(from Zero Draft – Zero ambitions)
The former director of UNDESA, Tariq Banuri, is clear on his Facebook post about the Zero Draft of the outcome document of UN CSD Rio+20: “civil society will need to engage actively with governments and the Bureau in order to push them into raising the level of ambition, which currently seems to be scraping bottom”. Indeed this Zero Draft lacks any sense of urgency, any capacity of analysis, any idea how to solve the problems, no targets, no concrete actions, no glimpse of leadership.
It is sad to realize such a low level of ambition only 5 months before the Summit, where we want Heads of States to discuss and decide on the future of the planet and all living species. It will be extremely difficult to attract Heads of States to travel to Rio and agree on a text full of clichés and rhetoric, with no commitments, reaffirming evident and earlier agreed principles and human rights.
During preparatory meetings, it was constantly said that we need a better definition of “Green Economy” and that social equity is a substantial part of the concept. Astonishingly, the word “equity” is not even mentioned in the text! It was stressed that we need a paradigm shift, a systemic change in our economic system. But nothing has flourished from all those insights. The text is neither consistent nor coherent. You cannot ask continuous growth, and in the same time recognize ecological limits (which we already passed).
The whole text breathes only the voluntary approach, which countries can accept or just leave. It is all up to nice and interesting partnerships, good intentions and promoting green consumption. When you read in detail you can find some good ideas, but most are not really new: other indicators, stop harmful subsidies, civil society participation; all said and agreed on a decade or two ago.
In Johannesburg there was a huge fight on the wording “change unsustainable patterns of production and consumption” (Agenda 21) and “promote sustainable consumption”. The last sentence is here again! No tackling plan will really be new and effective if we continue to make the same old mistakes. Ten years after Johannesburg we still need to fight for transition thinking.
There is still a lot to do, starting with such a text, will not only put the Planet at stake but also this Summit. Is it worthwhile to send a delegation to Rio to discuss a text of no relevance for the future of our societies? So we start to doubt if Heads of States will invest money and energy to do so. But the only reason they have to do so, is to imbue them with the revolutionary spirit and skills of a new generation that needs to keep fighting our battle.
Equipo editorial