Rio+20 wrap and Earth Charter experience

Post by Douglas F. Williamson

The blogger, Douglas F. Williamson

While many people present at Rio+20 and much of the media will portray the conference as a failure, I prefer to see things from some other perspectives and certainly not in black and white. This conference was yet another experiment in global understanding, cross-cultural communication, and multi-state negotiations. It was also an opportunity for many of the community grappling with sustainable development challenges to come together and talk face-to-face, which is very useful. The conference also served as a way to take the temperature of the sustainable development movement.

So, where is it? Well, clearly, the multi-lateral process did not yield many results, no concrete strategy moving forwards, and no commitments. There were many platitudes and empty words. However, some words, some ideas, did bubble to the top and these must be seen as encouraging, even though they do not represent the strong leadership we'd like from our governments, nor the urgency many of us feel is necessary.


So, what are some of the positives we can take away from this conference?

The outcome document was strong on education and education for sustainable development. The recognition of ESD's importance to achieving sustainable development is also a recognition and affirmation of Earth Charter International's work and should provide a solid push as ECI rolls out its ESD program at the new Earth Charter Center for ESD.

The document also acknowledges the need to move beyond GDP and develop more sophisticated metrics to gauge the well-being of societies. This speaks very much to the Earth Charter and its position on material sufficiency. The EC preamble states, "We must realize that when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more." The being more is much harder to measure, but that quality of being encompasses all the important factors that cannot be measured by a statistic as limited and narrow as GDP.

Alicia Jimenez and Rick Clugston, ECI

Sustainable Development Goals are also on the table in the document, and while also not a panacea, the goals approach as a voluntary initiative seems to hold more hope than the commitment route. The MDGs have not been totally successful, but the general consensus is that they have helped in closing the gap on many of our global societal challenges. A new version called SDGs might also have a similar impact.

So, while the nation states have not been able to provide the leadership many expected, the outcome document is not a loss, simply not a very large gain.

I barely paid attention to the official negotiations while I was at Rio. I had no expectations of anything very positive coming out of the negotiations as CSD-19 was always fresh in mind. If these same governments couldn't agree on chemicals, how ever would they be able to agree substantially on topics as massively complex as the Green Economy and the Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development? Exactly. But, there was plenty of other progress being made at Rio.

Mirian Vilela, ECI Director accepts award

Earth Charter International and the Global Reporting Initiative signed a Voluntary Agreement, and there were hundreds more of these kinds of agreements. Our team was out and about networking like crazy, meeting all kinds of people doing good work, and searching for synergies to forge partnerships and create initiatives that would add up to more than the sum of their parts. While the business community didn't show up at Rio Centro, the education community did and there were many opportunities to talk about ESD and speak with practitioners and leaders in the field. We also organized or co-organized five events, had Earth Charter speakers in numerous others, and won an award recognizing the Earth Charter Initiative for 20 years of work empowering people. The Earth Charter and people doing Earth Charter work were present and positive, talking about the importance of an ethical foundation and ESD, and generally contributing to the discussion and debate on present sustainable development challenges.

Nora Mahmoud, ECI Youth Coordinator

Finally, I think these meetings, whether or not they accomplish anything politically significant, are important. From the larger historical standpoint, these meetings are a testament to the relative peace and willingness of nations to sit and discuss important global issues. That we can all meet in one place and air our dissatisfaction with the status quo, hear about advances in thinking and ideas (even if most are not new), and discuss global societal challenges such as sustainable development, is in itself an achievement. We must remind ourselves that the global society is still emerging and defining itself, that the challenges that we face concern us all, including future generations and other species, and that our fate is truly in our hands, is a testament to human progress.

Our goal has been to inject the ethical side of the debate into the discourse and I think we have succeeded. We will continue to show up, make our perspective heard, and at the same time, we will push forwards with our educational efforts, and we will succeed.

