RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) “With volunteers, we will drive sustainable development forward.” These were the words of Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, at the close of Rio+20 on Jun 22.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

Clark was speaking at an event where municipalities, businesses and development banks announced voluntary commitments made in Rio.

While critics accuse the Rio final declaration of being merely empty words, some of the main actors involved in the negotiations organised a press conference on the last day of the summit to showcase “actions for the road ahead” that were agreed upon here.

The actions are to be included in a “registry of commitments” attached to the final Rio declaration, whose implementation the U.N. will follow up on.

According to Sha Zukang, secretary-general of the Rio conference, “from the very beginning, Rio+20 was supposed to be about implementation, about action” and “voluntary commitments are a major part of this conference, complementing the outcomes of the official negotiations.”

He said that 692 registered commitments are included in the final Rio agreement, amounting to 513 billion dollars.

What do these commitments look like? Jose Maria Figueres, a former Costa Rican president and current chair of the non-profit Carbon War Room, explained that his organisation signed a memorandum of understanding with Aruba to help the country take action to phase out fossil fuels by 2020.

Additionally, Figueres’s organisation will work to mobilise one billion dollars to be invested in energy efficiency in buildings. Figueres gave no details on how the money would be raised or spent.

Addressing Zukang and referring to the outcome document of the Rio+20 conference, Figueres said, “Those who have failed you, Mr. Sha, are the governments, not the CEOs (chief executive officers), not the NGOs.”

(During this statement, two activists stepped in front of the panel screaming that the speakers “do not represent them”. They were immediately removed from the room by security forces.)

Another example of a voluntary commitment made in Rio was given by Bindu Lohani, president of the Asian Development Bank, who reminded media that eight development banks have committed to investing 175 billion dollars for sustainable transport in developing countries.

Clearly proud of this amount, Lohani added, “If you want to know more about this commitment, just Google 175 billion, it will show up.”

Other commitments included 45 chief financial officers announcing their companies will adhere to sustainable water management principles, 200 businesses committing to sustainable practices, more than 250 academic institutions from 50 countries announcing they would reshape their curricula to include sustainable development education, and over 200 cities promising to make plans for and invest in climate action.

Possibly in an effort to convince the audience that voluntary commitments do matter, Clark invited a Jamaican volunteer worker to speak about her achievements on the ground in social and environmental improvements.

Clark concluded, “Someone said that without volunteers, the world will stop. Here, with volunteers, we will drive sustainable development forward.”

The voluntary commitments by businesses, municipalities, development banks, governments and international organisations are one of the outcomes of Rio that has been praised by commentators. In the absence of a final document that is strong and detailed, some place hope in individual initiatives.

But considering that negotiators at Rio could not agree on a proposed annual 30-billion-dollar fund for sustainable development, the amount of 513 billion dollars in voluntary commitments appears optimistic, particularly given the lack of details around the various amounts of money put forward.

And the strong praise for voluntary action during this event rang a little hollow considering that none of the speakers made any reference to the Cupula dos Povos, where civil society, the home of volunteering, gathered during Rio+20 to exchange experiences, share practices and also plan for a better world.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 22 junho (TerraViva) – O desafio de aliviar a fome de cerca de 900 milhões de pessoas em todo mundo é uma das prioridades das Nações Unidas.

O secretário geral da ONU, Ban Ki-Moon, convidou os participantes da Rio+20 a enfrentarem conjuntamente os cinco objetivos do programa Fome Zero: propiciar 100% de acesso a alimentação adequada em todo o mundo, eliminar a desnutrição entre crianças com até dois anos, tornar sustentáveis todos os sistemas alimentares, aumentar em 100% a produtividade e renda dos pequenos produtores e eliminar a perda e o desperdício de alimentos.

Ban Ki-Moon: esforço para eliminar a fome. Crédito: Cortesia ONU

Os chefes de Estado, empresários e representantes dos agricultores presentes no encontro promovido pela FAO, Biodiversidade Internacional, Fundo Internacional para o Desenvolvimento da Agricultura (IFAD, da sigla em inglês), Banco Mundial e Programa Mundial de Alimentos (WFP em inglês) no Riocentro repetiram uma palavra-chave: resiliência.

O presidente de Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou, salientou a necessidade de não apenas superar as crises, mas de aprender com os erros e prevenir, com políticas de agricultura adequadas e apoio logístico, que outras crises aconteçam.

Não basta receber doações, é preciso ensinar as pessoas o que fazer com elas, disse Issoufou. E citou o caso de mulheres que estão trabalhando em projetos de retenção para enfrentar os períodos entre a colheita e a seca. “Quando as mulheres têm renda, suas crianças comem”, observou.

O país desenvolve um projeto se segurança alimentar com o objetivo de aumentar a produção de cereais e restaurar os ativos produtivos. A primeira fase do projeto tratou de recuperar os bens de produção e criar bancos de alimentos. A segunda etapa pretende ampliar a produção local, com a reabilitação de algumas áreas. Sua estratégia foi o Plano 3N (Nigerians nourish Niguerians, ou nigerianos alimentam nigerianos).

Os participantes concordaram que o grande problema da fome não é tanto a falta de comida, como sua distribuição e a capacidade de armazenamento para evitar as perdas e os desperdícios, associando saúde e segurança nutricional com soberania alimentar.

Neste contexto, Esther Penunia, secretária geral da Associação dos Fazendeiros Asiáticos, lembrou que as organizações de agricultores familiares são os pilares da mudança social e do desenvolvimento sustentável. Apesar de serem responsáveis por grande parte da produção mundial, enfrentam a pobreza.

“É preciso que estejam organizados para exigir seu direito à água, à semente e à terra. Atuando de forma coletiva, eles têm mais poder de negociar com o mercado melhores preços e condições para continuarem produzindo”, resumiu.

José Graziano da Silva, diretor geral da FAO e um dos responsáveis pelo projeto Fome Zero implantado no Brasil em 2003 e 2004, disse que o programa da entidade não é novo, mas a meta ousada pressupõe assumir conjuntamente um compromisso político, mobilizando a sociedade. (FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, 21 de junho (TerraViva) Chewang Norphel é um herói improvável. Ele é um homem modesto, pequeno, quieto e pensativo, que não checa sua imagem cada vez que passa por um espelho. Há alguns anos, seus vizinhos até pensaram que ele era louco.

Agora, Norphel, um engenheiro civil  indiano que trabalha para o departamento de Desenvolvimento Rural (DRD) de Jammu Kashmir, em Ladakh, no Himalaia, é cumprimentado pelas mesmas pessoas que não o consideravam como um benfeitor. Durante a sua longa carreira no DRD, Norphel veio a perceber que a água que flui a partir das geleiras do Himalaia para baixo das montanhas estava mudando seus padrões, tornando-se erráticos. Em uma região onde quase nunca chove, e onde a população depende 100% da água das geleiras para irrigar as plantações de trigo e legumes, estes novos padrões irregulares de fluxo eram dramáticos.

O lago glacial Tso Rolpa, na região central do Nepal, tem crescido devido ao rápido derretimento da neve com o aquecimento global. Foto: Kishor Rimal/IPS

No final da década de 1980, Norphel projetou geleiras artificiais nos lados das montanhas perto de Ladakh, que seriam expostas à luz solar direta. Tanques colocados ao lado dos leitos dos rios, ligados a eles por canais, serviriam como reservatórios de água doce durante a primavera e o verão, e em seguida, congelariam durante o inverno, para serem liberados novamente quando necessário. A princípio, os vizinhos pensaram que os engenheiros haviam enlouquecido.

No entanto, quando a primavera e o verão chegaram e os reservatórios derretidos  forneceram um fluxo constante de água para a agricultura, a genialidade de Norphel foi finalmente reconhecida. Agora ele é conhecido como “o homem do gelo”, e saudado com gratidão pelos agricultores locais. A história de Norphel é um dos exemplos mais vívidos de como as pessoas estão lidando com as mudanças climáticas no Himalaia, e ao mesmo tempo, tornando possível o desenvolvimento sustentável.

A história é contada no documentário Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown, que foi apresentado no dia 20, no Rio de Janeiro, como um evento paralelo à Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20. “Estou feliz que minha ideia foi aceita pelas pessoas, e está servindo para ajudá-los agora”, Norphel afirma no filme. A mudança climática e o aquecimento global causados pelo homem estão colocando em risco as vidas de milhões de pessoas no Paquistão, Índia, Butão, Nepal, Bangladesh e China – pessoas que não emitem quase nenhum gás de efeito estufa, e não pode pagar por soluções caras.

Os impactos do derretimento do Himalaia são múltiplos. Embora os campos de trigo de Ladakh sofram com os fluxos erráticos de água glacial na primavera e verão, outras regiões são confrontadas com a possibilidade de que o derretimento provoque uma enchente devastadora. Este é o caso de um novo lago chamado Thortormi no reino do Butão, na encosta sul da Montanha Table, perto da fronteira com o Tibete. Ele é formado a partir de água que flui para baixo a partir do derretimento da geleira Thortormi, que até alguns meses atrás foi mantida no lugar apenas por uma represa de moraina, um material constituído por restos de rochas e lama.

As populações locais temem que o lago recém-nascido extravase seus limites, destruindo a moraina, e provocando o que os cientistas chamam de enchentes por explosão de lago glacial, ou GLOF na sigla em inglês, que são tsunamis mortíferos que fluem montanha abaixo. Um tsunami desse tipo já aconteceu em 1994, matando pelo menos 21 pessoas e destruindo plantações e aldeias. Com o apoio técnico e financeiro de organizações internacionais como a Convenção das Nações Unidas sobre Mudança Climática (UNFCCC), o Programa das Nações Unidas para o Meio Ambiente (Pnuma) e o Fundo Global para o Meio Ambiente (GEF), entre outros, as populações locais transformaram a moraina em uma barragem adequada.

