From Rio+20 to a New Development Agenda

Building a Bridge to a Sustainable Future

Felix Dodds, Jorge Laguna-Celis, Liz Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134751549
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Ecologia

Twenty years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, "The Earth Summit", the Rio+20 conference in 2012 brought life back to sustainable development by putting it at the centre of a new global development partnership, one in which sustainable development is the basis for eradicating poverty, upholding human development and transforming economies.

Written by practitioners and participants involved in the multilateral process of negotiations, this book presents a unique insider analysis of not only what happened and why, but also where the outcomes might impact in the future, particularly in the UN development agenda beyond 2015.

The book throws light on the changing nature of multilateralism and questions frequent assumptions on how policy is defined within the UN. It shows that Rio+20 was more than an international meeting; it represented a culminating point of decades of successes and failures and a watershed moment for seminal concepts, ideas and partnerships including the Green Economy, zero tolerance on land degradation, the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals, the creation of national measurements of consumption, production and well-being that are intended to go beyond GDP, the introduction of national green accounting and the commitment of billions of dollars for sustainable development partnerships, including Sustainable Energy for All.

The authors conclude by mapping out a new agenda for development in 2015, when the current Millennium Development Goals framework is due to expire. An agenda that will restore faith in the UN and inspire a global response to the demographic, economic and environmental challenges that will define our future in the decades to come.

Chapter I

---

The rebirth of
sustainable development

---

When Brazil started discussing the possibility of holding a conference on sustainable development in the autumn of 2007, it was in nobody’s mind that such a conference could be a launching pad for a new global development partnership, one in which sustainable development is the basis for eradicating poverty, upholding human development and transforming economies. Such was the transformative role that Rio+20 played. Rio+20 represented a culminating point of decades of successes and failures of efforts aimed at defining a developmental pathway that reinforces the inescapable symbiosis between environment, human wellness and better standards of living.

The legacy of Rio+20 consisted of the agreement to develop integrated goals; renew environmental and developmental institutions; develop green and inclusive economic policy frameworks; and set principles and instruments for sustainable consumption and production, as well as frameworks for measuring development beyond the traditional gross domestic product (GDP). The rebirth of sustainable development draws its essence from two complementary approaches to development: a planet-centred approach and a people-centred approach. Both approaches find their common source in the principles agreed in the Charter of the United Nations. They have evolved distinctively during the past decades, through successive international conferences in the social, economic and environmental fields that have given birth to international norms, practices, instruments and institutions, often on parallel paths.

The planet-centred approach has had a number of key milestones in the past four decades in the area of environment and development. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, hosted in Stockholm in 1972, popularly called the Stockholm Conference, is regarded as the first multilateral conference on the environment. Stockholm gave impetus to national and international environmental protection, it ushered in the advent of Ministries of the Environment and launched activities to develop an intellectual and conceptual framework through which to view environmental challenges. It was also responsible for the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), gave rise to a body of international environmental institutions and to the creation of international environmental law, characterized by soft law¹ and hard law. ²

Stockholm became the precursor to the international agenda of sustainable development, which was first promoted at its ten-year review held in 1982 in Nairobi, the seat of UNEP. This Special Session of UNEP’s Governing Council promoted the concept of a UN Commission on Environment and Development. The then UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, took up this idea and asked the Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland, to establish a World Commission on Environment and Development. The initiative was endorsed in December 1984 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). This World Commission became known as the Brundtland Commission and published its report in 1987. The Commission’s definition of sustainable development was in itself a paradigmatic revolution synthesizing development and environmental thinking. Sustainable development was defined as a balanced integration of social development, economic development and environmental protection that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (United Nations, 1987).

Another key result from the Commission’s report was the recommendation to hold a new conference on environment and development. This conference was agreed upon in December 1989 by the UNGA, which decided to convene a United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 – renamed by Maurice Strong as the Earth Summit – following a resolution drafted by two young development specialists from the South: Ahmed Djoghlaf from Algeria, who later became Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity; and John W. Ashe from Antigua and Barbuda, who through the years rose to became his country’s ambassador to the United Nations and then to occupy the highest elected office of the United Nations as president of the UNGA (2013–2014).

The Earth Summit has been the most significant event for advancing environment and sustainable development law and for creating a body of thought and literature on sustainability as a tool for development and well-being. Its outcomes have continued to frame our vision concerning sustainable development:

• Agenda 21;

• the Rio Principles;

• the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change;

• the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity;

• the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa;

• the Forest Principles;

• the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).

The people-centred development agenda embodies the foundations laid out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – which recognizes the right to development – and the subsequent conventions and instruments that protect human dignity and freedom, equality, and equity of women, children, migrants, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and other groups. Some of the most significant conventions in this regard are the following:

• the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (March 1966);

• the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (December 1966);

• the Convention on the Rights of the Child (November 1989);

• the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (November 1989);

• the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (December 2006).

As Maurice Strong said at the end of the 1992 Earth Summit:

The carrying capacity of our Earth can only sustain present and future generations if it is matched by the carrying capacity of its people and its leaders. We must bring our species under control, for our own survival, for that of all life on our precious planet.

(Strong, 1992)

As a complement to the international human rights conventions, during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s the United Nations also advanced the people-centred development agenda through major international conferences similar to those held in the fields of environment and sustainable development.

The improvement of gender equality and the empowerment of women gradually evolved through international conferences such as the first (Mexico, 1975), second (Copenhagen, 1980), third (Nairobi, 1985) and fourth (Beijing, 1995) World Conference on Women. These culminated with the adoption of the Beijing Action Platform, its follow-up and processes by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and by new implementing institutions such as UN WOMEN, established in 2010 by the UNGA.

