Rio 20 Summit

Twenty years ago, delegates from around the world gathered in a crowded conference center beneath the watchful eye of Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 1992 Rio conference ended with the ratification of a Convention on Biological Diversity, a Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change, all despite disputes between rich and poor countries over who would pay for implementing the plans to protect the Earth. While these Conventions have not led to world-changing actions, they did seem like the perfect starting point. The conference was one of the first to engage the entire world, and it set up a formal international process for creating broad policies that require the engagement of leaders around the world in hopes of preserving the Earth’s environments.¹

What went wrong? In 1992, a twelve-year Canadian old pleaded with the United Nations (UN) assembly in Brazil to take action: “If you don’t know how to fix [the world], stop breaking it.”³ Her words brought some delegates to tears, but twenty years later little has been done to stop us from “breaking it.” Not much has been done to curb protect biodiversity  in the last 20 years, and the Rio+20⁴ conference held on June 20 – 22^nd has been described by most as a failure.⁵

The Good Side of Rio+20
Despite the overall sense of disappointment in Rio, there were a few small successes. The most important and progressive decision was the development of an alternative to gross domestic product (GDP), the traditional measure of economic prosperity. GDP is “the market value of all officially recognized final goods within a country in a given period.”⁶ The absurdity of using this measurement for a country’s “prosperity” comes to light when we consider what factors go into determining a country’s GDP. For example, in 2011 many places in the world experienced extreme flooding. Damages from these events increased the profits of insurance companies by billions of dollars, resulting in increases in GDP even while vital infrastructure was destroyed and true prosperity was certainly not improved. To correct this strange accounting, the UN introduced a new measurement: the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI).⁷ The IWI “highlights nuances in different countries’ evolving wealth by incorporating the changes in the produced capital (machinery, buildings, etc.), human capital (education, health, etc.) and natural capital (natural resources, land, etc.).”⁸ Such an index will improve calculations of wealth to more accurately reflect changes in the quality of life available to the majority of a country’s citizens, including access to sustained natural resources.

In addition to factoring the environment/natural resources into gross domestic product calculations, the other favorable outcome of the conference was the emergence of side commitments. The UN secretary general at Rio, Sha Zukang, has estimated that 692 side commitments were reached with an associated $513 billion pledged. Some examples of these agreements include:⁹

• The U.K. prime minister demanded that all companies listed on the London Stock Exchange share greenhouse gas emissions inventories with the public.
• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the United States would commit $2 billion to support the development of clean energy in Africa.
• The Maldives announced that all 1,192 of its islands will become a marine reserve by 2017. This area will become the world’s largest marine reserve.
• Eight of the world’s biggest development banks will invest in a U.S.-led $175 billion initiative to promote public transportation.
• The government of Aruba said it would take itself entirely off fossil fuels by 2020 and spend $1 billion on energy efficiency over the next 15 years.
• The Brazilan State of Pará committed to stop deforestation  entirely by 2020.
• French President François Hollande has promised to fund sustainable development in poor countries by taxing financial institutions in France.
• More than 300 universities will increase the number of courses related to sustainability.
• Brazil, Denmark, France, and South Africa will adopt UNEP’s global reporting initiative, requiring companies to report their environmental footprints.
• The World Wildlife Fund is continuing to push a global agreement to protect rivers, aquifers, and lakes shared between nations. Twenty-six nations signed at Rio+20 and twelve more nations are engaged in the ratification process.

The Bad Side of Rio+20
Despite progress made through side deals, officials and environmental activists are warning that such voluntary commitments are unenforceable. Besides, the whole point of a once-in-a-decade global conference is to make a final agreement in which more than just a few cities invested. The final version of the overall Rio 20+ declaration went through several iterations before it was watered down enough for all of the representative governments to unanimously agree to. Original plans to cut fossil fuel subsidies, double worldwide renewable energy production  by 2030, and enshrine the rights for all people to have access to clean water, adequate food and renewable energy technologies were abandoned.^10;11 Many countries were frustrated by the conference requirement that all countries unanimously agree to the entire document, which led to the removal or weakening of certain key components of the agreement. For example, the Vatican forced the removal of the phrase that leaders recognize “access to reproductive health services,” and a separate passage about the expansion of renewable energy was hedged by the caveat that investment in renewables should be “based on individual national circumstances and development aspirations.”¹²

The Ugly Side of Rio+20
The final nonbinding declaration from Rio+20 commits the world’s politicians to only modest goals. The failure of the conference was summed up by some participants in the nickname “Rio Plus 20 Minus 40.”¹³ Amidst a growing global environmental crisis, the Rio+20 result is just one more in a long, frustrating series of unsuccessful attempts to curb climate change .

The climate change numbers are discouraging. Despite global deliberations under the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the overall growth rate of global carbon emissions hasn’t changed much since 1970. In the baseline year 1990, 22.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere. By 2010 that amount had increased roughly 45% to 33 billion tons.¹⁴ UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon summed up the failures of mega-conferencing best when he said, “Let me be frank. Our efforts have not lived up to the measure of the challenge.”¹⁵

Now that Rio+20 is over we are left to wonder: Is there a way forward? If conferences only lead to weak “lowest common denominator” declarations, is there any point to flying in 50,000 attendees from around the world every few years? Many criticize mega conferences like Rio +20 as a dying ritual, but unfortunately there is no clear alternative that would facilitate the widespread adoption of binding agreements.¹⁶

The main reason why conferences like Rio emerged was to help resolve the contentious issue of which countries must take the lead with policy decisions and which countries will pay for the reductions. At the 1992 conference, participants discussed the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” with a heavier burden on wealthier countries, historically responsible for the largest share of Kyoto Protocol  was built around this idea—industrialized countries agreed to reduce emissions and provide aid to developing countries. Seven years later, Kyoto has been largely unsuccessful as countries like the United States refused to move forward without commitments from developing countries like China and India.

Without resolving the “who pays” question, it doesn’t seem like additional conferences will move world leaders very far toward solving the climate crisis. At this point, many scientists and activists are trying to convince countries to move forward individually as they begin to recognize how and climate change will impact people locally. As British biologist Jonathan Baillie put it at Rio 20+: “I’m afraid that only a major catastrophe, that would directly and massively affect people’s lives, would force us to make the changes needed.”¹⁸