Para fazer isso, cerca de 350 moradores locais, incluindo mulheres e adolescentes, trabalharam em condições extremamente difíceis para transportar ferramentas, pedras e outros materiais de construção até a montanha, cinco mil metros acima. O documentário mostra o grupo de trabalho até os joelhos em água glacial, carregando pedras e lama para refazer a represa. O lago Thortormi é um dos 24 lagos glaciais butaneses considerados instáveis. O país tem 2.674 desses lagos glaciais. No filme, Pradeep Mool, um engenheiro do Centro Internacional para Desenvolvimento Integrado das Montanhas (ICIMOD), sediado em Katmandu, Nepal, disse que, “graças a imagens de satélite, é possível identificar as geleiras mais perigosas. Contudo, é impossível dizer quando ou onde uma catástrofe vai acontecer”. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) The continued exodus of Somalis to Kenya and Ethiopia has fuelled the debate on a new issue of global concern: climate refugees, driven from their homes and across borders by extreme weather events.

Climate refugees in East Africa. Credit: UNHCR

Massive displacement of people in some parts of Africa, especially the eastern part of the continent, is caused by lengthy periods of drought, famine and armed conflict. One illustration of this is the flood of people leaving Somalia since late 2010.

The issue has caused deep concern in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which launched the report “Climate Change, Vulnerability and Human Mobility” at the Rio+20 climate conference on Thursday Jun. 21.

Social organisations are highly disappointed by the outcome document of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, which has drawn heads of state from around 130 countries to Rio de Janeiro and ends Friday.

The UNHCR report, presented in the Riocentro, the conference venue, is based on the personal testimonies of 150 refugees and internally displaced people in Ethiopia and Uganda, and assesses global trends of forced displacement and their relation with climate change and natural disasters.

The growing number of climate refugees gives new urgency to the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in areas far away from the parts of the world that are most affected by the phenomenon, such as Africa.

Protesters around the world took to the streets this week to mark World Refugee Day Jun. 20 and demand that the international community do more to address the growing humanitarian problem.

The report presented by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres was produced by the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security in partnership with the UNHCR, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Bonn.

The rector of the U.N. University, Konrad Osterwalder, said “The report highlights how important it is to understand the real experiences of vulnerable people with environmental stressors today.”

“This report confirms what we have been hearing for years from refugees,” said Guterres. “They did everything they could to stay at home, but when their last crops failed, their livestock died, they had no option but to move; movement which often led them into greater harm’s way.

“I am convinced that climate change will increasingly be a driver in worsening displacement crises in the world. It is very important for the world to come together to respond to this challenge,” he said.

UNHCR spokesman in Brazil Luiz Fernando Godinho told TerraViva that although there is still no clear definition of what constitutes a “climate refugee”, what is important to understand is that climate-related phenomena are driving more and more people from their homes and countries.

“The UNHCR has issued a call at Rio+20 for (the world) to pay more attention to the existence of refugees who have been displaced by extreme climate changes,” he said. “The international community has not come up with a set of measures or agreements to give guarantees to people who are driven from their homes by natural disasters.”

There are some 15 million refugees in the world today, 10 million of whom are under the UNHCR’s mandate. But it is impossible to determine how many of them were displaced by natural disasters and climate-related phenomena.

Somalia alone, which has the third largest displaced population in the world, has 1.1 million refugees living in neighbouring countries, three times the 2004 total. They were driven out of the country by a combination of armed conflict, drought and famine.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) Last year was a particularly bad one for Asian countries facing nature’s wrath.

A bus navigates rushing floodwaters in Batticaloa, a town in eastern Sri Lanka, during the January 2011 floods. Credit: Courtesy of Sarvodaya

Of the 14.9 million people who were displaced by natural disasters in 2011, 89 percent lived in Asia, according to a new report released here by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The report, titled “Global Estimates 2011, Peoples Displaced by Natural Disasters”, said that the bulk of the displacements were the results of floods or storms. But even in previous years, Asia has claimed the number one spot in terms of the number of people forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters.

China and Thailand had the largest number of people displaced by extreme weather events, primarily due to recurring disasters. Over 4.5 million were displaced in China alone.

However, Sri Lanka, with an overall population of just over 20 million, saw the largest per capita displacements, with floods between January and February displacing three percent of the entire population, or 685,000 persons.

Most of those displacements occurred in the eastern and northeastern regions of the island, which are also some of the poorest areas.

Ponnanbalam Thanesveran, the top government official for the remote village of Verugal in eastern Trincomalee District, experienced firsthand the details of the disaster.

Between January and February of 2011, the eastern region of Sri Lanka received a year’s worth of rain in one month. Thanesveran’s office was cut off for over two weeks, during which time he used a boat to get to his office and get around his small constituency.

“I might be the first Sri Lankan government official who carried out his duties from a boat, wearing a life jacket and shorts,” he told TerraViva.

The floods destroyed the entire rice harvest in Verugal. According to figures released later by the government, around 20 percent of the overall harvest was wiped out.

The report had more bad news. It said that changing climate patterns that have altered rainfall patterns combined with growing populations were likely to increase the vulnerabilities of Asian populations living at risk of natural disasters.

In Sri Lanka, weather experts warn that while the number of days of precipitation has gone down, the shorter rains have increased in intensity, leading to frequent flash floods.

“The (other) problem is that most of the people who get affected in areas like Verugal are the poorest. One blow like last year’s floods and it will take years for some of them to recover,” Thanesveran said.

At the release of the report, officials said that the inability of poor villagers and farmers to cope with such disasters needs to be taken into consideration at negotiations like those which just concluded in Rio.

“The international community must ensure that vulnerable communities are prepared to respond and able to find sustainable solutions as they recover from such life-changing events,” NRC’s Secretary General Elisabeth Rasmusson said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) The EU’s “agriculture minister” tells TerraViva that in Europe, the push for food security made at Rio+20 will be continued with a future European development policy centred on this issue.

Dacian Ciolos. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Q: How do you evaluate the final Rio agreement?

A: Even if generally the European Union thinks that the final Rio document could have been better as regards agriculture and food security, I think the document is consistent enough.

Our objectives are in there, for example, the value of small-scale farming for global food security is properly recognised. Improving productivity of small farms both helps increase overall food production levels and contributes to poverty alleviation.

Technology and innovation transfer to small farmers has been acknowledged as important here in Rio and the EU’s development policy, particularly in relation to Africa, will reflect this. The document recognises the negative impacts of food price volatility on the livelihoods of smaller farmers and it has been agreed to improve transparency in food markets.

Q: Many voices say that Rio will not have any practical impact. What impact can Rio have when it comes to food security?

A: Food security cannot be dealt with unilaterally, by only one institution. It is also a problem that cannot be solved without looking at it simultaneously from the economic, environmental and social point of view.

The Rio agreement acknowledges this and it is a step towards finding the complex answer to the complex food security question. From now, when decisions will be made about financing or about social support measures, agriculture will be considered central.

In the next couple of years, we will need to think up an international framework that can address the issue of food security in its multidimensionality.

Q: What are the next steps you will take in Europe to follow up on Rio?

A: The European Commission is now working on applying our experience from the Common Agricultural Policy (i.e., the farming policy of the EU which offers financial support for European farmers and is now undergoing a “greening” process) to our development policy.

In the future development policy of the EU (2014-2020), we are focusing on two core dimensions: sustainable energy and food security. We intend to offer not only financing for these two areas but also offer knowledge.

Mind you, we do not want to provide models, but we rather want to support our partners in developing countries to elaborate their own development models. In Europe itself, the next farming policy will change to be more sustainable.

Q: Everyone speaks now about supporting small farmers to achieve food security. Is it enough to offer support to small farmers or do some other measures need to be taken to limit the negative impact that agri-business can have on sustainability?

A: Large-scale farming makes more sense than small-scale ones in some areas because of relief, climate and soil conditions, for example, when it comes to cereal and oil production. But what is important to watch is the behaviour of agri-business in the market: they should not be allowed to take over land artificially when proper land tenure and market management are lacking.

It is also important to ensure that investments in farming do not just go for those enterprises that bring short-term profits, which are agri-businesses, but also significantly towards the model that brings long-term gains, which according to me is smallholder farming.

Because private banks usually steer away from offering financing to small farmers, public policies should support investments in this sector. And public support is also needed for the organisation of small farms and simply for balancing the development of the agri-business sector and the smallholder one.

Q: How difficult it is politically to shift investments towards small farms?

A: It is a matter of political will. If you want to obtain medium and long-term results which make sense both socially and economically, then you are interested in supporting small farmers.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) When the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development ended Friday, there were winners and losers – mostly losers.

The omission of reproductive rights is a step backwards from previous agreements, said Gro Harlem Brundtland. UN Photo/Mark Garten

The United Nations and the host country Brazil – along with big business – put a positive spin on the outcome of the conference, a follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit.

It was another historic document that will change the world, they claimed.

But most non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society representatives and women activists expressed disappointment and outrage over the final blueprint, titled “The Future We Want”, which was approved by world leaders Friday.

The comparison with the 1992 Agenda 21 was inevitable.

Anita Nayar of the Manila-based Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) told IPS that in the historic agreement adopted in 1992, there were around 170 references to gender and an entire chapter on women.

In the latest version of “The Future We Want”, there are only around 50, and these have been watered down and were used as negotiating chips by states, she said.

“It is not a simple matter of gender mentions either, but rather there is clearly an unwillingness by some states to agree on concrete actions and an overall weakening of internationally agreed commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment,” Nayar added.

