São Paulo – It is possible for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, to result in many declarations and no practical effect. Not because heads of state of countries that are influential in the international scenery have cancelled their travels to Rio de Janeiro, but because, according to specialists, there is little focus in the conference’s objective: to guarantee “renewed” political behaviour for sustainable development and to evaluate what progress has been made to date after conferences on the climate.
For some result, Rio+20 needs to extract from participants engagements that have not been reached to date, among them the fight against excessive consumption, energy generation from clean sources, less deforestation and social inclusion in the green economy.
A physicist and professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), José Goldemberg believes that the Rio+20 should not result in agreements for the reduction of emissions nor in targets for replacement of energy matrices, for example. After all, this conference does not have a legislative character, as did the Eco-92, also in Rio.
“Rio+20 was scheduled to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Eco-92, which was a legislative conference. It resulted in the climate convention, the Agenda 21 and Biodiversity. Some countries ratified it and what was decided at the event became law. That (legislation) is not forecasted in the Rio+20. It will be an evaluation of the last 20 years, in which the problems have not disappeared. They have even been worsened,” he pointed out.
The document to be focussed on at the conference, draft zero, received 643 suggested proposals to be discussed by negotiators. Before the official opening of the Rio+20 there will be discussion roundtables to decide on what to include and what to cut out. Goldemberg says that there is still time to include celebration of an engagement for the conference not to stop at declarations.
“There is time to include a point for the countries to agree to discuss and agree on responsibilities for each within three to five years. Or else, the Rio+20 runs the risk of being purely declaratory,” These “responsibilities”, says Goldemberg, could determine what each country can do for greater energy efficiency, how each one can improve its productive chain and where each one may cut its carbon emissions to enter the green economy. This requires a transformation of the economic fundaments which, to the researcher at the Advanced Studies Institute at USP, Wagner da Costa Ribeiro, is possible.
“The green economy even proposes globalisation paradigm changes. Today, a company extracts ore in Pará (Northern Brazil), puts it on a train and ships it to Maranhão (in the northeast of the country). There, the ore is put on a ship to China, thousands of kilometres away. There, the ore is processed and is returned to Brazil. It is not possible to consider a route like that in the green economy.”
Consumption and consumerism
Another challenge in this process, to be discussed in the Rio+20, is how to deal with energy efficiency in a society that is more and more consumerist and in a world population that is growing. In 1999, the world population was six billion inhabitants. Today, it is seven billion. In 2030 there will be eight billion and in 2050, nine billion people. The question is no longer how to feed so many people, a concern of economist Thomas Malthus in the 19th Century, but how to feed so many people and provide them with dignified living conditions without further degrading the planet.
That will only be possible if social inclusion considers the green agenda. “We currently have a crisis not just of jobs, but of work. The green economy must generate work posts to start the recovery of degraded areas, rivers, garbage recycling, to work with agriculture free from pesticides,” explained Ribeiro.
The executive investor relations manager at Ethos Institute, Henrique Lian also believes that the Rio+20 must discuss the current economic theme and ways to include everybody in sustainable development. “There are 1.4 billion people lacking electricity. They need electricity. Everyone needs to change for an acceptable level of consumption,” he says.
To Ribeiro, a way of building a socially fairer and more responsible world would be investment in multilateral institutions responsible for dialogue and for engagement of the signatories.
“Rio+20 should cover governance of the international environmental order, should discuss protocols and has three options for its agenda: the first would be discussing the establishment of a World Environment Organisation. For such, 300 international agreements would need to be reviewed; the second option would be strengthening the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), which was established in 1972, but has few funds. If there were greater funds, it would be more important. The third option is to do nothing. I believe that the most convenient option would be strengthening and improving the UNEP,” he said.
Brazil and the green economy
According to information disclosed by the International Energy Agency (IEA), participation of oil as a source of energy dropped in 2009 as against 1973. On the other hand, items gaining importance were coal, gas, nuclear energy and hydroelectric power.
The IEA study shows that in 1973 oil answered to 46% of the primary energy supply. In 2009, this participation dropped to 32.8%. Participation of natural gas rose from 16% to 20.9%; nuclear energy rose from 0.9% of the total to 5.8%; and that from hydroelectric energy, which represented 0.8% of the total in 1973, rose to 2.3% in 2009; and in the case of energy from coal, participation rose from 24.6% to 27.2%. The volume of energy consumed worldwide doubled in the period, according to the IEA.
In a green economy it would be necessary to obtain energy from less pollutant sources than oil. This opens opportunities for Brazil, which, according to Lian, has significant sustainability credentials. “China would have to change its productive model. Brazil is already in the lead, but must make this advantage into opportunities,” he said.
Goldemberg also observed that the country, with its essentially “clean” energy source, is “greener” than many Asian, African and European nations. The Brazilian mission would be fighting afforestation and burning.
Still according to IEA information, Brazil is the world’s second main producer from hydroelectric power plants. The first is China. In 2009, hydroelectric power answered to 83.7% of generation of energy in Brazil. In this aspect, the country is only behind Norway, where 95.7% of domestic energy is generated from hydroelectric power. In China, hydroelectric power generation answered to 16.7% of the total, but, in the Asian country, the main source of energy is still coal.
*Translated by Mark Ament