Johannesburg 2002: The World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio + 10), gathered together world governments, concerned citizens, United Nations agencies, multilateral financial institutions and other major actors to assess global change since the historic United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), of 1992. Unfortunately, little was achived.
Download the Green MEPs briefing on the Earth Summit
Between 26 August and 4 September 65,000 politicians, civil servants, NGO campaigners and grassroots activists descended on Johannesburg for the UN-sponsored World Conference for Sustainable Development. Dubbed 'Rio +10', the conference aimed to review progress made since sustainable development was placed firmly on the international agenda at the UN's Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, set priorities and make firm commitments for the future.
This briefing describes the road from Rio in 1992 to Johannesburg, asking what progress has been made since Rio, what the Johannesburg summit hoped to achieve and how far these aims were realised.
In June 1992 world leaders met in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) - or Earth Summit - to discuss global action for protecting the world's environment and promoting poverty eradication.
Despite failing to meet Green aspirations and the clear lack of political will for radical change evidenced at Rio, the summit did at least produce some concrete results: the UN framework Convention on Climate Change, which lead to the development of the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, a series of principles defining the rights and responsibilities of states.
Rio also gave us the Statement of Forest Principles, on which the sustainable management of forests worldwide would be based, and Agenda 21, which has itself spawned thousands of local environmental initiatives around the world.
In December 2000, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution to embark on a 10-year review of UNCED in 2002 - a Summit, focussing on progress since Rio and the path towards sustainable development in the future. The World Summit on Sustainable Development was scheduled for Johannesburg, South Africa, for September 2002.
It aimed to provide a forum for the world will take a critical look back at UNCED, to arrive at a comprehensive, frank and useful review of the past 10 years, set priorities and make commitments for the future.
The issues to be examined could hardly have been more important - including water and sanitation, agreements on reduction of pollution, agricultural and fisheries production, the protection of the world's forests and the health of the world's population.
In February 2001, the European Commission adopted a Communication on the EU's priorities and actions for Johannesburg defining the strategic objectives and issues for the Rio +10 Summit. After much delay, the Commission also finally released an external Communication on the Summit "Towards a Global Partnership for Sustainable Development" in February 2002. Lack of political will was evident.
According to the European Commission,
there were four factors were responsible for the lack of progress since 1992:
failure to change unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, particularly
in developed countries, a shortage of financial resources caused in part by a
reduction in development aid, disappointing response from institutions in setting
targets and monitoring progress, and weak domestic governance in many developing
nations.
Caroline Lucas's (Green MEP for the South East) opinion on the commission's negotiating strategy, drafted on behalf of the Trade Committee in the European Parliament, pointed out that it was "hardly a strategy in any serious sense of the word, since it contains very few objectives which are either measurable or timebound…[the Commission] should approach Rio +10 with a far greater sense of urgency."
This Green perspective was incorporated into the Trade Committee's final report to the European Parliament but not into the final negotiating strategy adopted by the Commission.
Between April 2001 and June 2002 a series of preparatory meetings ('PrepComs') were held between states and stakeholders to draw up and agree an agenda and programme of action for the summit. At the final PrepCom in Bali, in June 2002, participants failed to agree an action plan.
Some
73% of the implementation text was agreed - but many of the contentious issues
were contained within the remaining text. In particular, the Bali PrepCom failed
to reach agreement on targets and timeframes for access to energy, phasing out
of energy subsidies, implementation of the WTO Doha agreements, an action plan
for meeting previous commitments on levels of bilateral aid, good governance demands
on the developing countries and the effects of globalisation on sustainable development.
Particularly
worrying was the failure to put any kind of brake on the growing power of corporations
or prioritise environmental or social justice issues. Whenever proposals were
put forward to that would in any way slow down the WTO's agenda it has been clear
that trade concerns will take precedence. Developed countries (particularly the
US-led Juscanz group, consisting of Japan, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand)
refused to commit themselves to concrete actions on debt relief, fair trade and
development aid. Big business - acting through the Business Action for Sustainable
Development (BASD) - blocked proposals for a regulatory mechanism to govern their
activities.
It became clear that the "sustainable development"
agenda of Johannesburg was in danger of being hijacked by corporate interests
and that 'solutions' involving the privatisation of common goods such as water,
energy and the health sector would be adopted, which would risk making them even
less accessible to the poor.
Pressure to achieve concrete results from the ashes of the failed preparatory meetings was keenly felt by the UN, the South African government and the leaders of the industrialized nations. But as official delegates publicly complained the formal agenda was too tightly controlled for meaningful negotiations to take place, and the police adopted heavy-handed tactics to silence dissent on the streets, it became clear that Johannesburg would not repeat the sea-change in thinking that followed Rio ten years earlier.
Johannesburg represented a remarkable opportunity for the world's leaders to come together and reaffirm the commitments they made at Rio 10 years ago to pursue a sustainable vision of a more equitable world, where poverty reduction proceeds hand-in-hand with environmental protection and regeneration.
This opportunity was squandered. The inability of elected politicians to approach the challenges with determination to set concrete targets and reach binding agreements during the preparatory process created a political vacuum which was quickly and quietly filled by the corporate sector.
The final agreement and plan of action to emerge from Johannesburg contains few achievable targets or workable proposals likely to improve the prospects for sustainable development. In some cases the Johannesburg text weakened existing commitments. Specific summit outcomes included:
Water and Sanitation - Leaders pledged to halve the number living without sanitation by 1.2bn by 2015, but this agreement remains non-binding
Climate Change - Delegates failed to agree targets for generating more of our power from renewable sources and the summit provided a platform for US and Australian intransigence on the Kyoto Protocol
Biodiversity - The commitment made in Rio to halt biodiversity loss by 2010 was weakened at Johannesburg into a pledge to merely slow the rate of extinctions
Fishing stocks - The first agreement to come out of Johannesburg included a pledge to set up an international network of marine reserves by 2012 and a commitment to "restore fish stocks urgently", but no binding targets or proposals for achieving them
International Aid - Previously agreed concrete targets for developed nations to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on development aid were diluted into mere aspirations
Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility - no progress was made
So what is the road ahead? The fact that the summit took place at all at least ensured that the media put the problems of the environment and development at the top of their agenda. No longer can we reasonably argue that we don't know what needs to be done - or how to do it.
What's been lacking is the political will to take these problems seriously. It is clear that only Green politicians, who accept the need for radical change to produce truly sustainable, equitable and poverty-free societies, who can be trusted to drive the Rio agenda forward.
The need for Green politicians to present radical alternatives to economic globalisation, unsustainable patterns of consumption, production and trade and to propose development projects which are truly sustainable has never been greater.
Further information on the World Summit on Sustainable Development is available from a range of sources, representing the UN, participating nations, civil society organisations and the corporate sector.
Friends
of the Earth info from during the Summit: www.foe.org.uk/campaigns/corporates/news/earth_summit
European
Commission's statement prior to RIO+10
The European Commission has adopted a Communication "Ten Years After Rio: Preparing
for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002", setting out priorities
and actions for the EU in preparation for this event.
UK Government's
Sustainable Development Forum
This website contains a review of the UK Government's preparations for the World
Summit on Sustainable Development - again, prior to the event.
The International Council for
Local Environmental Initiatives: www.iclei.org
The official UN Earth Summit website: www.johannesburgsummit.org/
The official stakeholder website: www.earthsummit2002.org