All posts by COA Students

Posted:
March 23, 2012
Author:
COA Students

The Future We Really Want: The Why, and What

By: The Informal-informals [Earth] Team

Earth in Brackets has critically examined the history of sustainable development negotiations, outcome documents, and implementation, and has found it to be, with the exception of small gains made in the implementation of Agenda 21, uninspiring. Current institutions under the UN lack the coherence, jurisdiction and consistency to fully address issues of sustainable development, and there has not been sufficient action addressing these issues. As time progresses, the interconnected crises the world is facing are accumulating and intensifying, making them ever more difficult to combat. The Millenium Development Goals, while ambitious, seem to have been forgotten about and are unlikely to be completed by 2015. Implementation of Agenda 21 has been highly unsatisfactory. Now, there is The Future We Want, a document we find to be lacking in ambition, and which is, despite some participants’ best efforts, being increasingly diluted in the negotiations precluding the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.


Therefore, as international youth from [Earth] and the College of the Atlantic, and as voices of the future with a vested interest in the outcome of UNCSD, we have developed The Future We Really Want. We stress that The Future We Really Want is not an all-encompassing final document, but rather a reflection of the work of a focused group of individuals over the course of a concentrated study on the Rio process. It includes some, but not all, of the issues, goals, and actions that we are most passionate about, and that we believe are critical for consideration if there is to be true progress towards sustainable development. It is part of our platform for dialogue and change, both in our own communities, and the greater community of our allies and those with whom we must work harder to collaborate and whom we welcome into productive discussions.


Below, we present some of the key issues and statements outlined in the document:


Overarching Points

  • Negotiators must be truly conscious of their responsibility to future generations, to their constituents, and to one another. Increased political will and commitment to sustainable development and poverty eradication are needed to ensure accelerated fulfillment of sustainable development objectives, and re-commitment to inclusive, transparent and effective multilateralism is needed to better ensure the full and fair participation of all relevant stakeholders.
  • All States have Common But Differentiated Responsibilities – there are historical ecological, social, and economic obligations, therefore countries must take action proportional to their capacity to do so and proportional to the level of harm they have inflicted on society and the global environment.
  • There is inequitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunities, necessitating full cooperation among member states in supporting multilateral development strategies.
  • States should reiterate their commitment to the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with a renewed emphasis on the recognition of all human rights including, inter alia, the rights to clean water, food sovereignty, and development.
  • Neo-liberal economic policies are detrimental to sustainable development. Only a deep reform in the economic system will ensure the equitable fulfillment of sustainable development goals.
  • The economy should serve to fulfill basic human rights and need, and should be based on cooperation beyond consumption and growth while avoiding detrimental effects on the environment. To this effect, we encourage countries to work towards localization, internal development, and move away from growth.
  • The creation of a new Sustainable Development Council, with a progressive mandate that fully integrates all stakeholders in the decision-making process, would provide support for members to effectively communicate, negotiate, and implement their policies, and would provide a platform through which there could be an exchange of relevant information, including implementation assessment, creating a stronger and  more coherent process.

Thematic issues

  • Water is a necessity for human life and is needed for basic well-being and dignity: Countries must guarantee access to responsible quantities of clean and safe water, and should also cooperate more closely in order to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to water-related crises. The right to water should also be extended to Earth’s organisms and ecosystems; the protection and allocation of safe and clean water resources to natural processes and habitats is indispensable for avoiding the endangerment of essential hydrological cycles.
  • Cities have become our main habitat, and there can be no sustainable world without sustainable cities. Unsustainable urban expansion and the increase in mega-cities aggravate problems of poverty, waste, and pollution. For this reason, intermediate city development and a retrofit of existing cities should be encouraged. In order to address international issues arising from city-level problems, States’ policies should support and facilitate the evolution of sustainable cities from both a national and local level and allow the development of self-sufficiency in city management.
  • Earth has a carrying capacity: There are scientific indicators of optimum and maximum sustainable yields that define the limits on how much humans can produce and consume. In order to adequately discourage over-consumption, shift to cleaner production patterns and fulfill basic human needs–especially in the areas of food, water, and energy–sustainable patterns of production and consumption must be adopted in accordance with the principle of  Common But Differentiated Responsibilities.
  • Food is a fundamental human right that must be acknowledged by all states. Food security is a tool that is closely intertwined with sustainable development, and, with a shift towards localized production and consumption, can strengthen, revitalize, and empower local communities, and reduce international food dependency. Food sovereignty is also vital to sustainable development and is the fundamental right of communities to have control over and/or access to, inter alia, arable land, agricultural and marine resources, seeds, the methods of food production, and nutritional food.