Permacyclists' take on Rio+20 and the Peoples' Summit

Guest post by David Meyer and Annabelle Vinois, www.permacyclists.com

Permacyclists and the lead blogger

We've been in Rio for two weeks now and are only just starting to catch our breath.  I think this morning may have been the first day in the past week that I've woken up unaccompanied by the sound of a helicopter hovering low over the city…

My wife and I have come officially as part of the delegation from the organization ATD Fourth World, an NGO working with people living in extreme poverty.  At the same time though, arriving in Rio was the culmination of 13 months traveling by bus from New York making short documentaries about grassroots environmental initiatives along the way, so our time in Rio involved a few different roles and a lot of running around between various obligations, always with the camera ready trying to document what was going on.

Before arriving, we thought the highlight of the week would be our own moment in the sun - the side event we had scheduled at the People's Summit to show our videos and talk about our trip. The first sign though that this wouldn't be the case came a week before the summit, when our event was finally scheduled but we were told that the People's Summit could provide us with no technical support beyond a power outlet.  No projector, no sound… we were nervous, and scrambled some to find material, though with no success - we couldn't afford to rent any, we have no friends in town, none of our few contacts could help… 

In the end it didn't matter though - the tent where we were to show our films had no walls, so a projector wouldn't have done us much good, and the neighboring tent was blasting its own sound so loud that even with speakers our talk would have been inaudible.

And so even though a nice group of people came out and we had a good presentation watching videos on our laptop, in the end our impression of the People's Summit was that for all its talk of a new society and an alternative space, it wasn't so different from the society we already live in.  Bigger groups with more resources were able to give loud and visual presentations in prime locations, while smaller groups like ourselves were left to flounder on their own in obscure tents on the edges. 

More overwhelming though was that almost every square inch of the summit seemed to be taken up by people selling things.  From indigenous people selling handicrafts to street vendors selling "I Love Rio" t-shirts.  Clearly word had gotten out that there were willing buyers in the Aterro Flamengo, and for all the anti-capitalist dogma, it seemed an awfully capitalist place…

In the end the highlight of the week came, surprisingly, at Rio Centro, when a short protest by young climate activists turned into an angry sit-in and a walk out of 130 people, all handing in their official UN badges on the way out in protest to what they saw as the failure of the summit to take any meaningful action.  It was a spontaneous moment, a burst of real energy into what was otherwise a week of carefully orchestrated political theater - on both sides of town - and it gave me some hope for the energy that is still out there in the climate movement.

Watch the video.

Besides that one moment though, it was a week of endless speeches, of questions which turn into speeches, of chanting and banner-waving - a week of words.

On one of our last nights in Rio, I was talking with Mercedes, a woman from Bolivia who is also part of the delegation from ATD Fourth World, and I asked her what she thought of the conference.  "Too much theory," she told me.  "Not enough practice."  Imagine, she went on, if all the people who had come here had instead stayed home and planted trees?  Just 10 trees each.  50,000 people… 

It has been an intense two weeks, with some great contacts and some memorable experiences, but in the end I can't help but wonder if Mercedes isn't right - if we might not have done more for the planet if we had all just stayed home and planted trees…

Premacyclists' report and video from Rio+20 walkout

The following is a guest post from David Meyer and Annabelle Vinois, Earth Charter International friends and supporters. They captured an interesting moment at the conference. We thank them for sharing.

Even if Rio Centro was the center of the largest conference in UN history, sometimes it could also be a pretty dull place.  So after the fist few days, when young climate activists started organizing protests each evening around the "Fossil of the Day Award," recognizing the country most opposed to the environment in negotiations, we started following them around.  On the second to last day of the summit, they planned a larger action and let us in to help plan and film.  The idea was to symbolically tear up a copy of the agreement, drawing attention to what they felt was the inappropriate influence of major corporations on the final draft text.  Then a young indigenous girl would sing a song, and those who wanted to would sit and occupy the protest space and see what happened. 

