Is it worth it? (Rio+20)

As I’ve traveled again today to New York for an additional week of Rio+20 negotiations at the UN, it's time to address perhaps the most common question people are asking as the Earth Summit is approaching: Is it worth all the effort? 

The slow pace of negotiations causes  frustration and pain at all levels, from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon , to elder statespersons like Gro Harlem Brundtland and Fernando Henrique Cardoso to NGOs and Trade Union organizations. Frustration and fatigue is the most widely shared feeling at all sustainability summits because it isn't easy to reconcile the tension between the three pillars of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental). There are also too many differing vested interests among the 193 UN member States, as well as among this nebulous corps described as "civil society". This tends to bring everyone down toward the lowest common denominator, and inevitably those with higher ambitions we are rarely happy when we go home. 

So, why is it that despite the flaws, almost everyone comes back and gets involved whenever another summit is announced? Why are the UN and civil society so addicted, as if these summits were their (our) cocaine?  Here are five reasons I can see why so many NGOs always come back.

1.     Agenda-setting: The truth is that most of the progress in international policy in the last decades finds its origin in one or more citizen groups who’ve championed new policies and measures. I can remember a few instances where the initiative came directly from within a government or the UN but these are exceptions, and even with these the first thing the government or the UN does is to reach out to, and strategize with, potential allies from within the NGO community as a key element of an outreach approach.

2.     Damage control: International policy doesn’t move in a straight line, it goes back and forth influenced by factors that often have little or nothing to do with the subject matters (changes of parliamentary majority and leadership in key countries, financial and other crisis take up attention and resources to the detriment of environmental and social issues, a committed government minister is replaced, etc.) or that are directly relevant (lobbying by sectorial interests, change of public perception…)  That’s the watchdog function of NGOs; to fulfill it one needs to be there to see what’s going on, help the allies, destabilize and neutralize the adversaries, and bear witness. The web of multilateral environmental instruments, made up of a combination of legally-binding treaties and conventions, action plans and agreements contained in political declarations is like a football playing field; we’re reaching the end of the second half of the game, but we don’t know if we’ll be granted extra time (and penalty shoot outs).

3.     Window dressing: For many non-State actors, a summit is an opportunity to give visibility to their own work, even though it can be difficult among so much background noise. Since Rio’92, the host countries of major intergovernmental meetings provide facilities, including entire pavilions, for governments and private entities to display their work and to debate on their own terms. Entities that are worlds apart use these opportunities in their own ways, and Rio+20 will be no exception with – for example – the Corporate Sustainability Forum on the one hand and the People’sSummit on the other. These fora are handy for the media in search of stories and background pictures, especially when the political negotiation is deadlocked in private rooms and there is little to show and report there.

4.      Recognition and visibility: Some private entities, including some NGOs, like to say they’ve been part of it even if they’ve not really been an active part of it. You can bet that the 2012 Corporate Social Responsibility reports of many corporations will say that they were in Rio even if it’s hard to tell what they’ve actually done (or even if what they’ve done was undermining progress). Of course the same also happens with some NGOs; for example some flag on their websites they have Consultative Status within the UN Economic and Social Council (like more than 3500 NGOs across the world) as if it was a great achievement. The good news is that often NGO representatives who come for the first time get it fast and become shining stars after (or even during) their first experience. Another good news: not everything in the private sector is greenwashing: there is an increasing constituency of committed green entrepreneurs who are changing the patterns of production, trade and consumption; among those who were already at Rio’92 and Johannesburg 02 also some have learned the lessons of their mistakes and they should be encouraged.

5.     Family reunion: An Earth Summit looks like a large family gathering and  its most trivial aspects can be irritating. So it's important is that it be full of tensions, intrigues, alliances, separations and divorce, shouts, screams,  tears, and also laughter. Like in any large family.

This blogpiece is also available in español, HERE (ÁQUI) on the website of the Spanish news agency EFE.

Before the Renaissance

When I was involved between 1975 and 1982 in the campaign to end commercial whaling, our favourite sound-bite was “The harpoon guns should end up in museums!”  So I was thrilled last month when I found in the aquarium of La Coruña, Spain the harpoon gun of IBSA III, one of the whaling vessels we’d stopped killing endangered fin whales in 1980 when I was the campaign coordinator on board the Rainbow Warrior.

