Episode 3 of the book From Rio +20 to the New Development Agenda : How Did it All Come to Happen?
Twenty years after the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development, "The Earth
Summit", the Rio+20 conference in 2012 brought life back to sustainable
development by putting it at the centre of a new global development
partnership, one in which sustainable development is the basis for eradicating
poverty, upholding human development and transforming economies.
Written by practitioners and
participants involved in the multilateral process of negotiations, this book
presents a unique insider analysis of not only what happened and why, but also
where the outcomes might impact in the future, particularly in the UN
development agenda beyond 2015.
The book throws light on the
changing nature of multilateralism and questions frequent assumptions on how
policy is defined within the UN. It shows that Rio+20 was more than an
international meeting; it represented a culminating point of decades of successes
and failures and a watershed moment for seminal concepts, ideas and
partnerships including the Green Economy, zero tolerance on land degradation,
the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals, the creation of national
measurements of consumption, production and well-being that are intended to go
beyond GDP, the introduction of national green accounting and the commitment of
billions of dollars for sustainable development partnerships, including
Sustainable Energy for All.
In this episode, we go behind the scenes to understand the political forces and institutional maneuvers that made Rio+20 possible. How did negotiations unfold in the lead-up to the summit? What role did key players—from heads of state to civil society—play in shaping the outcome? And how did the legacy of previous summits help or hinder the road to Rio?
Episode 3: How Did it All Come to Happen
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| Liz Thompson |
– H.E. Dr. John W. Ashe, Co-Chairman, Rio+20
Preparatory Committee, Permanent Representative of Antigua and Barbuda to the
United Nations
"Long-term sustainability solutions can only be
brokered at the international level – and a huge amount of energy and expertise
has gone into those international agendas since 1972. Through the Stakeholder
Forum, Felix Dodds has been at the heart of that global diplomacy for more than
20 years, allowing him and his co-authors, Liz Thompson and Jorge Laguna Celis
to draw on that wealth of experience and theirs in order to map out a robust
and inspiring road map for a better world."
– Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director, Forum
for the Future and former Chair of Stakeholder Forum
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| Jorge Laguna Celis |
"This is the ultimate ‘insider’s guide’ to the Rio+20
process, taking the reader from the preliminary discussions back in 2007 all
the way through the conference itself and into the future. In tabloid
terminology, Felix Dodds, Jorge Laguna Celis and Liz Thompson give us ‘the
thrills, the spills, the personalities and power-plays’ that shaped the summit
and its diverse outcome. Whether you regard the outcome as primarily a missed
opportunity due to its fundamental incompatibility with respect for planetary boundaries
and its failure to match President Lula’s pre-conference vision of an event
that would lead to ‘a new and more balanced distribution of wealth’ in the
world, as I continue to do, or whether you share the authors’ optimism
regarding the re-moulding of international institutions and the voluntary
commitments secured in Rio, this book will give you a deeper and broader
understanding of why Rio reached the outcomes it did. And as it makes clear,
there is still much to play for, particularly in regard of the sustainable
development goals, which could yet provide impetus for a global move towards
the future we both want and need."
– Richard Black, former BBC Environment
Correspondent
"The Earth Summit of 1992 was a pivotal event in
multilateralism; it set the world on a journey to sustainable development. In
2012 the world’s governments returned to Rio to rechart that path in the light
of past successes and failures and the new challenges which lay ahead. In this
book, three development practitioners conduct an interdisciplinary assessment
of the outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development,
'The Future We Want' and the post-2015 development agenda. It is a refreshing
and timely contribution to the body of development literature."
– Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Commonwealth
Secretary-General
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| Felix Dodds |
"This book is a decisive contribution to a better understanding of the Rio+20 negotiations which in many ways were the genesis of the Post-2015 process. The negotiations were dauntingly complex given the range of issues covered, and this book is both timely and seminal as it will enable those who did not participate in the process, for the first time, to fully appreciate the scope of the negotiations. This will be a vital referent for the discussions under the Post-2015 process which need to be widely participatory. This book will contribute to facilitating informed and substantive participation by a wide range of stakeholders"
– Paula Caballero Gomez, Director, Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, Colombia
"The landscape of geopolitics is rapidly changing, as
is our view of how we can live and prosper within the planet’s boundaries while
attaining sustainable global development. Dodds, Celis and Thompson have
captured the nuances of these changes and challenges, presenting them in a way
that enhances our understanding of the major development issues of our time and
the response of the multilateral system to those issues."
– Dame Billie Miller, former Deputy Prime
Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Barbados
"This is an invaluable contribution to the on-going
conversation on the future of our planets and its present and future
inhabitants. The ideas for action are anchored in an erudite appraisal of the
results of the Rio+20 summit and deserve careful consideration by policy
makers, advocacy groups and concerned citizens."
– Shafqat Kakakhel, former Deputy
Executive Director of UNEP
"This book is an animated, engaging and well documented
tour through the recent history of development, culminating in Rio+20 and its
declaration. But it goes beyond history and points a path for achieving the
kind of development that human beings long for and how we must plan for it. This is
probably the greatest challenge of our time and this book gives us hope that we
are up to it."
– Sir George Alleyne, Director Emeritus,
PanAmerican Health Organization, Chancellor of the University of the West
Indies
"There are many who are only too happy to dismiss
multilateral negotiations because of their painfully slow progress and bizarre
esoteric practices. Sections of the media feel cliché bound to portray them as
a junket circuit for politicians and officials, and delight in calling them a
waste of time and money. And it is undoubtedly the case that drive, passion,
ideas and excitement is much more obvious in the myriad of grassroots peoples’
movements around the world campaigning for change; in the dynamic partnerships
between forward thinking cities and regions; and in the innovative approaches
that thousands of communities and some leading companies are taking to address
the challenges and opportunities of sustainable development. But if these
thousands of actions aiming to create a better world are to come together in a
way that enables humanity to prosper fairly within environmental limits, we
need to keep our faith in a vision of multilateralism where the world’s
countries, slowly but surely, build the common frameworks that are needed to
deliver genuine sustainable development. This book does an excellent job of
documenting the journey to the Rio+20, the details and outcomes of the summit
negotiations, and critically what needs to happen in the years ahead. It makes
sense of where we have got to on this long journey, and where we need to go
next. Nothing could be more important."
– Craig Bennett, Director of Policy and
Campaigns, Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland)
At the time of writing these books the bios of the three
authors were:
Felix Dodds was the Former Executive Director of
the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, Associate Fellow at the Tellus
Institute, and on the board of Advisors for the Collaborative Institute for
Oceans, Climate and Security, Asia European Foundation ENVforum Steering
Committee and the Great Transition.
Jorge Laguna-Celis was the Senior Advisor on
sustainable development to the President of the UN General Assembly; prior to
that he was a negotiator and expert on international environmental governance
and sustainable development. Since 2006 he has been a member of the Mexican
Foreign Service and is based in New York, USA.
Liz Thompson was the former Minister of Energy
and Environment of Barbados. She was honoured by UNEP in 2008 with the
prestigious "Champion of the Earth" award for her work in climate
change and environment. She was one of two executive coordinators appointed by
the UN at the level of Assistant Secretary General to support the Rio+20
process and negotiations.
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