?The time for waiting for all countries to agree is over," say non-governmental groups as they prepare to step up action on environmental crises
RIO DE JANEIRO (AlertNet) – Rio+20, envisioned as a visionary gathering designed to wrest the world onto a more sustainable development path, ended Friday with a tepid agreement even the UN Secretary General had earlier admitted was not “up to the measure of the challenge.”
The deal simply affirmed concerns about poverty, food security, deforestation and other issues - though the meeting produced promises of half a trillion dollars in spending on efforts from improving energy efficiency to building more sustainable transportation.
Negotiators also agreed to launch a process to create new sustainable development goals (SDGs) to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a framework of global targets set by the United Nations to be met by 2015 to help alleviate poverty.
But despite deepening worries that environmental crises from climate change to shortages of water and food will lead to worsening poverty and threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions, world leaders “failed to deliver any clear vision or solutions,” charged Kit Vaugh, climate change advocacy coordinator for CARE.
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist, sustainable development expert and head of the Earth Institute at Colombia University, was equally critical.
“Our governments are locked into old thinking, to old processes, to very powerful vested interests and to a short-term election cycle,” he said. “The challenges of climate change, of protecting biodiversity and of combating desertification require … a new way of doing things that will not, sadly, come from rooms of diplomats negotiating year in and year out.”
MOVING AHEAD
So as Sha Zukang, the UN’s economic and social affairs chief and head of the Rio+20 gathering, declared in a closing statement that leaders in Rio had managed an “extraordinary accomplishment” in creating a “framework for action that will drive us forward,” many heads were shaking.
And in the hallways of the gathering, which drew over 45,000 people, many non-governmental participants said they were now making plans to move ahead to address the world’s problems without the international coordination and political support they had hoped to win.
“The time for waiting for all countries to agree is over,” said Reiner Braun, executive director of the Federation of German Scientists and program director of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Now “we need a coalition of the willing,” he said. “Those who can move ahead must move ahead.”
Germany, for instance, is moving toward generating all of its power from renewable energy, said Joachim Spangenberg, a biologist, economist and vice president of the Sustainable Europe Research Institute. As countries like Germany – and thousands of other sustainability projects around the world – show what is possible, “you disvalue the argument” that it can’t be done,” he said.
“You can’t solve world environmental problems at the grassroots level,” he admitted, and even as small-scale sustainability projects prove a success, “the war is being lost” as environmental change outpaces the scale-up of effective innovation.
But “gathering knowledge on what is possible and promoting that and experimenting is a good starting point for changing the overall course,” Spangenberg said.
NEW FOCUS ON ETHICS
Michael Slaby, who works on intergenerational issues for the Jacob Soetendorp Institute for Human Values, said a renewed focus on ethics may be one way of driving a transition to a more sustainable economic system.
“We really are facing a planetary crisis, and it has very deep moral and spiritual roots,” he said. That suggests “the answers that are being found must also be rooted in ethical and spiritual values. We desperately need a change in minds and hearts.”
That push could include things like ensuring individuals and institutions – including churches – invest their money in and buy goods from environmentally and socially ethical companies.
“There are very good and practical examples of ethical procurement and investment,” he said, and these need to be “documented and broadened and mainstreamed.”
“The consequences of our decisions and actions will be felt by many generations to come” and most of us want “our children and our children’s children to take pride in our actions,” he said.
The lack of an ambitious international agreement for action at Rio in particular means that civil society and non-governmental organisations will have to step up to help drive change, CARE’s Vaughn noted in a statement.
Around the world, “there are solutions emerging which don’t rely on international politics. Local communities all around the world are already taking action to manage their natural resources and live a sustainable life,” Vaugh said.
“The short-sightedness of world leaders demonstrated here in Rio means that we, as civil society, have to put everything we can to catalyze these local initiatives,” he said.
Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, warned that action – rather than affirmations of concern – is what will be rapidly needed to deal with growing environmental threats.
“The political declaration issued by leaders in Rio has no hope of giving the peoples of the world ‘the future we want,’” he said, citing the slogan of the Rio+20 gathering. “Without much stronger action, we are clearly headed for a future we can’t live with – and quicker than most leaders realise.”
The agreement signed at Rio “is totally inadequate, as many of them would readily admit.”
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