1980: This is me on the deck of the Rainbow Warrior.
The whaling vessel in the background is IBSA III

Thirty-two years separate last month’s photo (above) in the aquarium museum from the black & white photo (left) of me on the deck of the Rainbow Warrior in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. IBSA III, the whaling vessel on the black & white photo was one of five whale catchers owned and operated by a company whose business was to kill large whales on their migration path approximately 170 miles off the coasts of Portugal and Spain. After harpooning them, the catchers used to tow the dead whales (generally three at a time) to two land stations on the North West coast of Spain where the meat was sliced, packaged and frozen under the supervision of Japanese operators; at regular intervals a Japanese freezer vessel called in Vigo harbour and the whale meat was shipped to Japan. We’d picked up the Spanish fleet because it was on the list of pirate whalers -- they were catching as many whales as they could, as fast as they could, and ignored completely the regulations set by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) --  and also because soon after the end of General Franco’s dictatorship Spain was hoping to accede to the European Community. So we’d figured out that if we shamed them Spain could be the first domino to fall from a series of a dozen countries making at the time big bucks (big yens) from killing big whales. That’s indeed what happened two years later: in 1982 Spain's vote tipped the balance at the crucial IWC meeting where the moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted. Spain’s whaling industry was phased out, and now IBSA III’s harpoon gun is displayed in the aquarium museum in La Coruña as the witness of a very remote era.

When it was chased by the Rainbow Warrior,
IBSA III's harpoon gun wasn't resting in
a museum (1980)

I’m posting this story today, because the United Nations have designated the 22^nd of May the International Day for Biodiversity which is dedicated this year to Life in the Sea. Of course this year is also the 30^th anniversary of the adoption in 1982 of the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling. The campaign to end commercial whaling is a very old story that is still remembered as a milestone of the environmental movement. Essentially, it was a battle between very committed activists with a strong will against a large international group of old school businessmen unwilling to see that the times were changing.

The campaign for the moratorium on whaling finds its origin in Recommendation 33 of the first UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972. As we’re preparing for the Rio+20 Conference next month (Stockholm+40, in fact), should we ask ourselves  what we must send to museums this time? Oil drilling gears and refineries? Destructive trawl fishing gears? Unsustainable biofuel schemes affecting food security and the environment? Aging nuclear reactors on earthquake fault lines and elsewhere? Vessels flying flags of convenience to evade financial, social and environmental regulations? …Don’t count on governments to agree a list in Rio. But if only they put their words into action now and stop supporting with public subsidies environmentally harmful industries, for our children it could make the difference between living in a world of environmental horror or contemplating instead the museum of past environmental horrors.  Let the Renaissance begin!

Special thanks to Miriam Montero and Marta Cavallé of the Lonxanet Foundation for Artisanal Sustainable Fishing for arranging my visit at the La Coruña Aquarium, to Francisco Franco del Amo, Technical Director of the aquarium for his warm welcome, and to Greenpeace photographer Pierre Gleizes who kindly sent me the two photos from 1980 included in this piece. In his recently published entertaining book “Rainbow Warrior mon Amour” (in French), Pierre describes the first trip we did together in Spain as “a Tintin adventure”; Yep!

This blogpiece is also available in español, HERE (AQUÍ) on the website of the Spanish news agency EFE.

The Long and Winding Road Towards Rio+20

On Monday 23rd April, when the last two weeks' session of informal negotiations for the Rio+20 conference began at UN Headquarters in New York, I took this photo and posted it on my Facebook page with the following comment: "The sign on the photo says 'one way'; so why can't governments agree?"

Two weeks later when the talks ended on Friday 4 May in the evening, I got this other photo taken in a nearby street corner to illustrate the state of the negotiations.

A clumsy process had failed to break the deadlock; government delegates continued to disagree on most key issues; there was at least as many road blocks on the way to Rio as ever before; the only thing government delegates could agree was to to meet again in New York in a few weeks, from 29 May to 2 June to hold further talks.

By 22 May, the Co-Chairs will attempt to produce another streamlined document that can form a new basis for negotiations, taking into account what they've been hearing in the last two weeks. Whether this last ditch effort fails or not, it is clear that not all the major issues will be resolved during this last informal session in New York.  But this is how it should be: at that point we'll all move to Rio and the buck will pass to the Brazilian government who will assume the presidency as host country for the third and final session of the Preparatory Committee and for the Summit proper. Civil servants and diplomats like the ones in New York are very good at maintaining and protecting their countries' positions. But they usually lack the flexibility to bring consensus; that's the job of the politicians, and these won't show up before we're in Rio. So, don't panic, as long as broadly speaking all options are left open before we move to Rio, it is still possible to envisage a successful outcome at Rio+20, if the politicians take their responsibilities seriously next month. That was my optimist side.