What happened was that people started to speak out, and people turned out to be pretty angry.  So everyone sat down in groups, discussed the conference and how best to show their protest, and well - the video shows the whole story, but the result of it all was a consensus decision that led to 100+ people walking out of the conference, handing in their badges on the way out in protest.  It was an inspiring moment - and for a the three hours the protest lasted, Rio Centro was anything but dull!

http://vimeo.com/44625148

Derniers jours de la Charte de la Terre à Rio

L’équipe de la Charte de la Terre en délégation à Rio a maintenu sa présence sur tous les fronts, allant de side-event  en conférence, de réunion en rencontre de haut niveau. Ils vous proposent ici des pistes de réflexion tirées de ces évènements sur la mesure du bien-être, la gouvernance mondiale du développement durable, le dividende démographique ou le l’engagement des jeunes.

Retrouvez les derniers articles traduits en français sur le site de la Charte de la Terre.

Earth Charter Youth Event at the Peoples Summit

Post by Cecilia Sbernini

On Monday morning, June 18th, there's nothing better than a youth meeting to get us inspired and ready to change the world. We’re at the People Summit again, the auditorium is filled with young people eager to hear what the more experienced have to say about us, about being young and about wanting to have youth voices heard.

It was great to see people from all the corners of Brazil, and some corners of the world gathered in one place. The speakers talked about the importance of creating networks, of working together and sharing our ideas to create projects and find support for our efforts using the earth charter as inspiration and guide. Various projects and initiatives were presented and youth from Canada, Brazil and the Netherlands shared their accomplishments and challenges. Severn Suzuki expressed her sadness about being in Rio, twenty years later, talking about the same issues, with more gravity and urgency for action. She spoke in Rio in 1992 as a child worried about her future, now she speaks as a mother, worried about her children's future. And it's exactly this worry about future generations and the love we feel for them that will serve as a tool to make people care. It’s this inter-generational love that will allow us save our planet.

Perhaps the most shocking to me was Marina Silva's speech on how we've become consumers of emotions: she drew on Severn's speech when we all got emotional and prompted us to act on that emotion rather than become merely consumers that once the emotion fades the ideas expressed become obsolete and leave space to a realistic and pragmatic world. She reminded us that people that make a better world have imagined something impossible believed in it and created it. That's what we have to do, the world we imagine when we're boosted with emotions is the same we need to imagine in front of obstacles and hardship. This is how we become part of real changes.

ECI and GRI Voluntary Commitment

Post by Alicia Jimenez

The Earth Charter International and the Global Reporting Initiative have jointly submitted a voluntary commitment in the framework of the UNCSD Rio+20 Summit.

Both organizations committed on creating a joint training program on sustainability reporting, deepening the participants' understanding on ethical principles for sustainability.

This education program will be undertaken at the Earth Charter Center for ESD, based at the University for Peace.


Find here the complete text of this voluntary commitment.

The idea of submitting this voluntary commitment was finally materialized at a meeting on Thursday 21 June between Teresa Fogelberg (GRI), Mirian Vilela, Alide Roerink and Alicia Jimenez (ECI) at the end of a side event organized by GRI at the HSBC Arena, in Rio.

Deuxième semaine de la Charte de la Terre à Rio+20

L’équipe de la Charte de la Terre a poursuivi son engagement à Rio avec des évènements  variés sur l’alliance entre les religions, le cadre éthique d’une gouvernance mondiale, ou encore l’investissement de la jeunesse pour le développement durable.
Retrouvez une selection d'articles traduits en français sur le site de la Charte de la Terre.

Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing

Janos Pasztor and Tarja Halonen

Post by Patricia Grossi Reis

On Thursday June 21 Douglas and I attended a side event of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability called “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing.” The purpose of the panel was to share key messages and recommendations from the Global Sustainability Panel (GSP) report, a blueprint for a sustainable future produced by 22 high-level panel members from around the world. While the GSP report was not created to be a formal input to the Rio+20 conference, it sets out a comprehensive framework for driving sustainable development forward in the context of the many interrelated challenges we are facing.