Read the full text of The Future We Really Want

Posted:
March 22, 2012
Author:
COA Students

What They Forgot to Mention

By Clara de Iturbe

The preceding day felt way too long and the tension in the air you felt when entering the ECOSOC room the morning after said a lot about what was coming next. Lengthy discussions of the Food Security thematic area—whose title has not yet been agreed upon—demonstrated that the North and the South have very specific agendas and that they are not ready to cooperate in certain areas yet. This was obviously predictable and it somehow kept the negotiations real. Israel and its last-minute additions remained obscure to the rest of the people present in the room, since they were yet to be analyzed by the other negotiating parties. These paragraphs will add to the many more that are to be considered, reconsidered and over considered in the next stages of the negotiation.

The rush I was feeling while being surrounded by so much reality, however, was clouded when I stepped back and realized that some vital aspects concerning food security were missing in the discussions. The amendments and new additions by the North and the G77 were many times not only repetitive and whimsical, but also lacking. Many issues were vaguely mentioned, and some major ones were not subject to discussion because they were simply not there at all—not mentioned even by the almighty G77. For instance, neither the text nor the amendments make reference to the food crisis. This is worrying as it should be the core of any proposed text or actions. By analyzing the implications and causes of the food crisis it is possible to figure out where the flaws of the current food system are and open in-depth discussions over what has to be done to overcome it. By forgetting to mention it, they are also forgetting the existing contradiction in  the fact that almost one billion people are currently food insecure while the world cereal production showed a historical peak in 2008. Moreover, this obscures the threat of clean biofuels to food prices and the huge political influence that the private sector has in this matter. The lack of reference to the food crisis undermines the importance of price stability and obscures the issue of speculation of food prices raised by the G77—which was rapidly bracketed by Australia.

On a not-so-different note, it seems like they also forgot that not everything concerning food security is about food production. Again, the overemphasis on production, or rather the extreme minimizing of food distribution and consumption patterns makes me wonder what their concept of achieving food security is, especially being clear that malnutrition is a challenge for both North and South. The only vague mention to distribution was proposed by the US yet in a context of sustainability—which is indeed important—but certainly does not address equity.

But let’s suppose for a moment that the negotiators actually cared about the sustainable production and distribution of food. If so, how can we explain that they also forgot to mention meat production—excluding fish? With the North and emerging economies increasing their meat consumption this should be a major area of debate, since this, besides being a great cause of land degradation and GHG emissions, is incredibly energy and water inefficient. Furthermore, the oxymoronic proposal of the US, EU, Norway, NZ and amongst other MDCs of encouraging a sustainable intensification of agriculture that makes charming promises of efficiency and increased yields, makes me worry that it might someday replace sustainable production. Also, only the G77 seemed to remember that this can in no ways be achieved without technology and information transfers and that, in fact, small scale farmers still supply around 70% of the world food while the oligopoly of agricultural technologies and GM seeds is held by only a handful of multinational corporations.

In the document, the US eagerly highlights the importance of agriculture for the Green Economy, but they prefer to forget the G77 appeals to actions at local and national levels. This will continue to create tensions between the countries with acute free-market approaches like the US, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia.

As these issues were being forgotten, many things were going on in the room. Delegations were very vocal: The right to food to which the US, the EU and other MDCs politely opposed; Mexico’s push for protecting traditional farming methods made the EU very uncomfortable; and Japan, surprisingly advocated for a more inclusive and localized food production. So, not all is looking so bad. Regardless of the EU effort to bracket any mention of indigenous farmers–as they consider it an ‘unclear concept’–one vastly addressed point of agreement was gender equality and the integration of other stakeholders in the process. The importance of land tenure was surprisingly mentioned too by an MDC.

