, the Rio+20 process till now has been quite disappointing. It has been
taken complete hostage to the domination of northern industrialized countries
and has little space to offer to developing and poor countries to bring and
seek genuine redressal of their concerns. The themes of the Rio+20 “Green
Economy in the Context of Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication
(GESDPE)” and Institutional Infrastructure for Sustainable Development (IFSD),”
do not address the root cause of the problem. The draft outcome document, Zero
Draft titled “The
Future We Want” is a highly compromised
document with low ambition, frivolous treatment to big challenges of day like
food security, water, energy, livelihoods, cities, forests, bio-diversity,
oceans, and mountains. Additionally, the document has no credible framework for
action. It aims to green the business and profits, commercialize ecosystem
services, and devise a road map for green economy and sustainable development
goals, which further allows developed countries in collusion with business and
international financial institutions to use them as tools to put new
conditionalities in trade and aid. The three intersessionals, which held
negotiations on the zero draft till March 2012 have further ripped the draft of
the rights, sustainability, development, and social and economic aspects. The
direction of the negotiations seems highly leveraged in favour of the developed
countries. This needs to be reversed through solidarity among the developing
and least developed countries and civil society.
More disappointing is the lack of discussion and debate on the issue of such
extreme importance in the civil society, media or state. It is important to
underline that until and unless fundamental problems of extremely unequal and
highly unjustified financial architecture, aid and trade, systems and
institutions, which perpetuate profit at the cost of people, nature, environment
and earth, and disempowers huge majority of humanity from accessing and
exercising rights and their participation in policymaking in the global
governance are challenged, cosmetic changes cannot extricate the world from the
crises that it faces. At the same time it is also important that we revisit our
own national and sub national policies to ensure that we reverse the growth
path that we have charted blindly following the north, which has been
responsible for bringing the crisis of unsustainability.
With these objectives, a collective of civil society organizations is convening
this Consultation, where people from different walks of life including
policymakers, experts, farmers, media and academia discuss the priorities at
national and global levels and explore their own roles. Prof. V S Vyas has
kindly consented to deliver the key note speech on “Historical Perspective on
Rio +20.”
To attend the consultation or for more information, please email: pairvidelhi1@gmail.com
For updates on the Rio+20 process, follow Beyond Copenhagen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeyondCPH and Twitter: @BeyondCPH
Organizers: Beyond Copenhagen, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jathha, CECOEDECON, IDS, Jaipur, PAIRVI, Pan Himalayan Grassroots Development Foundation, SADED, SANSAD.