On the realistic side, my Varda Group colleague Kelly Rigg who was with me in New York last week has just written an excellent piece in her blog in the form of a letter to Heads of State and Government. Kelly shows how negotiators from all sides tend to protect their own vested interest, often in contradiction with what their leaders have said or signed in other fora. For example, in the preambular text which refers to the need to eradicate poverty, the US negotiators say they only want to eradicate "extreme" poverty; the US has also proposed to delete the adjective "clean" from the sentence which reaffirms commitments regarding the human right to safe [and clean?] drinking water and sanitation. What reading can we make of this? Let's get rid of extreme poverty because it bring insecurity, but not of poverty as a whole because it'd mean we'd have to share wealth in earnest? And let's avoid people dying from dehydration because it doesn't look good on TV, but slow death due to polluted water is okay?  The G77 countries (developing countries for the most part, led by countries that have emerged in the last two decades, like China, Brazil and India) are also demonstrating shortsightedness when they insist that "each state has the right to determine its national energy policies in accordance with its national requirements"; right, but let's not forget the obligations enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted 20 years ago at Rio'92: "The ultimate objective [...] is to achieve [...] stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production i8s not threathened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner" (UNFCCC Article 2).  And the European Union, despìte its commitment to decrease its environmental footprint best illustrated by its leadership in climate policy, continues to drag its feet when it comes to  the elimination of environmentally and socially harmful subisdies in agriculture and fisheries...Talking of subsidies also, the members of the G20  already agreed  in principle in 2010 to "phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, taking into account vulnerable groups and their development needs." The G20 countries will hold their own summit in Mexico a couple of days before Rio+20; shouldn't this be the perfect opportunity for them to put their stated policy in motion with a time-table and target dates? The strong signal that the markets need to give the much needed push for the renewable energy sector worldwide, on this, the UN-designated  International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.


I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Oh, I miss John Lennon!

Impasse

When in the mid 1970s I've first known Brice Lalonde, now Executive Coordinator of the Rio+20 Conference, he was correcteur d'imprimerie  in Paris for a living. It was before personal computers, word processors and spellcheck programmes existed (if you were saying "le PC" in those days you could only be talking of "le Parti Communiste"), thus the correcteurs were a very powerful guild. No editorial business, big or small,  could operate without them; they were uniquely skilled to correct in record time typos, grammar and spelling mistakes of course but also repetitions, redundancies, and even nonsense. Now we have computers, word processors and spellcheck programmes, but we see that still too often governments are  missing common sense. So sometimes when I watch the pace at which the Rio+20 text negotiations are going and note that we have less than 60 days to the Rio Summit, half-jokingly I wish Brice could get back to his original job and offer his correcteur skills to the UN.

I'm writing this from New York where I'm staying for another two weeks of "Informal informal" Rio+20 negotiations. The latest version of  "The Future We Want," the draft declaration that Heads of State and Government will be asked to consider in Rio now contains...272 pages, because it compiles all the options put forward by government delegations and despite an attempt by the Bureau to streamline the text. Even if we take only the paragraphs of "streamlined text" by the Bureau, it would still be more than 50 pages (a length which is generally considered to be too long for such a declaration) and it's anyway unlikely that the various negotiating groups would agree this week to focus on the Bureau's version only.

With all global environmental indicators in red alert, more than ever we need multilateral decisions. But in 2012, there must be better ways to conduct multilateral negotiations than listening to back-to-back statements week-after-week.  For example, the so-called Vienna Setting, an innovative, transparent and participatory arrangement used in the last twelve years in several UN processes (including the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002) has proven useful for negotiators to break their impasse.

But is there the political will to break the impasse?

This blogpiece is also available in español, HERE (AQUÍ) on the website of the Spanish news agency EFE.

Summit 2.0

Has the UN Secretariat lost faith in the ability of the 193 UN Member States to negotiate and agree a meaningful document for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) to be held in two months and a half in Rio de Janeiro?

I just spent the last two weeks in New York at what the UN jargon calls Informal-informals. The aim of these consultations is to be in a position to present to the Heads of State and Government in Rio a draft declaration that is both meaningful and concise. We started in January with an original "zero draft" of 19 pages, and after the Informals this week everyone went home with a draft of...206 pages. At the end of the Informals, the  two Co-Chairs of the Preparatory Committee announced that by 16 April they will "streamline" this text where they find commonalities, but it is unlikely that the size of the text gets significantly reduced in this process (it will probably be increased).