I must admit it was a great honor to be sitting at the same table as so many distinguished participants such as President Jacob Zuma from South Africa, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart from Barbados, Dr. Gro Harlem Bruntland, former Prime Minister of Norway, and Tarja Halonen, former President of Finland, to name just a few (the list was extensive!). Dr. Bruntland talked about empowerment of women and the importance of reproductive rights, Prime Minister Stuart examined the need for a framework to advance ocean’s governance and Sir Richard Branson – not an official member of the GSP panel but a guest speaker at the event – called for the end of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

The GSP report makes 56 recommendations, which fall under three main headings: empowering people to make sustainable choices, working towards a sustainable economy, and strengthening institutional governance to support sustainable development. Recommendation 14 specifically advocates incorporating ethical dimensions into the sustainable development discourse through instruments like the Earth Charter.

Amidst so many claims that the final Rio+20 document lacks in substance and ambition, I hope governments, businesses and other stakeholders will work together going forward to adopt the recommendations presented in the GSP document and turn the vision of a sustainable future a reality.

High Level Panel on Global Sustainability

Post by Douglas F. Williamson

Gro Harlem Brundtland

In 2010, UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon convened a High Level panel on Global Sustainability, a group comprised of a variety of experts including world leaders. The panel was tasked with reporting to the Secretary on global sustainability challenges. The group issued its report several months ago in advance of the Rio+20 conference and it included 51 recommendations, including one to use the Earth Charter for discourse on the ethical dimensions of sustainable development. The document was completed by consensus and its endorsement of the Earth Charter shows the declaration's continued relevance to the emerging sustainable future.

Jacob Zuma of South Africa

Sir Richard Branson

Many of the esteemed panels members were present for the meeting, which was packed, and although it wasn't a very interactive dialogue, it was interesting to hear about the process of the report's creation and see all the different minds that contributed. Some of the points that I found compelling were the emphasis on going beyond GDP, some called it GDP plus, and the focus on getting pricing right, meaning integrating all costs and expressing all values including what are now known as externalities, environmental and social. There was also talk of ending subsidies for fossil fuels and youth and women empowerment. All of these points and many more are elaborated in the report. All relevant information can be found at the panel's Web site.

Making Population Matter: The Demographic Dividend and Sustainable Development

Post by Olivia Gilmore

Yesterday I ventured out of RioCentro and over to Athletes Park, a separate collection of pavilions and individual country centers with a much more casual feel. What brought me there was an event entitled Making Population Matter: The Demographic Dividend and Sustainable Development, hosted by USAID, The Aspen Institute, and the Center for Population and the Environment. It took place in the U.S. Center, a drab navy box lacking the flair and style of the Italian Center or United Arab Emirates, but which was compensated for by the genuinely interesting dialogue among the panelists and audience.

Panelists included Cassio M Turra, Professor of Demography, Carmen Barroso, Regional Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Susan Reichle of USAID’s bureau of Policy, Planning, and Learning, and Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, Executive Director of the African Institute for Development Policy. The Aspen Institute’s Peggy Clark acted as moderator; closing remarks were given by USAID’s Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg.

The event began with an explanation of the demographic dividend, which for those of us that are unfamiliar with the term, generally refers to the economic growth a country with a large youth population can realize if it invests in the following four things: child survival, access to reproductive health, increased access to education, and job creation. If these things can all happen together then exceptional growth can be achieved.

Cassio Turra went on to explain that the economic benefits that the demographic dividend relates a change in age structure during demographic transition to economic growth. However, it is important to note that this growth is not automatic. It is more like an opportunity, an opportunity that can be missed if countries do not have the right policies.

Brazil is often cited in relation to the demographic dividend, with huge leaps in women’s education and empowerment leading to smaller family sizes. The “Asian Tigers”, such as Taiwan and South Korea were also mentioned.

However, where this opportunity is missed the social and economic realities are particularly devastating. Speaking to this point, Deputy Steinberg referenced Robert Kaplan’s famous article in the Atlantic, The Coming Anarchy, which made quite a stir in the early 90’s of the Clinton Administration. When the article showed up on his desk with a giant question mark on the top put there by the President himself as if to ask “Is this true?”, Steinberg’s response was “Maybe”. Whether this gloom and doom outlook is true or not depends on if we are dealing with the demographic transition or a youth bulge. A youth bulge is a threat to security, drag on the economy, and a situation which breeds gender and domestic violence and social unrest. The demographic dividend means a positive use of a nation’s human capital and unprecedented social and economic growth. As Steinberg pointed out, the youth bulge is seen in the people in IDP camps we don’t reach. The demographic dividend is represented by the young boy, who after receiving the Ambassador’s tie, is inspired to further his education and better his life.