The apex of the conferences in the social field was attained in 1995 when the United Nations held the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen as a means for creating a dialogue space for confronting, in a holistic manner, the major social challenges of the decade. Some of these were in reaction to the changes in the world economy brought by globalization, the consequences of the structural adjustment policies in developing countries forced by the “Washington Consensus” (Serra and Stiglitz, 2008), the changing nature of the welfare state model, and the growing phenomenon of social disintegration in rapidly urbanizing metropolitan areas. The Copenhagen Declaration adopted at the end of the summit represented advancement towards an inclusive people-centred development agenda and introduced the idea of “social development goals” through the following commitments:

• promoting full employment as a basic priority of economic and social policy;

• promoting social integration and the promotion and protection of all human rights;

• achieving equality between women and men;

• promoting and attaining the goals of universal and equitable access to quality education and access for all to primary health care;

• accelerating the economic, social and human development of Africa and the least developed countries;

• ensuring that structural adjustment programmes include social development goals.

The culminating emblems of the people-centred agenda are without doubt the 2000 Millennium Declaration, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Human Development Index (HDI). The Millennium Declaration is the ultimate global agenda for development and poverty eradication. It is based on six basic human values: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility. Its poverty eradication chapter contains the pledge by world leaders to time-bound MDGs. The Millennium Declaration and the MDGs are a milestone in the promotion of a holistic approach towards human development, grounded in the historic opportunity offered by globalization and rapid technological change. Their purpose was to concentrate global attention and resources aimed at sparing

no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected [and thus] making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.

(United Nations, 2000)

The Millennium Declaration also contained a call to address in the 2001 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development the main “obstacles developing countries face in mobilizing the resources needed to finance their sustained development” and the special needs of the least developed countries (LDCs) and other developing countries in special situations. It further charted an ambitious programme of institutional reform involving the UNGA, the Economic and Social Council and the cooperation and coherence between the United Nations, its agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, intending to do everything possible to ensure that the United Nations became

a more effective instrument for pursuing the fight for development for all the peoples of the world, the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation and destruction of our common home.

Finally, the Millennium Declaration also agreed to open greater opportunities to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders in general to contribute to the realization of the UN goals.

The Millennium Declaration, however, did not propose sustainable development as the overarching paradigm for achieving development and poverty eradication. The Declaration only refers to sustainable development in connection with “the respect for nature” and “the protection of our common environment.” This dichotomy was an early indication of the difficulties faced at the start of the new millennium by the sustainable development paradigm and its association with an “environmental agenda.”

By 2002 it was clear that the planet-centred development agenda faced real difficulties. Geopolitical factors, such as the aftermath of 9/11, would continue to detract attention from implementing the results of the World Summit on Sustainable Development held during that year in Johannesburg. Most importantly, the world’s substantive commitment to development was elsewhere. The international community gathered in Johannesburg to look back on three decades of implementation since Stockholm and one decade since Rio, and to agree on a new and ambitious plan of action; the few advances made were quickly eroded. As early as 2006, President Mbeki of South Africa was already calling the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPoI) a “forgotten piece of paper.” In 2007, for the first time in its short history, the CSD failed to agree a policy outcome. In 2011 it failed again for a second and last time, since the CSD’s life would come to an end after its 2011 meeting as a result of decisions made at the Rio+20 Conference.

The financial and economic crisis that started in 2008 also dealt a hard blow to the United Nations and the fulfilment of the pledges made at the dawn of the new millennium under both the people-centred and the planet-centred approaches. Its devastating effects on the prospects for global economic growth for 2009 and 2010 also acutely exposed the faltering coordination and systemic surveillance by the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations. These circumstances called into question the overall relevance of the United Nations in the global setting and its ability to deliver on the pledges made to achieve poverty eradication and sustainable development.

Despite the various reforms undertaken particularly from 2005 onwards as a result of a major reformist programme agreed in the first five-year review of the MDGs, known as the World Summit Outcome, by the end of the decade the United Nations was losing its relevance to act as a global coordinator capable of responding to the major evolving social, economic and environmental situations, and attracting and bringing to the same table all actors involved in the solution to those problems. The United Nations was at pains to deliver to the world a coherent message with regard to its own global development priorities. This situation was partially due to a growing internal tendency to work in silos. It was also the result of the inability of UN member states to come to terms with the ambiguity previously pointed out between the human-centred “development and poverty eradication” agenda and the planet-centred agenda, which often led to the erroneous association of “sustainable development” as simply an “environmentalist agenda.”

President Lula da Silva’s and Brazil’s case for a Rio+20

Taking up the baton for sustainable development in light of President Mbeki’s comments, on September 25, 2007 President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, addressing the UNGA at the opening of its annual leaders’ week, made the case for a new conference on sustainable development (UN News Centre, 2007).

President Lula indicated the necessity for a summit that would “address the persistent problem of global inequality,” asserting that “social equality is our best weapon against the planet’s degradation.” He stressed the need to reorder international priorities around an agenda that supported and favoured “social justice.” Recalling Rio’s efforts to preserve and protect “our common heritage,” President Lula stated that this heritage could only be “salvaged through a new and more balanced distribution of wealth.” He called for greater emphasis on renewable energy and biofuels, for international trade relations based on balanced and fair rules, and for development approaches which would result in the termination of farm subsidies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer, agricultural protectionism and the perpetuation of “dependency and under-development.” President Lula stated, “[I]t is unacceptable that the cost of the irresponsibility of a privileged few should be shouldered by the dispossessed of the earth.”

On November 4, 2008, over a year after the address by President Lula, the government of Antigua and Barbuda tabled a draft resolution on behalf of the group of developing countries (the Group of 77) for the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assemb...