The words “we need to talk” have marked the death knell of many a relationship, and as the Rio+20 conference gets underway in Brazil, there's a growing sense this “talk” will deliver the same uninspiring message it has many times before. While humanity's relationship with the planet becomes increasingly destructive, these metaphorical heart-to-hearts seem to grow progressively less convicted, as if the two are caught in a faded romance neither can end.
Even with all the fanfare surrounding the summit - hundreds of side events, business gatherings and social media drives - the sense of d'ej`a vu is both palpable and depressing. 'We've been here before and we know how it's going to end' is the underlying sentiment being hinted at by several top officials and commentators.
Watching the Rio+20 talks feels like going over someone's unfulfilled New Year's resolutions.
Lezette Engelbrecht
At the same time, the situation has become more drastic than ever, with a series of pre-event reports painting a bleak picture of the future. The UN Environment Programme's latest Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) shows carbon emissions have increased 40% and biodiversity loss has risen 30% in the two decades since the 1992 Earth Summit. The global community has missed all but four of its 90 most important environmental goals, and pressure on ecosystems and poor communities is only set to intensify as the world's population swells from seven billion to nine billion in 2050.
The report is essentially saying that despite all the previous “we need to talk” moments, resulting in over 500 internationally agreed upon goals to support sustainable development, the world continues to speed down an unsustainable path. With greenhouse gas emissions set to rise by 50% before the end of the century, we're heading for temperature increases of between three and six degrees Celsius. At the very lowest of those increases, annual economic damage from climate change is estimated at 1% to 2% of world GDP. The GEO-5 report notes that if humanity does not urgently change its ways, several critical thresholds may be exceeded, beyond which sudden and generally irreversible changes to the planet's life-support functions could occur.
Despite these findings, along with other recent warnings from prominent scientists, the Rio+20 negotiations aren't even aimed at developing a set of targets. Due to other world events demanding leaders' attention, such as the European crisis, US elections and conflict in the Middle East, the most that can be hoped for is reaching an agreement to set new sustainable development goals, which would then be drawn up over a period of two to three years. Only then will they be considered international benchmarks. It's like saying: “we need to have a talk about agreeing to have a talk, so sometime in the next few years we can set some goals”. About problems that have been around for more than 20 years. Is that really the best we can do?
Putting on a front
While the exact forecasts may be more urgent, we've heard versions of the same warnings floating around Rio+20 at practically every major environmental and development conference in recent memory. Even when clear goals are drawn up, countries gather a few years later only to stare at the same list of problems. The 1992 Earth Summit's “Agenda 21”, for example, an action plan to address human impacts on the environment, was adopted by more than 178 governments. Ten years later, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, nations realised they had not made much progress and reaffirmed their commitments, agreeing on a new plan of implementation. Another decade on, we sit down again to look at broken promises.
As much as one wants to remain hopeful, watching the Rio+20 talks feels like going over someone's unfulfilled New Year's resolutions, or finding a to-do list scribbled on the back of a napkin, lying forgotten in a jacket pocket somewhere. It's not for lack of solutions that progress has stalled - countless plans and proposals have been suggested, many perfectly viable and achievable. Yet, there seems to be a lack of global momentum to push these forward.
If even a fraction of the effort being poured into the financial crisis was redirected into issues of sustainable development (which will have considerably greater and more far-reaching impacts), we could have been on the road to mitigating some of the damage already done. Instead, leaders refuse to budge on the most basic of points, or they insert so many conditions and clauses that any outcome is essentially straightjacketed.
Even when we do admit culpability in the planetary crises of our time (“it's not you, it's me”), the recognition has the same air of mock accountability as it does in the traditional context. It can serve as a way of sidestepping a nasty situation, but never involves real reform of any kind. So ministers will concede that we are changing the Earth's climate, nodding grimly all the while - and then jet off to go bail out an economy somewhere. There's an admission that we need to change, but no attempt to actually do it. There's lots of 'we need to talk', but that's inevitably where it ends.
Of course, the irony is that we can't “break up” with the planet - it's one relationship we cannot sever ties with. And so Rio+20 calls the world to do what the “it's not you, it's me” statement implies, but doesn't often see realised - to change.
With this kind of action not forthcoming, the WWF and other organisations have appealed to the Brazilian government to strengthen the current negotiating text, saying it may be called 'the future we need', but certainly doesn't have the commitments we need. One person who knows all about fighting for the future is Severn Suzuki - who has watched a future play out that's vastly different from the one she pleaded for 20 years ago. A then 12-year-old Suzuki implored leaders at the Rio conference to think about the gap between their words and actions; to not leave her tomorrow up to chance: “Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market.”
But the future is also not something today's leaders want to get involved in. So they return to their markets and elections, and busy themselves in the present. They rely on well-worded statements that inspire great emotion but require little action. They appease and postpone, and pray they don't live to see the day where the time for action has come and gone; and when, finally, they will have nothing left to say.
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