I was not expecting that more comprehensive and ‘radical’ concepts like Food Sovereignty be mentioned, but it was very disappointing to find that the core aspects of the food crisis and the underlying inequity in the systems of production, distribution and consumption were not considered. So, I guess this blog entry was about what they forgot to mention, but not only that. It was about the good, bad and the ugly; about what is attainable, and politically unlikely; and about the issues that are so important that they simply prefer to ignore.

Posted:
March 22, 2012
Author:
COA Students

Bottoms up

by Ana Puhac

After witnessing the process of negotiations on the Zero Order draft compilation document for only three days, disappointment in the spaces of the UN Headquarters is laughably apparent. Disappointment is not an unforeseen ingredient when dealing with the global political scene and UN. However, when it is implied in mordant remarks of Staffan Tillander, Ambassador for Rio+20 while putting amendments into the Zero order compilation text, it is an omen that calls for rethinking the accountability of the high-level negotiating juggernaut in spearheading the change toward sustainable development.

What struck me the most was that there is a prevailing acceptance coming from both inside & outside of UN, that there is a prescribed place for the change to happen, and it is ultimately in the hands of a minority of high-level decision-makers. I am particularly concerned with the evident inferiority complex that civil society, as well as the Major Groups, are still battling with. Opening up intergovernmental flora to civil society in 1972, the Stockholm Conference offered an opportunity to show that civil society organizations can reach their highest political potential during environmental blockbusters. Still however, in the twenty years of the sustainable development jamboree, civil society and Major groups have a role but of civil slaves to the governments and corporations.

Marian Harkin, Member of European Parliament from Ireland, and a passionate speaker at the side event, Volunteering for Sustainable Future, definitely changed my expectations on how expertise influences the share of responsibilities in implementing the change with her remark that volunteerism is still seen as “an appendage” to  the real (?) actions on sustainable development. Maybe I’m wrong, but it appears to me that at the UN there are powerful experts in many areas who are not doing much of anything, and outside of the headquarters there are many powerless people who are not  necessarily experts in anything, but contribute to everything.

Predictably, my point is that the floundering inaction at the highest levels has been elevated to a format where it’s clear that we can’t lose any more time putting tremendous efforts into reigniting the commitment of the world leaders. Indeed, it is not entirely true that the bottom-up approaches will ultimately bring the solution either. Change is not vertical or horizontal. Change is organic, and it does not occur in harmony with the human expectations. One would think that, some natural impulse for survival would  kick in by now, and people would realize they need to push to create a web, or a network if you will, rather than a streamline that operates bottom-up or top-down solely.

However,  the power of grassroot niches and international local governments, the field of my great interest, are going to become places of creating the web of change in this century. Local communities must raise their self-awareness and keep cultivating its role in the web-creating transition to change until it reaches the top. In that regard, the side event of Just and Sustainable Cities brought to the table different growing initiatives between local communities and businesses that happen in local urban communities around the world. Surprisingly, at the negotiations on the Zero order text yesterday, the paragraph on cities received some quite interesting and innovative ambitions. Most of them were, quite successfully, smothered by [US, Canada, EU and New Zealand].  Japan brought up an important point of establishing a platform to promote sustainable cities for the future with active involvement of the relevant UN entities such as United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD). This is a proposal that recognizes the real benefit of initiatives that come from the local and international levels simultaneously. Cities and metropolitan regions are growing so big that they are gaining a real potential to become future autonomous enclaves. For that reason, the cities and growing towns are the prominent acupuncture points for the civil society to “press” on, where the relief  on our biosphere can be the greatest.