She said while human rights is generally affirmed in the context of sexual and reproductive health, the specific omission of reproductive rights is glaring.

Equally critical was Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and chair of the Brundtland Commission (named after her) which brought the concept of sustainable development to global attention 25 years ago.

“The Rio+20 declaration does not do enough to set humanity on a sustainable path, decades after it was agreed that this is essential for both people and the planet. I understand the frustration in Rio today,” she said in a statement released Thursday.

Brundtland, who is a member of a group called The Elders, said, “We can no longer assume that our collective actions will not trigger tipping points, as environmental thresholds are breached, risking irreversible damage to both ecosystems and human communities. These are the facts – but they have been lost in the final document.

“Also regrettable is the omission of reproductive rights – which is a step backwards from previous agreements. However – with this imperfect text, we have to move forward. There is no alternative,” she said.

The reactions from groups at the grassroots level were mostly negative.

“I haven’t seen this much fake green covering since last St Patrick’s day. The document does not come close to the future we really want and that’s because it was written with the interests of the few rather than the many in mind,”  said Nathan Thanki of Earth, one of the protesting youth leaders who occupied the plenary entrance at the Rio+20 site on Thursday.

Noelene Nabulivou, Women’s Action for Change, Fiji, told IPS, “As an activist from Pacific I see clearly the catastrophic impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and sea level rise. Rio+20 does not do justice to the immediacy and severity of this global problem.”

Nicole Bidegain of GEO-ICAE, Uruguay said, “The green economy simply reinforces the current model of development, based on overconsumption and production. The same financial mechanisms that caused multiple crises since 2008 are being promoted, but this time to commodify nature. There is enough evidence on the negative impacts of the financialisation of nature on women’s rights and livelihoods. “

She said the private sector as a source of finance is prioritised over public financing. “This is ironic as the private sector is concerned with maximising profit in the short term, not with long-term investments needed to transition to genuine people-centred sustainable development.”

Monica Novillo, Coordinadora de la Mujer, Bolivia, said, “I came to Rio+20 with high expectations that governments would build on the landmark resolution on sexual and reproductive health and rights for youth and adolescents adopted at the 45th Commission on Population Development.”

She said Brazil played a key role in creating this outcome, “so I expected that they would strongly defend these fundamental rights at Rio+20 against a minority of conservative governments.”

While the Cairo and Beijing agendas (on population and women) were reaffirmed at Rio+20, it is high time that these agreements are fully implemented, she added.

DAWN’s Gita Sen regretted that Rio+20 had virtually buried reproductive rights.

She told IPS, “Reproductive rights has been traded away. It is very clear in this outcome document that there is a continuing war on women’s human rights launched by the Holy See (Vatican) along with some very conservative governments.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (TerraViva) “Thousands of farmers are waiting on the side of the road for land reform,” Milton Rondo Filho, Brazil’s minister for international cooperation for tackling hunger, told a meeting organised by Oxfam on “Inequalities and Sustainable Development – a BRICS Perspective” here this week.

Puttaraju, a farmer in southern Karnataka state in India, proudly shows off his prize crop, millet, which assures him of a steady harvest. Credit: Krishna Prasad/IPS

Biraj Patnaik, principal food advisor to the Indian Supreme Court, said that “India and Brazil could learn a lot from other.”

While Brazil had its successful Zero Hunger programme, India had the highest procurement of food grain for public distribution in the world. It also had greater expertise of in-kind transfers of food, and had adopted a rights-based approach to education and employment, while the right to food is being campaigned for.

Brazil has launched what is probably the biggest school feeding programme in the world, involving 47 million children every day, Filho said.

“This forms a virtual cycle, with children in the family and families within the community, if food is procured locally,” he observed.

In 2011, Brazil donated 700,000 tonnes of food grain to needy countries.

Inequality within India has deepened, said Patnaik, who was appointed by the Indian Supreme Court as a food commissioner. “If you leave out Africa, only 16 countries have a lower per capita income. Only five countries have a lower infant mortality.

“The International Food Policy Research Institute, in its World Hunger Report, ranked India 66 out of 88 countries. Mothers have to teach their children how to live with hunger,” he said.

Five hundred million small farmers all over the world – many of them women – provide food for two billion people, almost a third of humanity, Biraj Swain, leader of the Delhi-based Oxfam India Food Justice Campaign, told IPS. One in every five people in the world has no electricity and two out of every five cook on open fires.

The campaign is part of Oxfam’s programme in 40 countries, which seeks to protect small household farmers from the shock of rising prices of food after the financial crisis of 2008.

“For small farmers, it has been Rio minus 20, most retrograde,” Swain said. “There has not been reengagement but reversal. Less than three percent of global food supply can meet the calorie needs of all those who are now deprived of this basic right.”

India is the worst off among BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) when it comes to runaway inflation in food prices, she said. “The government is tinkering with fiscal policy, like interest rates. What needs to be done is to bridge the gap between the farm and kitchen.”

Oxfam has put out what it terms “Killer Facts” regarding food security. At one level, economic disparities are great in Brazil, which is three times the size of India, while South Africa is the worst off.

One percent of Brazil’s population owns half the country’s wealth. Globally, the richest one-tenth of people own 57 percent, while the poorest one-fifth have to make do with less than two percent. However, 46 percent of Indian children are undernourished, compared to just four percent in Brazil.

“The lack of access to food in India is the worst in the world, most regressive. As many as seven out of every 10 farmers are net buyers of food. Food and fuel account for 80 percent of their expenditure,” she said.

She cited how her native state of Orissa in eastern India, which has been “bypassed by the Green (agricultural) Revolution”, subsidises electricity for industries while it has the lowest per capita energy consumption in India.

At Rio+20, “food infrastructure” was the most discussed item on the agenda on this sector. However, even if such infrastructure is increased, farmers do not necessarily get food, she said.

What is really required is the guarantee of a support price for farmers’ produce. In the northwestern state of Rajasthan in India, farmers have actually filed a criminal case against the federal government’s Food Corporation of India for neglecting to provide such a support price.

In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, which she describes as “ground zero” for food security in the entire world, the state government has said that it does not have bags to store and transport food grain.

“The government owes the nation the universalisation of food and nutrition rights, as indicated in the agenda of the Indian government’s Integrated Child Development Services scheme,” she said. “More than a Green Revolution, what most states in India require is a Brown Revolution, considering that we are in the semi-arid tropics.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Canadian grain and lentils farmer Nettie Wiebs does not support a green economy, a term she says has become a euphemism for corporate land grabbing that is putting smallholder farmers out of business.

Protesters denounce the new “green economy” at a march in Rio de Janeiro June 20. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The concept of a green economy is being touted as a path to a sustainable future at Rio+20 but La Via Campesina, a global organisation of smallholder farmers, is fed up with what it sees as greenwashing.

“Our analysis of the green economy solution is that it is a false solution and in reality it is a legitimisation of land grabs, water grabs and seed grabs from their rightful populations, the smallholder farmers,” Wiebs told TerraViva.

“We utterly reject the idea of a green economy based on the agribusiness model of corporate interests because a vast majority of people in the world are badly served by it. We’re in a deep struggle to defend healthy food production and a living environment for all of humanity. It is our livelihood and their lunch.”

Wiebs, who runs a family farm east of Vancouver, said despite living in a highly industrialised country, corporate investment in agriculture is displacing smallholder farmers like her. She said a recent census in Canada noted that the small farm population is rapidly shrinking and its collapse was linked to corporate investment in agriculture “solutions”.

“We are in this food crisis because of agribusiness which makes prices very volatile, speculation in commodity markets, increases hunger and gives control over food production processes to a small group of actors whose key objective is to profit,” Wiebs said.

Luc Gnacadja, the executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, views the term “land grabs” as overly negative, arguing that land transactions are business transactions that empower farmers as well as from investors.

“Land grabbing is a kind of business and in every business there are crooks,” Gnacudja told Terraviva. “It is the responsibility of government to keep crooks in check, regulate and incentivise best practises.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Agriculture and food security are one area where experts say that even a more general level of agreement, as reached in the final Rio+20 declaration, constitutes progress.

Peruvian farmer Inocencia Chipana shows her coffee beans outside a cooperative warehouse. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

“The European Union considers that the Rio final agreement could have gone much further, (but) when it comes to agriculture and food security, I think the document is consistent enough in that the importance of small family farming for improving global food security is properly recognised,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos told TerraViva.

According to the commissioner, the main value of the Rio agreement for global food security is that it acknowledges that this is an issue that needs to be addressed from economic, environmental and social points of view and that international collective efforts are needed in this direction.

Other positive aspects in the agreement, according to Ciolos, are the acknowledgement that technology and innovation have to be made available to small farmers, not just to agri-businesses, and the need to cushion farmers from the negative effects of global food price volatility.

Ciolos’ relatively positive assessment of agriculture and food security in the Rio+20 final document is shared by Emile Frison, director general of Biodiversity International.

According to Frison, agriculture was one of the less controversial points in the negotiations but this should be taken as a good sign, meaning that countries have come to accept the urgency of addressing food security as a global problem.

“Malnutrition has finally been recognised as a major concern for the future,” Frison told TerraViva. “And it has been acknowledged that if we want to address the issue of malnutrition, we cannot solve it only by offering pills and supplements, but a more sustainable solution has to be found and this has to come through a more diverse agriculture that provides a more diverse diet and a better health.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) What does birth control have to do with reducing global emissions? Everything, women around the world would say, because they know how closely linked reproductive health is to poverty, food security, climate change and more.

