Brussels, 21/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - After months of negotiating, a last-ditch agreement was reached during the night of Tuesday 19 to Wednesday 20 June, just before the opening of Rio+20, the United Nations conference on sustainable development. On Wednesday morning, UN conference coordinator, Frenchman Brice Lalonde, announced that the Rio declaration, “The Future We Want”, containing 283 articles, had been adopted. The text had been put to the heads of state and government present in Rio de Janeiro and it is expected it will be ratified on Friday 21 June. It is, however, an agreement which falls well short of the expectations of the EU which had been hoping that a global environment agency would be set up and was looking to the green economy to be the motor of sustainable world-wide growth.
Only a few days before the opening of the conference, negotiations were still at a virtual standstill, with the European Union blocking any proposals it felt did not show enough ambition. This veto (UN decisions are taken unanimously) was in relation especially to the creation of a global environment agency which the EU wanted. Ultimately, the EU will have to scale back the level of its ambitions somewhat since, with regard to the chapter on strengthening the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the agreement reached on the night of Monday into Tuesday provides only for UNEP being self-governing, with significantly increased resources and means of action.
The EU, like the other industrialised nations, will also have to lower its expectations on developing the green economy as a driver of sustainable growth throughout the world. The emerging countries, led by Brazil, the conference host, see the green economy as a way for the developed countries, under the guise of ecology, to put up trade barriers to their goods and export their know-how and technology. In the Rio declaration, then, the green economy becomes merely one instrument among others for achieving sustainable development and eradicating poverty.
Europe has, nevertheless, one reason for satisfaction: the agreement in principle reached in the night of Tuesday into Wednesday makes provision for setting sustainable development goals (SDGs). In his speech at the opening of the conference on Wednesday, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso stressed that “the European Union wants a post-2015 overarching framework with specific goals that address the three dimensions of sustainable development - environmental, economic and social - in a holistic and coherent manner”. However, the SDGs, which will take up the torch from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which will come to an end in 2015, will have to be defined at a later date, the developing countries not wanting to commit themselves until the industrialised countries give an indication of the funding planned for reaching these goals.
The heads of state and government will be able to amend the content of the agreement, though this seems unlikely. “If a state wants to amend an article in the text, then every country will want to renegotiate the point that doesn't suit it”, said Lalonde. In other words, an agreement of lesser ambition is better than no agreement at all. (OL/transl.rt)