Another session of Informal informals will take place in New York 23 April-4 May. And even more informal consultations are on-going in the meantime within and among the different political groups (including the powerful but very diverse Group-of-77-Plus-China). However, given the difficulty to come up with a workable consensus outcome document, it is hardly surprising that the UN Secretariat and the Brazilian Government, respectively organizers and hosts of the conference, are  increasingly putting their hopes in other initiatives that can save the summit:

• Nine Sustainability Dialogues: The Brazilian Government says they want the nine thematic Civil Society Sustainability Dialogues scheduled in Rio 16-18 June to become an official part of the conference. The UN and Brazil say that the eight speakers (scientists, economists, private sector, NGOs, etc.) selected for each of these events will be asked to each come up with a set of three recommendations that will be forwarded for deliberation to the four High-Level Round Tables of Heads of State and Government that will be held on 20-21 June at the Summit. The UN say they will soon launch an online forum where any citizen will be able to send their own ideas which will be forwarded to the moderators of the relevant Sustainability Dialogues. 
• Sustainable Development Goals: UN officials believe that Rio+20 will be the opportunity to agree to the adoption of a series of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),  successors of or complementary to the UN Millennium Goals that helped the international community focus its efforts in the areas of poverty and hunger eradication, access to education, gender equity, child and maternal health, HIV-AIDS prevention, environmental sustainability, and development. Rio+20 would not be the place to negotiate the details of these SDGs, but it is hoped that Heads of State and Government in Rio would give the UN a mandate to develop them between 2013 and 2015. The idea of the SDGs came to light in the report of the UN Secretary General High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability released in the month of January. The Governments of Colombia and Guatemala have actively campaigned in favor of the SDGs.
• Compendium of commitments: The UN is also proposing that all organizations and groups participating in the Rio+20 Summit events register their voluntary commitments in a registry or compendium. The added value of this registry is unclear, unless it can serve as a mechanism to combat greenwashing and to secure the transparency and accountability of public-private partnerships.

I suppose that these and other initiatives can help save the Summit. We'll see if they help save the Planet too. 

This blogpiece is also available in español, HERE (AQUÍ) on the website of the Spanish news agency EFE.

Safe Mariana Trench

James Cameron's dive into the Mariana Trench this week-end inevitably evokes for me the long campaign against radioactive waste dumping at sea I ran with Greenpeace for many years. During that campaign, we prevented the governments of the US, Japan and Taiwan from using the Mariana Trench as a radioactive waste graveyeard. Hadn't we been successful, James Cameron could have found a very different ocean floor, with mountains of radioactive waste barrels, crushed and leaking because of the water pressure (the nuclear industry was calling this the dilute and disperse approach to waste disposal).

I wrote in a peer-reviewed journal article published some 15 years ago  how the world's governments agreed to ban ocean dumping. We started the anti-dumping campaign in 1978  at a critical time, when many countries were developing or stepping up their nuclear power programmes. In the late 1970s, only five countries were  routinely chartering vessels to dump radioactive wastes in the high seas, but many more countries were planning to join this practice. One of the areas they'd identified as a convenient dumpsite was a site 600 miles North of the Northern Marianas. In 1979, both Japan and the US had announced their intention to initiate new programmes of radioactive waste dumping at sea. Japan was planning to dump up to 100,000 curies per year in the Mariana Trench, and in 1982 the US also considered a plan to scuttle ageing nuclear submarines in the Ocean. These dumping programmes would have involved the disposal of as many as one hundred decommissioned nuclear submarines, each containing 50,000 curies of radioactive wastes. In addition, the US Department of Energy had maintained hopes to be able to find ways to dump at sea thousands of cubic metres of radioactively contaminated soils dating back to the early years of their nuclear weapons programmes in the 1940s, the Manhattan Project which preceded the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The UK, France, Japan, the US, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands were also spending millions of dollars annually to develop the sub-seabed disposal option for high-level radioactive wastes in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans: equipped with drilling gear and/or suppository-shaped  free-fall penetrators (containers which would penetrate the seabed like armour piercing bullets) ships from these countries would shoot the high-level wastes under the seabed. All these plans were shelved in 1983 when the Parties to the London Convention called for a moratorium on radioactive waste dumping at sea in response to the Greenpeace campaign, and they were scrapped altogether ten years later when the London Convention was amended to ban permanently the dumping of all radioactive wastes at sea.

It's good to look back because there's a conventional belief that advocacy campaigns by NGOs do not work, and that nothing can be done to stop environmentally harmful activities in the high seas. 

Guide for not Getting Lost in Rio+20

The Spanish news agency's environment service EFE-Verde who hosts my blog in Spanish has published last week my "Guide for not getting lost in Rio+20" as a six-parts series. If you read Spanish you can find information on Rio+20 and the expectations around it.