A woman’s work is never done. Taken in a low-income settlement in Karachi, Pakistan. Photo by Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

This message was precisely what female leaders at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development were saying, but not many were listening, least of all the Vatican.

“The only way to respond to increasing human numbers and dwindling resources is through the empowerment of women,” said Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and former director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“It is through giving women access to education, knowledge, to paid income, independence and of course access to reproductive health services, reproductive rights, access to family planning,” she stressed.

Female leaders have long been telling the world that sustainable development is not just about deforestation, climate change and carbon emissions. It’s about understanding that sustainable development will not be possible without gender equality and that sexual and reproductive rights are human rights.

This concept is nothing new. At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, there was unanimous agreement that sustainable development cannot be realised without gender equality.

So it’s frustrating for people like Rebecca Lefton, a policy analyst focusing on international climate change and women at the Center for American Progress, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, to be fighting over something that was recognised 20 years ago.

Lefton has followed the negotiations for several months, and to her dismay, has found that many references to women’s reproductive rights and gender equality have been scrapped from the Rio summit’s text.

“Women’s rights and gender equality were affirmed, but not as strongly as they could be,” she told TerraViva. “I don’t think the text would be reopened to be revised or tweaked,” she added.

Brundtland sounded more optimistic. “It looked quite bad some weeks ago in the preparing process for this meeting….In the last week or two this has improved,” she said, citing “key passages on women as central partners in decision-making”.

The United States, Norway and several women’s rights organisations were fighting to keep the language strong, but the Holy See (the Vatican) led the opposition to remove passages ensuring women’s reproductive rights.

“The result is that the final text has no reference to reproductive rights and commits to promotion rather than ensuring equal access of women to health care, education, basic services and economic opportunities,” said Lefton.

“It’s quite frustrating to find the Vatican exerting so much power over what the majority of women want but don’t have access to,” she told TerraViva, adding that the Vatican equates reproductive rights and health with abortion – an inaccurate comparison, at best.

Female heads of state and government gathered at the Rio+20 women leaders’ summit nevertheless remained undaunted and pledged that the document they signed would not be lost in the “forest of declarations on gender issues”. They urged governments, civil society and the private sector to prioritise gender equality and female empowerment in their sustainable development efforts.

“We know from research that advancing gender equality is not just good for women, it is good for all of us. When women enjoy equal rights and opportunities, poverty, hunger and poor health decline and economic growth rises,” said Michelle Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women.

Cate Owren, executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), criticised the removal of references to reproductive rights from the Rio outcome document.

“Political compromises for the sake of an agreement should not have cost us our rights – nor our planet,” she said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Over one billion people in the developing world could benefit from the Sustainable Energy for All initiative to bring electricity and clean-burning cookstoves to those without by 2030, U.N. officials said here June 21.

Some 2.7 billion people rely on traditional biomass such as wood or dung for cooking and heating. Credit: IPS

However, civil society is critical that the target communities are simply being treated as customers and not partners in this effort.

“Hundreds of millions will gain improved access to energy through grid extension and off-grid solutions, as well as scaled-up renewable energy sources,” said Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and head of UN-Energy.

Launched last fall, Sustainable Energy for All has three goals: ensure universal access to modern energy services; double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency; and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

Worldwide, approximately 2.7 billion people rely on traditional biomass such as wood or dung for cooking and heating. Some 1.3 billion have no access to electricity, and up to a billion more only have access to unreliable electricity networks. Most energy-poor communities are concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

“This initiative is being decided by an unaccountable hand-picked group dominated by representatives of multinational corporations and fossil fuel interests,” Nimmo Bassey, Nigerian environmentalist activist and chair of Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), told TerraViva.

Many of those involved have strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, including banks that finance and profit from new oil and gas development. The Bank of America is the world’s third largest coal financier, according a new FOEI report.

Other key players include Eskom, South Africa’s coal and electricity utility, Brazil’s largest power utility Electrobras, along with oil and gas companies Statoil and Duke Energy. Former CEOs of Shell and BP are also involved. The sole independent representative of civil society is the Barefoot College of India, says the report, “Reclaim the UN”.

FOEI and a broad coalition of 107 NGOs want energy access to be improved through community-controlled small-scale sustainable energy projects.

They are calling on the U.N. secretary-general to open up the process to affected and marginalised communities so they can be full participants.

Bassey and others are increasingly concerned that U.N. organisations are being dominated by corporate interests, particularly in the areas of energy, agriculture and food, water and the financialisation of nature.

“As it stands currently, ‘sustainable energy for all’ will fail spectacularly in its goal of tackling climate change and poverty,” he said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Danish artist Jen Galschiot is sending a strong message to delegates at the Rio+20 summit – one that some may not wish to hear.

Artist Jen Galschiot discusses his work. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

His metal sculptures, found outside the RioCentro summit complex, are elegant and diverse, but also aim to prick the conscience of world leaders gathered here. The most conspicuous one – the Statue of Liberty – holds a document with an ironic message: “The Freedom to Pollute”.

“We are not asking people to freely pollute the environment. But this sculpture symbolises the conflict between our demands for unbridled consumption and our concern for the planet that would imply that we restrict our excesses,” Galschiot told TerraViva.

Another eye-catching statue shows a pregnant woman hanging on a cross, titled “In the Name of God” – statement about the Catholic Church’s rejection of family planning and contraceptive use.

“The world is changing very fast, and population pressure is already affecting the climate and livelihoods. The more people there are in the world, the more forests are felled to create space for settlement, farming and grazing, the more the climate keeps changing,” said the artist.

“People need the freedom to choose the size of families they should have, in tandem with the available resources,” he added.

Galschiot’s sculptures, such as a series of figures titled “Climate Refugees”, paint a disturbing vision of a world plagued by hunger and want.

According to the United Nations, the number of people forced to move from their homes due to climate-related disasters could rise to 150 million worldwide in the next 40 years.

“It will be remembered that in 1992, the world’s heads of states made a promise to the world that they would form a global partnersdhip for sustainable development, and make the world a better place for the future generations. But 20 years on, all the promises have been broken. Billions of people are going without food, have no access to electricity, children are not going to school, and the list is endless,” he said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (IPS) As the global population threatens to explode – from the current seven billion to over nine billion by mid-century – the sharp increase in humans not only means overcrowded cities but also increasing demands on food, water, energy and shelter, foreshadowing devastating implications for a sustainable future.

Efforts to promote sustainable development that do not address population dynamics will continue to fail. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

The 21st century is a critical period for people and the planet, with demographic and consumption trends posing tremendous challenges in a finite world, warns a new report released at the Rio+20 summit on June 21 by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

Appropriately titled “Population Matters for Sustainable Development,” the report underlines the relevance of population dynamics in the sustainable development agenda “which has been lost over the past decades”.

It puts forward concrete human-centred and rights-based policies to address issues facing the world at large in the 21st century.

In an interview with TerraViva, UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin said improving the wellbeing of humanity now and into the future requires above all a genuine and immediate shift towards sustainable production and balanced consumption – the hallmark of the green economy.

“Everywhere, but especially in emerging economies, millions more people are becoming richer consumers of goods and services, thus adding to pressures on natural resources. Sustainable patterns of consumption – enabled in part by appropriate technologies – are therefore urgently needed,” he said.

Dr. Osotimehin said new global population dynamics present many challenges but also offer opportunities to secure a sustainable future. Demographic shifts, such as the trend towards living in cities, can reduce strains on the environment by reducing consumption of resources.

“Slowing population growth can have a positive impact on environmental sustainability in the long run. It will also offer nations more time to adapt to changes in the environment. However, this can occur only if women have the right, the power and the means to decide freely how many children to have and when,” he said.

The report says more than two-thirds of the governments of the 48 least developed countries (LDCs) have expressed major concerns with high population growth, high fertility and rapid urbanisation.

In order to bring the population agenda back into the sustainable development discussion, there is a need to recognise that population dynamics have a significant influence on sustainable development; efforts to promote sustainable development that do not address population dynamics have and will continue to fail; and population dynamics are not destiny.

But change is possible through a set of policies which respect human rights and freedoms and contribute to a reduction in fertility, notably access to sexual and reproductive health care, education beyond the primary level, and the empowerment of women.

Dr. Osotimehin said governments also need to integrate population trends and future projections into their development strategies and policies. “Investments that are built on – and take advantage of – demographic trends can help transform populations into rich human capital that can propel sustainable development,” he said.

“Planning for projected changes in population size for trends such as migration, ageing and urbanisation is an indispensable precondition for sustainable rural, urban and national development strategies, as well as meaningful efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) – NGOs present at the Rio+20 conference complain that they were only consulted on the official document at the last minute, when they could no longer make a significant impact.

Representatives of WWF, Greenpeace and Oxfam criticise the final text and exclusion of NGOs from negotiations Thursday, June 21. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the official segment of the Rio+20 conference June 20, when heads of state were supposed to rubber-stamp the final document presented by Brazil, a representative of NGO groups present here said that “the text is completely out of touch with reality and NGOs at Rio do not endorse this document.”

The NGO representative (identified as Waek Hamidan from Climate Action Network Europe by Brazilian media) said that the text was a failure because it did not address crucial issues such as ending support for fossil fuels and nuclear power, or taking clear steps to address high seas destruction.

He asked that, if the text remains as it was presented Tuesday, mentions of civil society being part of drafting it be removed from the introduction to the document.

NGOs present in Rio have all expressed deep disappointment with the final document, though they do not all necessarily agree with the call to strike out mentions of the text being elaborated together with civil society.

Barbara Stocking, chief executive officer at Oxfam, told TerraViva on June 22 that her organisation supports eliminating the civil society reference from the final text.

