A Date with History: 17 yr old Brittany Trilford addresses world leaders at the UN Earth Summit And the talks begin. (Follow the Guardian's Live blog)
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was upbeat this morning as he initiated the commencement of the official Rio+20 talks, just one day after the final negotiating Zero Draft Document was completed.
“We are now in sight of a historic agreement,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his address to Rio+20’s opening session. “Let us not waste this opportunity. The world is watching to see if words will translate into action, as we know they must.” Source
The deeply disappointing final negotiating document, ironically titled ""The Future We Want" has been met with a concensus of anger by civil society, NGOs and major groups, all of whom agree that the text lacks a clear plan of action to monitor or define new goals of sustainable development, nor does it lay out requisite commitments to the design and implementation of a green economy which takes into account both social and environmental issues.
Hopes that the document would set forward a concise timetable and commitments towards "sustainable development goals" focusing on the safety of oceans, food security, renewable energies, employment and gender equity were dashed as the key power brokers - the US, China, the EU and Brazil - muddied the waters sufficiently to ensure no authentic action remained a possibility.
And once again, as is the case in the UNFCCC Climate Negotiations, the rift between the developed (North) and undeveloped (South) reveals a highly flawed, top heavy and economically driven agenda which disenfranchises the poor, the rights of nature itself and threatens the very essence of biodiversity necessary to maintain life on the planet.
A key shortcoming of the text was the failure of negotiators to effectively agree to terms of "common but differentiated responsibility,"Principle 7 of the original Rio Declaration.
The principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR) is one of the cornerstones of sustainable development. It has emerged as a principle of International Environmental Law and has been explicitly formulated in the context of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It finds its origins in equity considerations and equity principles in international law. It informs in particular the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. Source It's pathetic," said Jim Leape, the head of WWF. "If this text proposed by Brazil is accepted, then the last year of negotiations has been a colossal waste of time. If you saw this document without knowing what it was supposed to be, you might think Rio+20 was convened as a seminar."Meanwhile, after two years of studying the global financial markets, Greenpeace global leader Kumi Naidoo has informed attendees at Rio that his organization intends to hold financial organizations responsible for the failure of these negotiations.
"We have been investing a lot of effort over the past couple of years to understand the industry and where the leverage points are and I think we are close to this point and finance institutions should be put on notice that not only Greenpeace but others are going to be putting them under much greater scrutiny."Our aim is to get all banks to say we won't make loans to oil, coal, gas and deforestation-related activity. We want to shut off the flow of capital. The time is right because the banks are at their most vulnerable in terms of public legitimacy." Source