This is not an outcry to dismantle the UN system or other global governing powers. Even though it might be marvelously cathartic to do it, for that we’d have to compete with the United States and the other developed giants. Let’s not forget however, that in the contrast to the UN meetings, there are the G8 countries, WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and such other meetings to which civil society is explicitly unwelcome. Those are the events that need proliferating passionate protests, too. With the Rio conference approaching, my hope is that the civil society  will recognize that it needs to distribute the energy among itself, not to end up pressing the UN’s belly to burp “the solution” while forgetting that the solution comes from the gut of civil society as well.

I say we need to realize that the effort put in the negotiations is mostly effort to decide how much green make up should be thrown at the Earth’s face. We must find ways to act against that plastic surgery of our planet. The events such as the Rio conference more than ever need a passionate crowd that believes that the sky will fall in order to remove the centuries of hubris that have been blocking politicians ears like wax plugs. However – finally, but vitally, this century movements will be closely shackled with advocacy of the rocketing power of local communities (Cairo, Madrid, NYC, Damascus, Athens…) that are more mobile to organize, but still great enough in number to influence national, federal  and sub-national legislations. From this point on,  the rational political acumen and the muscle of the local system will hopefully get this perpetuum mobile of the world to reach an unprecedented life of dignity and efficiency [we] here are dreaming about.

Posted:
March 22, 2012
Author:
COA Students

Education for Sustainable Development and Shifting the Paradigms

by Anna Odell

One of the issues when dealing with “sustainable development” is the lack of clarity around the term itself. We have spent an entire term working, studying, and understanding text such as the “The Future We Really Want” in depth and grasping the general issues that are relevant for Rio+20. But at times, I feel as though we need to take a step back and look at what we expect developing nations to become and what developed nations need transition to. What are they developing towards? To paraphrase Mr. Kartikeya Sarabhai, from the Center for Environmental Education in India, when examining development, we have to define what sort of development we are looking at. What do we actually want our future “green societies” to look like, and how will we get there?

The current model of development is illogical; developing nations are attempting to develop into the model that the developed nations have created, while at the same time the developed nations are attempting to transition to sustainability. However, the planet does not have the capacity for the world’s population to develop into over-consuming nations, such as the United States. As we use the current “developed” world as a model, we are running into some serious issues. While listening to the negotiations, sometimes I feel that states need a gentle reminder that sustainable development is not simply “development.” Instead of moving into the model already set by the developed world, developing nations have the unique opportunity to skip the wasteful carbon intensive development process which is socially, environmentally, and economically inequitable and inefficient, and shift to being sustainably developed. It is necessary for us to re-envision how we want our world to look, and how we are going to get there.

That’s where Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) comes into the picture. Mr. Sarabhai stated, “The real change is when people change,” and education is one of the most effective ways of implementing that crucial and necessary change. For generations we have had an education system that has attempted to teach us to obey societal norms and categorize, and now we need an education system that teaches us to think critically (and in fact, human ecologically) in order to solve the most serious problems ever facing the human species. According to Mr. Sarabhai, “not only do you need a different paradigm of development, you need a different paradigm of education.”

Another common issue with the current education and development paradigm is the assumption that the rich, developed world has it all figured out. It is also important to note that clearly the presence of an advanced education system itself does not imply “sustainable development.” Despite 80% of United States citizens having a post-secondary degree, the comparatively small population of the United States consumes about 30% of the world’s resources. ESD must include policy makers, youth, disadvantaged communities, and developing and developed nations. Ms. Laila Iskander, of the Community and Institutional Development Consulting in Egypt, shared a powerful example of the system of trash and recycling collection system that was organized by the poorest people in Cairo’s slums. People would go door to door collecting trash, then sorting it and recycling and reusing it into products to be sold for profit. This system grew to employ over 120,000 workers, and with the help from an NGO, education programs were started and those who never received a formal education were able to start their own businesses and flourish. Then, the North discovered something magical: Landfills. Landfills were then imposed on Egypt, creating a system in which trash was taken far away from the city (and the workers who were actively collecting and supporting themselves) and multinational corporations took control over what previously was an entirely local, economic system. The transportation of the trash is actually much more carbon intensive and inefficient. Ms. Iskander stated, “we need to stop talking about how we must education the poor people in the South; It is the people in the North who need to learn first.”

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