“Basically, civil society does not stand with that set of declarations,” Stocking said. “The basics are there, but there is nothing in it really that civil society has been strongly pushing for. There was no proper process of how civil society could be engaged.

“The dialogues took place just in advance of the actual high-level part of it but there has been no real means to bring that in because the actual text was closed by the time that was finished.”

But Sharon Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation, took a different approach. “I support the ambition and the views, but my challenge is not to remove us from the text but to clarify what co-determination (co-decision) really means when we move forward,” Burrow said.

“We, civil society, trade unions, represent the people and so do politicians. They presented us with a final text on the eve of the summit, that was most frustrating. But it’s not about a word in the text, it’s about the fact that if they’re serious about co-decision, they have to tell us how we will be involved, tell us what is the timeline.”

Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, told TerraViva that leaving civil society in the text or not is a theoretical question at this point, as no further changes will be made and the majority of civil society finds the document clearly inadequate and lacking in ambition.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) Imagine a space in which humanity can reconcile the often conflicting imperatives of population and a healthy natural environment.

Imagining sustainable development as a doughnut. Credit: Courtesy of Kate Raworth

Imagine this space shaped as a doughnut, providing a perspective on sustainable development that pursues environmental sustainability and social justice together.

Kate Raworth from Oxfam Great Britain introduced her novel research during a side event organised by Oxfam and the Expo Milano 2015 at Rio+20.

“Achieving sustainable development for nine billion people has to be high on the list of humanity’s great uncharted journeys,” Raworth told TerraViva.

“If we go over the limits of environmental ceiling there is unacceptable environmental degradation, but if we go under the floor of social boundaries, then we have unacceptable human deprivation. The space in the middle, within the boundaries, is the only just and safe space for all.”

The Expo 2015, scheduled to run three years from now in Milan, Italy, will focus on food and nutrition. Titled “Feeding the planet, energy for life”, the Expo aims at stimulating a global discussion on the challenges linked to food production and food security, safety, availability and nutrition.

“We have to make peace with the earth, and defend it so that all the peoples can have access to its land, water, forests and seeds, and biodiversity,” said renowned Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who was invited by ActionAid, a civil society partner of Expo Milan, to give her views on equity and sustainability.

Rio+20 is a crucial summit for Earth’s future, she said, “But food security must remain on top of the agenda even after Rio.”

Anaclaudia Rossbach, director of the Interecao NGO, a Brazilian partner of the Association of Volunteers in International Service (AVSI) that promotes sustainable development through citizen participation, told TerraViva, “What traditionally happens is that governments take decisions top down and communities have less opportunities to participate, or if there is some space for them, it is always in a consultative way.

“If communities understand what’s possible to build in their territory, then transformations are possible. If they don’t know, if they don’t look abroad, they will be excluded from development forever.”

In July, Expo Milan will announce its financial support for the participation of civil society representatives from 10 developing countries to the upcoming international participants’ meeting Oct. 10-12. The meeting will be held every year until 2015, and convenes all the countries, institutions and organisations that are shaping the Expo 2015.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 (TerraViva) The outcome of Rio+20 was dismissed as a “complete failure” for its lack of specific targets and deadlines by Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace.

“The bottom line is that on all fundamental things on environment and climate, things are extremely dire,” said Greenpeace head Kumi Naidoo. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Greenpeace has been one of the most vocal critics of the outcome of months of discussions on the final declaration at the Rio summit on sustainable development, which has increasingly come under fire by civil society as a sellout.

“There is a lot of spin and theatre to show that the outcome here has been a success,” Naidoo said June 21, one day before the summit officially ends.

“Are there specific benchmarks, are there specific resources (committed)?” he asked. “The reality is that there is a complete failure in that regard.”

Naidoo acknowledged that there were major disagreements among negotiating countries, but addsed that this will not be emphasised in official recaps of the summit. “They were under pressure to put on a nice face and say it was success.”

The Greenpeace head said that the full failure of the outcome should not be put entirely on Brazil, but added that the host nation should accept some blame for its efforts to secure a consensus, no matter how weak.

“Many governments have complained how hard Brazil was pushing to get any agreement at any cost,” he said, adding that the final result was a document with the lowest possible ambition. He also blamed richer nations for defending their own narrow interests.

Some U.N. officials who have been monitoring the negotiating process also said that there was pressure. One told TerraViva that many countries agree the declaration does not offer solutions to the dire crises currently faced by humanity, but were unlikely to say so publicly.

Naidoo stressed that a declaration lacking specific targets will fail to halt worsening problems like climate change, loss of biodiversity and deforestation.

“The bottom line is that on all fundamental things on environment and climate, things are extremely dire. All the signs are that time is running out. Within the context of lack of specific commitments with appropriate resources, we declare the outcome as an epic failure,” Naidoo said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) In the face of opposition from some developing countries, the European Union failed to get all it wanted from the final Rio+20 final agreement. Nevertheless, the Europeans decided to look at Rio as a good start.

“The agreement we have come to is not the best agreement in the world, but it is an agreement for a better world,” Danish Environment Minister Ida Auken told Terraviva.

“The EU came with a very ambitious agenda, and not all of our wishes have been fulfilled,” explained Auken, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

“However, the agreement marks progress on some points: the world has come to an understanding on the necessity of the green economy, which is new,” she said. “The first steps on the road towards global sustainability goals have been taken. New actors like cities, companies and civil society are being recognised as important to sustainable devepment.

“Concerning resources, the world has committed itself to reducing waste and to ensuring access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation.”

UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg conceded that, “Any text approved by 190 countries from different hemispheres will always involve compromises and dilution.

“But it is important to look at what direction it is pointing us to. And this text pushes us towards a world in which we treasure, measure and protect sustainable development like never before,” he said on June 20, the official start of the three-day conference.

All European decision-makers present in Rio admit a sense of disappointment with the results of the negotiations, but rally behind the common position that the agreement sets the world on the right path to sustainable development.

The main frustrations for the European Union have been the dilution of the commitment to the green economy, which at the moment has been replaced with more vague wording implying that countries keep some leverage over to what extent they choose to go down the green economy path; the postponement of the adoption of sustainable development goals until after 2015; and the rejection of the creation of a new body to handle the implementation of sustainable development commitments.

The final agreement envisages instead a redefined role for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

In Rio, the EU found itself facing big developing countries which rejected the green economy vision as an imposition by the global North on the development path of the South. Additionally, far from strengthening the EU position, the United States reportedly kept a rather low profile in the negotiations.

A less discussed aspect of the final document is the role envisaged for civil society in the implementation of the sustainable development vision.

“While the document recognises the role of civil society in implementing sustainable development, this role should have been made more specific and additional mechanisms for civil society involvement should have been created,” Staffan Nilsson, the president of the European Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC is an EU body meant to enable European civil society groups to make their voices heard by Brussels decision-makers), told Terraviva.

“If there are no actions from civil society, there is less direction for sustainable development,” Nilsson added.

At the same time, he noted that regardless of this weakness in the final document, Rio represents a strong example of civil society having numerous opportunities to make their voices heard and a good starting point for further positive work from both non-governmental and governmental actors on sustainable development.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) “Rio what?” asks Saba Khan, 25, married and the mother of two young daughters, only able to catch the first part of the name of the city where the summit on sustainable development is taking place.

Women march through the streets of Rio on Jun. 18. The banner reads "fight" in Portuguese. Credit: Clarinha Glock/IPS

Having studied until tenth grade, Khan, who works as a housemaid in the posh Clifton area of Karachi, Pakistan, has no idea where Rio de Janeiro is or why world leaders are meeting there.

But her excitement and optimism cannot be quelled when she finds out that there will be many women participating in the Jun. 20-22 conference, women who have actually made a difference to the world.

“When women with brains get together, something great is bound to happen,” Khan says with conviction.

“They will come up with solutions for us,” she says. “A woman leader, who is also a mother, will understand how difficult it is to leave a sick child and come to work – not a man.

“In fact, half our problems can be solved if women become leaders,” she adds, and asks a little diffidently: “But will they (men) let women talk?”

Women did talk at Rio+20, but whether their voices were heard is another question.

Uzma Tahir of ActionAid-Pakistan said the original draft outcome document was neither south-friendly, nor youth-friendly.

“It’s not even women-friendly or people-centred!” she added.

Two decades ago, change was in the air. In 1991, U.S. congresswoman Bella Abzug and the Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai formed the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), a movement to influence Earth Summit discussions the following year.

In the world women’s congress they organised, they came up with the Women’s Action Agenda 21, a document calling for women’s rights in areas of governance, environment, land rights, food security and reproductive health. This powerful document helped get gender equality into both Rio’s Agenda 21 outcome document and the Rio Declaration.

While the days of optimism have faded for many attending the summit, even before it officially ends Friday, Suzanne Maxx, a participant who was at Rio 20 years ago and found it “an extraordinary journey” then “full of hope”, she has not given up any of her idealism.

“The hope may have diminished somewhat, as we are moving in a trajectory towards destruction, but I hold the light; that is why I am here. That is my call,” she said.

Perhaps it is time to also listen to women like Khan, who say there is something else that needs to be done – a change in men’s attitude in general.

“It’s men who deny education to their daughters or stop them from seeking a job. They have this misplaced concept of their honour getting sullied if women step out of their homes,” says Khan with exasperation.

Faced with a double burden, Pakistani women are disproportionately affected by forced joblessness, low wages if they do work, and almost no public services. At the same time, they are still expected to perform all the chores at home, where violence is part and parcel of a married life and legislation against discrimination put on the back-burner.

Indeed, Pakistan is not an easy place for anyone these days to live in, but it is particularly hard for women. But then neither is the United States, as Maxx will tell you.

