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.