Looking back at Rio + 20: a glass half full

As dust settles over the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, it is time to assess the value the outcomes will add to sustainable development. With no major concrete commitments, easy to dismiss the non-binding agreement arrived at in Brazil, as ‘’business as usual’’ statements of intentions with no sticks to beat countries into staying the course of sustainability. But, looking forward, the document adopted by the international community contains promising innovations. In the endorsed resolution, The Future We Want, Member States committed to put in place building blocks to advance the sustainable development agenda. Heads of Governments renewed their commitments, launched new institutions, enhanced opportunities for participation, strengthened policy-science interface, and improved coordination at all levels.

Under the leadership of the General Assembly, Rio + 20 Summit has placed sustainable development at the heart of United Nations work. More than before, Member states reaffirmed their commitments to integrate the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development in a balanced, harmonious and holistic manner. Major institutional innovations were introduced.

Governance blocks falling into place

A much welcome boost to global governance.  An upgraded United Nations Environmental Programme, open to universal membership. With enhanced legitimacy and strengthened mandate, the organisation has been empowered as the leading and coordinating agency for global environment work.

Equally important too, an enhanced toolbox for the UN General Assembly. A High Level Political Forum, inclusive in membership, has been created to provide specific guidance and leadership for strengthening the weak links between the three sustainable development pillars. Besides offering a crucial intergovernmental platform, the Forum will set norms, build capacity, improve implementation as well as facilitate flows in finance, and technology.

The Forum, most importantly, will strengthen the science-policy interface, a perceived missing link in the agenda-setting chain of its predecessor, the defunct Commission on Sustainable Development.  Member States agreed to undertake periodic reviews of their progress, through a global Sustainable Development Outlook report.  The high profile publication will provide a state of the art review for decision-makers, complementing and adding value to other existing reports within the UN system.

To drive a global agenda for sustainable development, key processes have been launched. Building on lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals, Member States agreed to a framework to formulate a list of focused, time-bound, measurable goals as well as targets for tracking progress on sustainable development. Breaking away from the MDG top-down approach, the UN has established a 30-member Open Working Group, with representatives nominated by all its five regional groups to draft a set of sustainable development goals by 2014. An Expert Working Group, will also in parallel, explore options for financing and technologies.

Deliberations in the working group so far, suggest possible policy frames.  Planetary boundary is re-emerging as a galvanizing concept. Proposed in 2009, ‘’planetary boundary’’ made its way into the Rio + 20 preparatory process, but against opposition by some Member States, it was later dropped in the final document adopted. As an organizing idea, the approach delineates ‘safe operating zones’ where humanity can pursue economic growth and human development with minimal likelihood of irreversibly harm to life support systems of the earth.  Beyond each of the nine identified planetary thresholds of tolerance, human activities risk environmental damage of catastrophic and irreversible proportion.

Tipping points

As the concept of ‘’limits’’ re-emerges, battle lines are appearing, too. Even with the increased level of confidence in the evidence against human activities as the major force negatively transforming the planet, science alone, will not drive change. Politics, to a large extent, remains decisive.  What are the implications of the proposed boundaries on sovereignty, in particular rights of southern countries to pursue their own economic and social development priorities?  What are acceptable trade-offs in integrating the three pillars of sustainable development?  Against a limping global economic recovery, will the goals usher a green economy transformation, healthy enough for the planet? How will the goals play out in a new geopolitical order, where global economic growth increasingly depends on carbon-propelled prosperity of key southern countries like China? 

Besides they are even greater conceptual and practical challenges for unifying the MDGs and SDGs processes into a single global development agenda beyond 2015. How will the ‘social floor’ approach implied by the MDGs be balanced against the ‘planetary ceilings’ of the SDGs? Will balance be struck within each goal or across the different goals? How to ensure goals are global enough while at the same time flexible to accommodate individual country needs and capacities? How to ensure that the goals are long-term but also elastic enough to incorporate new and emerging trends and issues?

There are signs for qualified optimism. A window of opportunity is emerging: discrete streams of progress in science, policy and politics, all in search of a common point to converge.  The latest Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, more than before, hardens the science behind planetary limits, as well as ups the urgency for collective actions to prevent the climate system from warming beyond the safe two degree level. Added to the momentum injected by a merger of the two global policy processes, are a range of innovative technologies, policy initiatives and verifiable voluntary commitments by individual countries to pursue environmentally-compatible strategies for economic development.

Deadline 2015

Pressure is mounting too, as the 2015 deadline nears. Governments have agreed to reach a globally binding climate deal by end of next year in Paris. In tandem, Heads of States are expected to adopt also a unified global development goals. 

To achieve concrete progress for people, economy and planet, the United Nations will have to offer much more than a convening platform. It will have to inject entrepreneurialism into the negotiating process: effectively crystallizing the momentum around the emerging streams of progress into collective actions. The 1987 Montreal Protocol, demonstrates how creativity, risks-taking and leadership by the UN enabled a widely recognised successful global agreement to phase out ozone depleting substances. Unlike climate change negotiations, science was not strongly on the side of proponents of a globally binding regulation. It took months after the signing of the treaty for a consensus to emerge on Chlorofluro Carbons (CFCs) as the smoking gun of the observed hole in the radiation protective ozone layer.

It took the entrepreneurialism of UNEP’s director, Moustafa Tolba to build a decisive coalition of key states to draft a text agreed by all countries. This was missing from the expectations-high climate change Summit of 2009 in Copenhagen which ended in a disappointment. A failure, the world cannot afford to repeat again in Paris for humanity and planet in 2015.