“As an entrepreneur, I can tell you the capital available to men to start a business with is not available to women,” she said, adding, “It’s a global systemic problem where women are not on an equal footing when it comes to having choice to good health, equal opportunities, education or wages.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) More than 300 lawmakers have signed the Rio+20 Legislators’ Protocol to keep an eye on politicians who make promises on sustainability commitments they never keep.

Legislators' summit opens at the Tiradentes Palace, Rio de Janeiro. Julio Godoy/IPS

The Legislators’ Protocol – the highlight of the first World Summit of Legislators held ahead of the Rio+20 conference – was signed by lawmakers from 85 countries calling for political commitment to achieve economic growth, sustainability and justice and no regression on environmental law commitments.

For African lawmakers, the protocol has set the stage for battles ahead to get home governments to account for environmental commitments, support best legislative practices and integrate natural capital in national accounts.

“We have a lot of organisations putting efforts on conservation but there has been a gap because most of these efforts have not seen political legitimacy which is through pieces of legislation to support them,” said Stephen Kampyongo, a legislator and member of the Zambian Parliamentary Conservation Caucus.

“We have to reinforce our role and hold our executive government accountable for commitments they make and scrutinising the commitments of our government and ensure they are implemented.”

Co-Chair of the Zambian parliamentary caucus, Mwanda Imenda, said deforestation was a problem that needed urgent address in her country. Lawmakers have to lobby for the government to act on protecting the environment.

“This will not be easy but as the summit urged, the battle has just began and we are ready,” Imenda told TerraViva.

South Africa has enacted a raft of environmental laws, making it a model for other African countries. Presenting a paper on the case of South Africa, parliamentarian Ruth Bhengu cited South Africa’s proactive National Environmental Management Act (NEMA), which was the framework law for the environment.

An amendment to this act created the environmental Management Inspectorate known as the “Green Scorpions” under which people can be charged for crimes against the environment.

“Reported convictions of environmental criminals have increased, although we remain concerned about the incidents of rhino poaching I our protected areas,” Bhengu said.

For Byarugaba Bakunda, from Uganda, the protocol would be a rallying point for government and parliamentarians to tackle nagging environmental issues of deforestation and drought in the country.

Each of the legislators who attended the summit collected a printed pledge to which they will add their names to affirm their renewed commitment to progressive environmental legislation, poverty alleviation and ensuring effective scrutiny of public policy on environmental laws.

Andre Misiekaba, a member of the National Assembly of Suriname in the Caribbean, said the signing of the Legislators’ Protocol gave the summit a unique mandate in raising awareness about sustainable development in global parliaments.

“We have made a strong statement to our governments and we must act on what have agreed on by putting in place legislation to save our world,” said Misiekaba.

Hasan Tuluy, vice president of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, described the Legislators’ Protocol as a milestone in enacting national laws based on the Rio agenda. He urged countries to adapt new synergies between the twin goals of economic development and environmental responsibility.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) The president of the U.N.’s highest policy-making body is one of the strongest advocates of the Rio+20 summit – and is determined to work towards its eventual success.

U.N. General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser (left). UN Photo/Violaine Martin

“Since the beginning of my presidency,” General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser told IPS, “I have continued to advocate the importance of Rio+20 in meetings and bilateral discussions with world leaders and important partners, at the seat of the U.N. General Assembly in New York and during my travels aimed at overcoming differences and bridging the remaining gaps.”

He said Rio+20 is about setting the world on the right course for sustainable development for future generations, particularly addressing the challenges of poverty and environmental degradation.

“If Rio+20 fails, we all lose,” he warned.

But he cautioned that the adoption of the blueprint for sustainable development, “The Future We Want”, does not end Friday when world leaders pack up their bags and head home.

“The real work,” he told IPS, “commences after the conference is over as we come together in the General Assembly to articulate concrete action on key areas of concern and importance.

“Of particular importance is that there should a listing of the commitments made by all stakeholders in the outcome of Rio+20 with clear modalities and a time frame for implementation.”

Genuine political will and a sense of global solidarity have the power to bring convergence of intergovernmental positions.

“As you know, personally, I am a born optimist. I have learned over the years of my multilateral diplomatic experience that one has to be optimistic when you are working with 193 sovereign member states,” Al-Nasser added.

Addressing world leaders Wednesday, he reminded them that in 1992, Rio was the birthplace of not only Agenda 21, but of the three influential Rio Conventions: on climate change, biodiversity and desertification.

“I would urge member states to realise their important commitments made in the Agenda and these conventions,” he told TerraViva.

RIO DE JANEIRO, 19 de junho (TerraViva) Em meio a raiva, recriminações e acusações de “táticas de mão pesada”, os negociadores finalmente aprovaram um plano de ação global para o desenvolvimento sustentável, depois de longas maratonas de debates, em mais de seis dias cansativos.

Crianças afetadas pela seca formam fila para receber alimentos em Mogadíscio. Os pobres são os mais afetados pelas mudanças climáticas e outros problemas. Foto: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

A proposta de um fundo global de US$ 30 bilhões para o desenvolvimento sustentável, iniciada pelos países em desenvolvimento, foi derrubada antes mesmo de sair do chão. Os Estados Unidos e os 27 membros da União Europeia (UE) se recusaram a aprovar a proposta, deixando em dúvida sobre como um projeto ambicioso para o desenvolvimento sustentável, intitulado O Futuro que Queremos, deve ser financiado ao longo da próxima década.

“Sem compromissos de financiamento, o resultado da Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a Rio+20, pode repetir documentos anteriores sobre o tema, anunciados com muito alarde e com um grande custo pelos líderes mundiais,” afirmou ao TerraViva o embaixador Palitha Kohona, representante permanente do Sri Lanka na Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU). O financiamento é essencial para a maioria dos países em desenvolvimento poderem implementar as elevadas aspirações expressas no documento final de 49 páginas.

“Se os países em desenvolvimento não estiverem incluídos, o documento final continuará a ser uma lista piedosa de sonhos não realizados. O futuro que todos nós queremos deve ser um futuro que todos nós podemos ter “, ressaltou Kohona, ex-chefe da Seção de Tratados da ONU, que tem acompanhado de perto as negociações tanto da Rio+20 como da politicamente desastrosa conferência sobre mudança climática em Copenhague em 2009. Mas nem tudo está perdido, de acordo com Martin Khor, diretor executivo do South Centre, um “think tank” para nações em desenvolvimento sediado em Genebra. “O documento é bastante justo e equilibrado, dado o atual estado negativo de cooperação internacional para o desenvolvimento”, ponderou.

Khor disse ao TerraViva que pelo menos o documento final reafirmou os princípios do Rio, incluindo as responsabilidades comuns mas diferenciadas, o que é precioso para os países em desenvolvimento, por representar a equidade na partilha dos custos da mudança para uma economia ecológica. “Até quase o último dia, parecia que alguns países desenvolvidos se recusariam até mesmo a reafirmar o que foi definido no Rio há 20 anos”, observou. É um triste estado de coisas, lamentou, que uma reafirmação da conferência anterior, que em épocas anteriores teria sido automática, agora seja considerado um sucesso da Rio+20. “A falha é que não há nenhum compromisso por parte do Norte industrializado para um novo financiamento ou para a transferência concreta de tecnologia”, acrescentou.

No entanto, o Grupo de 77 (G-77), bloco de países em desenvolvimento mais a China, conseguiu obter uma decisão para iniciar um processo na Assembléia Geral da ONU, para considerar um novo mecanismo financeiro e de tecnologia. Contudo, realmente vai ser uma luta dura configurá-los. “A crise econômica mundial lançou uma sombra sobre a Rio+20. No entanto, o G-77 obtive uma vitória ao ter a maioria de seus problemas aceitos no documento”, destacou Khor. “Acreditamos que o texto contém um alto volume de ação. E, se esta ação for implementada, e se as medidas de acompanhamento forem adotadas, ele vai realmente fazer uma diferença tremenda para gerar uma mudança global positiva”, indicou.

Claro, acrescentou Khor, este documento é o produto de intensas e prolongadas negociações. E, portanto, é um texto de compromisso. “Como todas as negociações, há alguns países que acham que o texto poderia ser mais ambicioso. Ou outros que sentem que suas próprias propostas poderiam ser melhor refletidas. Enquanto outros ainda podem preferir ter sua própria linguagem. Entretanto, vamos ser claros: negociações multilaterais exigem dar e receber”, opinou.

Meena Raman, especialista em negociação da Third World Network sediada na Malásia afirmou que “o documento final não tem a ambição necessária para salvar o planeta, ou os pobres, mas isso não nos levou para trás, sobretudo levando em conta os nossos receios iniciais de que a Rio+20 poderia ser a Rio-40”. “Esse resultado acanhado sinaliza uma falta de coragem política, liderança e compromisso dos países desenvolvidos e aqueles que fazem campanha para o futuro que realmente queremos teremos de redobrar os nossos esforços”, completou.

Kohona enfatizou que “não vai ser inteligente disfarçar má vontade com uma terminologia inteligente. Nós todos sabemos como os países doadores mobilizaram grandes fundos num prazo muito curto para lidar com a crise financeira pela qual eles próprios eram os responsáveis”. “O meio ambiente pode estar chegando a um nível de crise muito mais grave”, alertou. Envolverde/IPS

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) Imagine a green city, literally, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil presents itself as a perfect example. Fruit trees sandwiched between closely packed skyscrapers lining the city streets create a cool, natural and relaxing environment.

The sack farming method is used in many slums in Africa. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

The green lawns and parks within the city centre compliment the beautiful forested hills visible across a horizon of buildings. Despite the unending traffic jams, Rio can in many ways be considered an environmentally friendly city.

