MHC Student Dana Drugmand wrote an excellent update on the Earth Summit, summarizing recent Rio speakers at MHC and interviewing professor and student (that's me!).
In June of 1992, tens of thousands of people, including 172 states, over 2,400 representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 8,000 delegates and 9,000 members of the press gathered in Rio de Janiero, Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The Rio Earth Summit, as it is informally known, was the largest environmental conference in history and the largest formal gathering of heads of state. Sustainable development had emerged onto the mainstream global agenda, with resulting documents “The Rio Declaration” and “Agenda 21” outlining principles and an action blueprint for achieving sustainable development. Additional outcomes of the conference included a “Set of Forest Principles,” the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was a landmark event in the history of environmental protection.
What has happened since then? The state of the environment has not gotten much better. Environmental degradation has actually gotten worse. Biodiversity loss is accelerating. We are now losing species at 1,000 times the natural rate. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one out of every eight bird species, one out of four mammal species, and one out of three amphibians are threatened with extinction. Half of the world’s forests are now gone. Overfishing has resulted in the decline of 90 percent of the oceans’ large fish species. Atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise. These problems do not exist in isolation; there are related social issues. Billions still live in poverty, chronic hunger affects nearly one billion people worldwide, and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.
The political enthusiasm for tackling environmental and developmental challenges that was on display at Rio in 1992 has eroded over the years. “I could definitely see the growing distrust toward international negotiations,” said Yiting Wang ’12, an Environmental Studies major who has been involved in the international environmental process through programs abroad and in environmental policy. James Gustave Speth, former dean at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and founder of the World Resources Institute, has called global environmental governance “an experiment that has largely failed.” Despite a proliferation of conferences, negotiations, and treaties over the last 20 years related to environmental matters, commitments to following through on actions have been absent.
Clearly there has been an implementation gap. It is relatively easy for a head of state to agree to abide by a certain environmental regulation, but actually enforcing the policy is another matter. This suggests a lack of effective monitoring strategies. Another reason for the implementation gap is that greater priority tends to be given to pursuing trade and economic interests. “The current economic situation also has a lot to do with the delivery of these promises,” Wang said. Finally, there is an overall lack of political will. The U.S. has not demonstrated much leadership in the international environmental arena, refusing to sign the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Kyoto Protocol. There has been increasing recognition that the global environmental governance system is fragmented and has not been entirely effective.
Reassessing this institutional framework will be one of the major discussions taking place at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in June 2012. The conference, to be held once again in Rio de Janiero, marks the 20th anniversary of the first Rio Earth Summit. The main objective of “Rio+20,” according to the 2012 UNCSD official website, is “to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges.” The two major themes of UNCSD are 1) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and 2) the institutional framework for sustainable development. The latter theme entails evaluating the current environmental governance organizations and institutions and discussing options for reform. One proposal is to create a “world environment organization,” a new UN super-organization for dealing with environmental matters.
Earlier this month, on Oct. 6, Jacob Scherr, Director of Global Strategy and Advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), gave a lecture on Mount Holyoke’s campus called “The Race to Rio+20.” Scherr identified the challenges we are presently faced with. After recapping some of the pressures on the planet, he expressed the notion that humans are pushing up against planetary boundaries. Thus, as Scherr put it, “we are running out of time.” He acknowledged the lack of strong leadership by governments and the prevailing skepticism about the international process. Yet, he did highlight some opportunities presented by Rio+20, such as the potential for social media to reach and engage billions of people like never before. He also outlined a list of “potential deliverables,” or smaller-scale targets that could be discussed at the conference, such as eliminating inefficient incandescent light bulbs and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
According to Environmental Studies professor Catherine Corson, “the most important issue that Rio needs to address is consumption in the global North, particularly the United States.” Corson, who specializes in global environmental governance, is currently teaching an Environmental Studies seminar, “Science and Power in Environmental Governance,” that focuses on Rio+20 and the long road that has led to it. She wants students to know about Rio+20, which, she said, “is anticipated to be the decade’s most high profile environmental event.”
Why is Rio+20 so significant? “Like the 1992 Rio summit,” Corson explained, “the ideas, power relations and institutional mechanisms that emerge from it will have a tremendous impact on future international environmental policy and practice, as well as on our lives more generally. Your generation will shape, through events like this and related policies, how we, as a global community, address issues like consumption, waste, environmental degradation and increasing inequality.”
Yiting Wang said she is hopeful for Rio+20 to turn into the Earth Summit of our generation. “It offers some hope and opportunities to review the pitfalls of the past 40 years of international environmental governance, reset the agenda and allow new actors to emerge.” One of these new types of actors is youth. Wang has served as International Youth Coordinator for the China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN) and has attended climate change conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun. She has already attended some of the preparatory meetings for Rio+20 and intends to follow through with her participation next year at the actual conference in Rio. “Increasingly, these international negotiations have been a platform for the youth movement to make a presence, solicit resources and expand influence through both direct political action and civic diplomacy,” Wang said. “This is also why I personally still continue to involve myself in the process, despite all other frustrations.”
Anticipation for the Rio+20 conference is already building here on campus. Students who are possibly interested in attending the event should talk to Wang or Corson, as they are looking to organize a “Mount Holyoke delegation. The Miller-Worley Center for the Environment is also sponsoring several lectures as part of its theme on international environmental governance. The next lecture is coming up on November 10 and will feature James Gustave Speth.
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