At the end of the session I asked a somewhat pointed question. The phrase “integrated approach for sustainable development” was thrown around a lot, but without any explanation as to how exactly the demographic dividend is achieved without further environmental degradation. After all, rapid economic development is typically anything but sustainable. I directed my question to Susan Reichle, asking her to please speak to how the policy, planning, and learning bureau of USAID works with environmental concerns and natural resource management in countries where the demographic dividend is possible. I cited Nigeria as an example where oil has been a resource curse for the population, causing violence, corruption, and terrible pollution, often at the hand of U.S. companies. Oil… conflict… environment… U.S. interests… not surprisingly my question was conveniently sidestepped with a diplomatic response – something to the effect of “USAID considers social and environmental concerns when implementing all projects… ”.  

We Got Mad!

Post by Nora Mahmoud

I attended and participated the side event, "Get mad and do something about it! Youth as initiators for change," co-organized by Temple of Understanding, Gender Progress Consortium, Zero Waste Youth, Zero Waste Institute Brazil, Government of the City of Porto Alegre, Interfaith Consortium for Ecological Civilization (ICEC), CliMates, MobilizeUS,Worldview Impact Foundation’s Green Apprentice Programme (GAP), Peace Revolution, and Novociclo.

The event's aim was meant to recognize the anger and disappointment many young people feel when we look to our future. Rather than meeting the future with a defeated attitude, the panel explored several of the environmental hurdles facing younger generations and then presented solutions, such as, alternative lifestyles, green business ideas, green growth, social media and virtual capacity building forums and short courses, and new ideas for institutional infrastructure that are currently being implemented by youth.

It was an extremely interactive and therapeutic session in which the audience was asked to participate and express their feelings about how they felt the negotiations were going and they were also to share what actions they felt needed to take place during Rio+20 and beyond. 

I talked about my experience with the Earth Charter youth network and emphasized the importance of education for sustainable development as the way forward.

An Ethical Framework for Global Governnance

Post by Loubna Sadiki

The Earth Charter International side event that took place on June 17th, entitled "An Ethical Framework for Global Governnance" had an aim to have an open discussion about how important it is to agree on common ethical principles for a global governance system for sustainability.

The first speaker, Mr. Bosselman, started by explaining that he noticed that there is an increasing gap between civil society and governance by showing a graph that displays this gap from 1996 to 2012. He explained that since the cold war, this gap was widened due to an increase of capitalism that led to the decrease of sustainable environment practices. He also pointed out that neoliberalism had a peak after the Johannesburg conference in 2002 where it was the emphasis of partnership between the government and the corporations that have resulted nowadays to a decrease of green practices.

Later, he explained the concept of Global Commons. He defined it as a public good (when we look at it from a global perspective); It's everything we share and have in common. He stressed that about 200 years ago, in the European Union, the government agreed that no land has to be sold to anyone because it is inherited and passed to the future generations.

The second part of the speech was presented by the Mr. Rubens and Mr. Liknotal. Mr. Rubens said that ''We should act on both local and international environmental levels.'' He added that as representatives of civil society, we should be able to act on all levels, and not have to choose between the government and civil society. He emphasized that we need instruments for global governance.
Mr. Liknotal then talked more about what kind of change we really need nowadays in regards to major environmental issues. He stressed on having values and spiritual values, ''without them we are doomed.'' This made me think about how relevant the Earth Charter is to helping to providing a values based framework that can guide us to more sustainable ways of living. The speech ended with Mr. Liknotal expressing his discouragement about the new agenda for Rio+ 20; he explained that the discussions on the environment and sustainability don't touch the real problems that we are facing such as water and deforestation but focus only on the green economy.