However, environmentalists and city managers attending the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development known as Rio+20 here say that apart from increasing tree cover within cities, a green urban future lies in good infrastructure, less pollution, affordable and sustainable housing, and better amenities to improve quality of living.

At a side event organised by the Asian Development Bank, there was consensus on the need to mobilise funding from all sectors with an aim of developing environmentally-friendly urban future.

“Many cities collect revenues from parking spaces and taxes from the private sector. Yet this is not enough because of other varied priorities. What we need is full participation of the private sector, where they should not give loans, but instead give grants,” said Arnab Roy, commissioner of the Kolkota Municipal Corporation in India.

At another event organised by United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), experts cited expanding urban agriculture as a strategy to address food and nutritional security.

“One interesting observation is that in relation to tree dynamics in peri-urban areas which we’ve noticed from the agroforestry perspective is that many of these areas, particularly in the tropics, have been transformed into agroforests,” said Dennis Garrity, the former director general of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

“Such areas are currently producing fruits and vegetables, fuel wood, timber and other tree commodities that are in demand especially within the same urban areas,” he added.

In cities like Rio, fruit from trees growing in the streets is available for public consumption, a fact that experts at the U.N. conference said had great importance for city dwellers in terms of nutritional value.

In other cities where farmers have intensified urban farming, particularly in peri-urban regions, such tree products are a good source of income.

“It is interesting that one of these rapidly growing systems of agroforestry is the market demand for higher value products. In many cities and city environs, it is the demand that stimulates farmers to intensify tree crop production, thus creating the diversity of agroforestry systems in places where it never existed,” said the former ICRAF chief.

He cited cities in developing countries such as Nairobi, Kenya, Jakarta, Indonesia, Kampala, Uganda and many other areas where urban farming and tree cultivation is intensifying.

Other players at the event included the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), International Partners for Sustainable Agriculture (IPSA) and Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI).

According to Alexander Müller, assistant director general of natural resource management and environment at FAO, different organisations in such a multilateral forums like Rio+20 have different issues to address ranging from food, biodiversity, and calories, among others, but all of them boil down to one issue, which is a greener environment.

“We have to find solutions that have global objectives but can be operationalised at a local reality. We also have to define new objectives with global objectives but with local realities,” said Müller.

He observed that Lagos, Nigeria, for example, is expected to grow by 400 percent in the next 40 years, bringing major challenges.

“Climate change will act as a multiplier of the already existing challenges. We must therefore ensure that we have sustainability of food security, and sound ecosystems,” said Müller.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is putting science to work in boosting food production through a global research portfolio worth five billion dollars launched at the Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARDD) earlier this week.

CEO of the CGIAR Consortium Frank Rijsberman. Credit: CGIAR

Food security and sustainable agriculture have been identified as priority issues here at the Jun. 20-22 Rio+20 Summit.

New chief executive officer of the CGIAR Consortium, Frank Rijsberman, says science and the environment should be best friends to achieve a food secure future. He told TerraViva that CGIAR’s research programme targets collaboration with a diverse range of partners to ensure that research translates into results on the ground.

The research portfolio, covering a five-year period, focuses on increasing the productivity of small-scale farmers, who provide up to 80 percent of the food supply in developing countries.

An essential part of sustainable agriculture, smallholder farmers are CGIAR’s top priority because when they have access to new agricultural technologies and crop varieties resulting from research, they are able to get more out of their land, labour and livestock.

The ambitious CGIAR research agenda, Rijsberman says, aims to reduce rural poverty, and improve the food security, health and nutrition of hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people. In addition, the consortium has committed itself to ensuring sustainable management of natural resources.

Fifteen new programmes build on CGIAR’s accomplishments over the past 40 years, including research on natural resource management that has helped to conserve water, renew soil fertility, and reduce erosion and greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously increasing farmers’ yields.

Rijsberman said millions more hectares of land would be under cultivation today at the expense of primary forests and fragile environments had it not been for CGIAR’s crop improvement research.

Emphasising that investing in agricultural research was a critical first step to kick-start the innovation engine for a sustainable, food secure future, Rijsberman explained to TerraViva reporter Busani Bafana the ambitious research programme which will bring together investors and the implementers.

Q: Who are the targets of the research portfolios?

A: The portfolio of 15 CGIAR research programmes organises the publicly-funded research of the CGIAR Consortium and its partners in order to meet the challenges related to food insecurity, rural poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation.

It targets both donors and investors in public agricultural research, by presenting to them an attractive investment portfolio, and the implementers of agricultural research, by organising and coordinating their efforts.

The research targets Africa, Asia and Latin America – with at least half of the projects in Africa.

Q: What specific research gaps does CGIAR seek to fill through the allocation of these funds?

A: Private sector research primarily focuses on the needs of commercial farmers, not the smallholders in developing countries that have different crops, different diseases and different problems accessing markets. CGIAR focuses on the needs of the 500 million smallholder farmers, mostly women, with less than two hectares of land, who provide most of the food in developing countries.

Q: Will CGIAR centres compete to access the funds?

A: The research programmes in this portfolio have been approved by our collective investors (through the CGIAR Fund Council). Funding will be allocated based on performance agreements between the CGIAR consortium and the centres leading the programmes.

Q: Can you briefly comment on the link between sustainable development and agriculture?

A: In response to the food price spikes in 2008, 2010 and 2011 (that pushed some 44 million people into poverty), farmers are trying to produce more food and they are ploughing under new and marginal lands more rapidly than even during the Green Revolution.

Unless agricultural research manages to help raise crop yields sustainably – getting more crop per ha of land – millions more hectares will be ploughed under. That is why agriculture and environment are new best friends, working together for a food secure future while safeguarding the planet.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (Terra Viva) U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon provided a frightening scenario of the not-too-distant future to over 100 world leaders present at the opening Wednesday of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon bangs the gavel to mark the official opening of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

He singled out three dangerous trends: too much political strife, grave economic troubles, and widening social inequalities.

Ban put UNCSD, also known as Rio+20, in its grim context when he noted that 20 years ago during the 1992 Earth Summit, there were five-and-a-half billion people in the world.

“Now there are more than seven billion. And by 2030, we will need 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water just to continue to live as we do today.”

Beyond a shadow of doubt, he warned “we have entered a new era … a new geological epoch, even, where human activity is fundamentally altering the Earth’s dynamics.”

Our global footprint has overstepped our planet’s boundaries, he cautioned.

On Tuesday, delegates from 191 countries approved a blueprint for sustainable development, titled “The Future We Want,” which will eventually be endorsed by world leaders on Friday.

But the question remained, how is this blueprint to be implemented without new funds and in the absence of an institutional framework?

At a press conference earlier in the day, Ban admitted he would have preferred a more ambitious action plan for the future.

“I know that some member states hoped to have a bolder and more ambitious outcome document. I also hope that we should have a more ambitious outcome document,” he admitted.

“But you should also understand that the negotiations have been very, very difficult and very slow because of all the conflicting interests and ideas.

“Some have presented (many) far-reaching and bold actions, while some countries also had their own views and interests. So you should understand that this is the outcome of such a long and very delicate process of negotiation.”

Addressing world leaders, Ban said, “Let us follow up on Rio+20 with commitment and action. Now is the time for action.

“Let us not ask our children and grandchildren to convene a Rio+40 or Rio+60. Now is the time to rise above narrow national interests – to look beyond the vested interests of this group or that. It is time to act with broader and long-term vision. Here at Rio+20, we can seize the future we want.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, 20 junho (TerraViva) – Enquanto as delegações dos países participantes da Rio+20 discutem projetos de cidades inclusivas, fim da pobreza e propostas de geração de renda voltados para a preservação do meio ambiente, um grupo de moradores de vilas e favelas do Rio de Janeiro começou silenciosamente sua própria revolução. Eles não têm bandeiras, a não ser o respeito pelas histórias de cada um e a tentativa de se fazer ver e ouvir dentro de uma sociedade competitiva, desigual e injusta.

Bira Carvalho e as histórias das favelas. Crédito: Clarinha Glock

“As favelas são representadas constantemente como campo de conflitos, espaço de propagação de uma violência atroz, além de ser compreendido como o meio para a difusão da comercialização da droga ilícita. O “outro lado”, o das famílias, dos trabalhadores, das crianças, raramente é apresentado, discutido ou mesmo compreendido. A partir do questionamento em torno desta problemática, o Imagens do Povo foi criado pelo Observatório de Favelas do Rio de Janeiro tendo como objetivo principal de todo o trabalho desenvolvido: digam vocês mesmos o que a favela representa para cada um”. 

Este texto faz parte da apresentação do livro “Imagens do Povo”, lançado ontem (19 de junho), pela Nau Editora, com fotos de fotógrafos populares que passaram pelo projeto desenvolvido na Favela da Maré, no Rio de Janeiro. Bira Carvalho, o autor da foto da bandeira rasgada, é um deles. Imagens do Povo é uma agência de fotos feitas por moradores que passaram pelos cursos da escola implantada dentro da favela no ano 2004. Estes retratos mostram a violência sem o sangue explícito como costuma ser retratada a favela nos meios de comunicação tradicionais. Falam da violência gerada pela falta de educação, de saneamento e de serviços básicos de saúde. Os fotógrafos da Escola da Maré captam a humanidade que está muito além da classe social e econômica, que gera sorrisos e sonhos, apesar das dificuldades e diferenças que hoje estão em pauta na Rio+20.  (IPS/TerraViva)

(FIM/2012)

RIO DE JANERIO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) Even before the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development opened here, one effect of the summit was already reverberating through the streets of Rio.

