Rio Plus 20: Can International Environmental Law Evolve?
Yesterday, I attended a luncheon at the National Press Club and listened to a reasoned yet passionate speech from Sha Zukang, Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - Rio+20 to be held next summer. The original Rio Summit provided the foundations for modern international law including Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Statement of Forest Principles, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. For all the promise of these lofty agreements, progress on the most pressing sustainability issues we face such as climate change and loss of biodiversity have made little tangible progress in the past two decades. Today’s global economic and political challenges only make things more daunting heading into 2012.
- Building a "Green Economy" in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and
- Developing a "Institutional Framework" for sustainable development
Secretary General Zukang emphasized that in order to reinvigorate international environmental law, Member States to the United Nations should spend minimal time squabbling on “if and how” to renegotiate legal frameworks agreed upon in 1992, and put focus on creating real action. Action needs to be at scale and come with a specific, set of tangible goals to invest in:
- “natural capital” such as agriculture, fisheries, forests and water and
- clean energy and energy efficiency. These goals should be backed by clear commitments to creating enabling conditions (e.g., policies and laws) and providing finance.
The Secretary General, a seasoned veteran in the processes of the UN, is spot on in his analysis. There is little time to waste and the next year will prove a challenge for international law experts to find a pathway from broad arrangements to mechanisms that create specific, measurable outcomes.
Two key challenges to flag are the following:
- How will the UN address the issue of “common but differentiated responsibilities” as emphasized in the Rio Declaration and Climate Convention? This means that there are different thresholds of commitment expected of different nations depending on their level of development. Clearly that gap and its legal rationale remains in some respects, but it is certainly a point of contention for some industrialized countries who face steeper competition in 2011 than in 1992 from the likes of
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Is the UN capable of empowering subnational governments to act on issues of global sustainability? Over the past 20 years, in some geographies, cities and states as opposed to national governments have played an increasing role in positive sustainability results. There is no better evidence of this than the patchwork of city and state climate change laws in the
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Rio plus 20 will be defined by both of the challenges identified in this article. As we inch toward a climate change adaptation fund, it is increasingly clear that the level of commitment necessary is lacking. It is also increasingly difficult for legislatures in the north (US, Canada, Germany, Japan) to convince themselves that China, India, and Brazil, with their many millionaires and burgeoning upper classes, should not make equivalent contributions. Historically obvious, but problematic in the contemporary. As for subnational progress, this is where the real action is but it is difficult for a formal intergovernmental forum to acknowledge this. We will move on in spite of this but let's not put too many eggs in the post-20 basket.