The endless debate

by Ashok Khosla

As one of history’s great media events, the Earth Summit and its associated events at Rio
and elsewhere, such as the ‘92 Global Forum certainly succeeded in raising widespread
awareness of major global environmental and sustainable development issues. A cursory
look at the media today indicates that the issues continue to be very much in the public
eye. Moreover, some 20,000 independent sector representatives from 117 countries took
part in the ‘92 Global Forum and their subsequent activities demonstrate a major continuing
effort on the part of many such organisations to incorporate the issues of sustainable
development in their work. NGOs all over the world have formed groups and activities to
implement their own treaties signed at Rio, and also the actions required under the
Conventions and Agenda 21. Their new found influence in international forums was quite
evident at the Cairo conference.
Local authorities and citizen group in many countries have spent the past two years
formulating their own little Agenda 21s and some have made remarkable progress in this
direction. Independent organisation at the national and global level have also worked to
keep the message of Rio alive. Indeed, much of the further contribution to the conceptual
and analytical framework needed to underpin sustainable development has been made by
such organisations. Among these, the Earth council, headquartered in Costa Rica, is a
major attempt to provide and independent platform for non-governmental action in this
sphere. The Centre for Our Common Future has continued to provide solid information
support to its world wide network of partners and others for the same purpose.

Some governments, both in the North and South, have formulated their National
Sustainable Development Plans, National and Regional Conservation Strategies, National
Environment Action Plans and other similar exercises in recognition of the commitments
they made at Rio. In many cases, these initiatives have involved expertise from outside
government to an extent that would have been unthinkable before UNCED. Such initiatives
are well documented and are a tribute to the achievements of the Earth Summit in bringing
about a wider awareness, a more broad-based participation and a clarification of some of
the major issues of sustainable development.
But we must not forget that these are not the only powers that currently determine the
nature of the world’s economy today and who will define the shape of sustainable global
development tomorrow.
Who determines these? It is the Big Boys of the global economy: the G-7 governments,
the Bretton Woods institutions, the global financial institutions and the multi-national
corporations. They were, of course all at Rio; and many said the right things- but did they
have their fingers crossed when they signed all those agreements? How many will yet
make the right trade-offs between making more money and making the human condition
better?

As a result of UNCED, some bilateral donor agencies have established windows for funding
sustainable development initiatives. How much of the money coming out of these windows
is “additional”? Much of it appears to be simply a renaming or reallocation of budget lines.
This is only to be expected at a time like this when even the riches countries have their
financial problems. But 2 billion dollars for the GEF certainly cannot be taken as even a
symbolic gesture towards the 125 billion dollar bill attached to Agenda 21.

The irony of Rio is that while NGOs have acquired an unprecedented role in national and
international negotiations, ODA flows have become even more sluggish than they were
before. Neither governments nor NGOs have yet seen the kind of support that was implied
in the signing of Agenda 21, which in turn was signed by the donor governments in return
for the commitments made by southern governments towards the Conventions.

It is not only the governments of southern nations that are preoccupied with social and
economic priorities higher than those discussed at Rio. The wealthiest also have their own
concerns: deficits, inflation, currencies, trade - and, as everywhere else, jobs. It is now
time for us to recognise that these jobs, or sustainable livelihoods, provide the one
synthesising goal that is now common to all countries. This is the one concept that has the
capacity to bring us all together in our search for sustainable development. When will that
be? In Beijing next year? Or Copenhagen the year after? Can we afford to wait for this
endless series of global conferences - or can we mobilise the energies of people to start
solving their own problems? Self-reliance seems to be the only way to the future.