The public transport system in countries like Sri Lanka needs to work more efficiently if it is to be made sustainable. Credit: Indika Sriyan/IPS

As some 50,000 delegates, activists and others tried to get to various meetings and events, at many locations, like along the famous Copacabana beachfront, traffic slowed to a snail’s pace. Even government officials travelling to the opening of the conference complained of the traffic on social media.

Experts here say that Rio’s summit-related traffic woes are yet another example of decades of planning that prioritised cars over efficient public transport networks.

This mentality has propelled the transport sector to be the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. The combined cost of congestion, air pollution, road accidents and transport-related climate change could be as high five to 10 percent of GDP per year.

“It is everywhere. We see it at home, we see it when we travel, and we see it in Rio,” Michael Replogle, global policy director and founder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a U.S.-based organistaion that promotes sustainable transport systems, told Terra Viva.

To address this problem, eight of the world’s leading development banks, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have pledged 175 billion dollars in loans and grants for sustainable public transport systems to cut down on congestion and emissions over the next decade.

“It signals a shift in the priorities (of the banks) towards supporting sustainable public transport networks,” Replogle said.

Cornie Huizenga, convener of the Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport, told TerraViva that organisations promoting sustainable transport had lobbied hard in Rio to get the topic into the Rio declaration. Now that it has been included, they also got 18 voluntary commitments to improve sustainable transport systems.

“The next step was the money, that is where the banks came in. Now this funding will be available for countries who want to invest in sustainable public transport systems,” Huizenga said.

Both experts agreed that Asian and Latin American countries would have to take the lead in shifting to sustainable public transport systems for the move to have a significant global impact.

In the next two decades, half a billion people will be added to the urban populations in India and China. Proper planning of urban transport systems is vital to avoid this explosive growth, which will only add to congestion and emissions, they warned.

Replogle said that there were already signs that some Asian countries like India and China had realised the importance of an efficient public transport system.

U.N. officials said that the new commitments were likely to help poorer countries with scarce resources to at least try to make the shift.

“These unprecedented commitments have the promise to save hundreds of thousands of lives by cleaning the air and making roads safer, cutting congestion in hundreds of cities. They will create more efficient passenger and freight transportation, spurring sustainable urban economic growth,” said Joan Clos, executive director of UN-HABITAT, announcing the commitments.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (Terra Viva) The United Nations has been running a social media campaign for Rio+20 with the entire U.N. system reaching an amazing number of people – and hundreds of millions of impressions.

“It’s the first time we have used social media in such a big way for a major U.N. conference,” a U.N. spokesperson told Terra Viva, “and it shows the very broad public engagement that Rio+20 has generated.”

The #Rioplus20 hashtag showed a huge increase in reach this week to 46,557,666 people via 206,489 tweets with an exposure of 811,999,391 impressions.

The latest report for the #futurewewant hashtag shows that it has now reached 26,179,318 people via 65,666 tweets with an exposure of 375,178,605 impressions.

The “reach” refers to the number of unique users receiving #futurewewant; exposure refers to the overall number of times the # was received – known as impressions – which could be multiple per unique user.

These figures reflect only the English Twitter campaign. There has also been a very big “Future We Want” campaign on Weibo reaching millions of people via Chinese celebrities like movie star Jackie Chan.

There is also a big Brazilian campaign using local celebrities.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) The cliché that mammoth summits like Rio+20 are “too big to succeed” can also be applied to the megacities of our day such as Rio de Janeiro: they are simply too big to become green and sustainable.

Shanties near waterways are a common sight in Manila. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

And yet that’s precisely the commitment made by the mayors of the 59 largest cities of the world, reunited in the so-called C-40 group.

At a side event during the U.N. conference on sustainable development here, the mayors of the C-40 group recalled that the largest urban centres of the world have “the potential to reduce their annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) by over one billion tonnes by 2030″, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of Mexico and Canada combined.

Now the mayors want to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030.

Mind the word “potential” – omnipresent in these days of meek admissions of well-known, concrete catastrophic scientific data and vague promises to tackle the problems some time in the future.

Indeed, megalopolises across the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Mexico City to Tokyo to Shanghai, have vast potential to reduce pollution because they are big polluters in the first place.

A megalopolis per se constitutes a senseless waste of energy, human and otherwise. To change that, cities need to launch an improbable, most likely rather unpopular revolution that would affect practically all aspects of life, from transport to waste management to the generation and consumption of electricity, to food supply and population management.

If such a revolution is to succeed, cities must cease to lure rural populations searching for better lives in large urban centres. If such a revolution is to succeed, megalopolises would be capitals of fairytale countries, unlikely to come true in our lifetimes.

Let’s begin with transport. It is well known that transport activity is responsible for 13 percent of all anthropogenic GHGE, and for 23 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Transport’s dependency on oil is a staggering 95 percent, and it accounts for 60 percent of all oil consumption.

To reduce their share of such pollution, cities would have to offer efficient public transportation, and simultaneously discourage the use of private automobiles by substantially increasing taxation and fuel prices, and limiting access to urban centres.

Cities would have to encourage the use of bicycles, significantly boost the efficiency of combustion engines to reduce exhaust fumes, and guarantee safety for users of public transport, especially in developing countries. Today, crime is a major discouraging factor for well-to-do citizens, particularly women, to use public transport.

To call such a set of goals difficult to achieve, expensive, and most likely unpopular would be an understatement. But that’s only the beginning of the to-do list for city planners and administrations.

Although heating is not a pressing problem for tropical cities, it is in countries with cold winters. In such places, optimising the thermic isolation of buildings is a must – as it is to have more efficient air conditioning systems during hot summers.

This requires enormous private investments, which would need support by credit state agencies, and tax cuts to make them attractive to citizens. Zero-emission model buildings are already in place in some industrialised countries – but they are models, still a far cry from becoming standard housing policy.

Furthermore, cities would have to rely ever more on renewable sources – sun, wind, bio-mass. They must discourage waste, especially plastic, aluminium, and other non-degradable compounds. When waste is unavoidable, it must be recycled.

Cities would have to rely on local and regional food sources to further reduce transport emissions. And so on…

As already mentioned, the sustainable city of the future must not only discourage migration from the countryside, it would have to encourage migration back to rural areas to reduce its own population.

In other words, the sustainable city of the future would have to mirror the sustainable country of the future, one that offers opportunities to populations in rural areas, one crisscrossed more by railroads than by highways, the green, socially equitable country of our dreams.

That country is not around the corner, and it certainly won’t be made possible by such mammoth conferences such as Rio+20. That country, the citizens will have to build themselves.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 (TerraViva) A majority of the 150-member Cooperative for the Conservation of the Environment (COOCEN) in Kigali, Rwanda are empowered women, who must balance raising children, managing homes and providing food.

Chief Beatrice Ubeku, CEO and Founder, Women Care Association of Nigeria. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

The women earn at least 50 dollars a month from making briquettes, an alternative source of fuel to the firewood and charcoal blamed for worsening climate change and deforestation. While seemingly small, the extra income has made a big difference in their lives, they say.

Vestine Uwimana, a mother of five, says being one of the 110 employees of the cooperative has helped support her family, providing food and paying school fees for her children. In addition, she enjoys a better livelihood and has money in the bank.

“I now have access to a bank account, my colleagues and I can save money,” said Uwimana. “I have subscribed to a pension scheme and health and disability insurance.”

COOCEN was launched in 1992 and today produces around 1,500 tonnes of briquettes per year as an alternative to firewood. It is one of more than 2,700 projects in over 160 countries that have benefitted from the Small Grants Programme (SGP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Uniting 182 countries in partnership with international institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the private sector, GEF, formed on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, is currently the largest public funder of projects to improve the global environment.

Through its SGP, GEF has given 10.5 billion dollars in grants to 14,000 projects and leveraged 51 billion dollars in co-financing directly to civil society and community-based organisations since 1991.

Convinced that the equal participation of women in environmentally sustainable initiatives must not be a token gesture, GEF has developed a gender policy to track how the beneficiaries of its SGP have made real, positive changes in women’s lives.

The Policy on Gender Mainstreaming calls on the GEF and its partner agencies to standardise gender into GEF operations, including efforts to analyse and address in GEF projects the specific needs and roles of both women and men.

GEF chief executive officer and chairperson Monique Barbut said while it was easy for organisations to pay lip service to gender, GEF has gone a step further to include gender as one of the issues under the Results Based Management System governing the multilateral institution.

“This means in very single GEF project, agencies that are developing GEF projects have experts who are going to tell us what exactly they are targeting in terms of gender and we measure it at the end of the project,” said Barbut.

“There is no one gender policy, because if you are working on biodiversity or energy the problems are not the same, and so we now have put a target towards the gender issue in all projects,” she said.

According to the text for the Rio+20 summit released on Jun. 19, negotiators recognised gender equality and women’s empowerment as important for sustainable development and a common future.

They further recognised that although progress has been made on gender equality in some areas, women’s potential to engage, contribute and benefit from sustainable development has not been fully realised due to social, economic, and political inequalities.

Barbut told TerraViva that while it would be good for Rio+20 to come up with a strong commitment on gender, current negotiations were far from producing concrete results.

Keylah Tavares, a member of the Brazilian Organising Committee responsible for sustainable projects, told TerraViva that having worked with GEF-supported projects in Brazil, the gender policy will help ensure that more women participate in sustainable development initiatives.

Chief Beatrice Ubeku, founder and CEO of the Women Care Association of Nigeria, who works in capacity-building projects focusing on solar lighting for women, said gender policies ensure women equally work for a sustainable future.

“The gender policy developed by GEF is a plus for women because their role in sustainable development is being recognised and it is the way forward for gender equality,” Ubeku told TerraViva.