A Plea to Paul Kingsnorth: Don’t withdraw; re-draw. Join us in Rio.
by nathan thanki
One busy day in March I received an email from a biology, conservation and ecology professor at COA. Attached to the message was a link to an article by Paul Kingsnorth from the February edition of Orion Magazine, entitled “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist.” I opened the link to have no more than a glance, but instead spent the next hour and a half reading, re-reading and reacting to the piece. I badly wanted to do something more—to engage with the issues and that professor—but it was finals week, so I bit my tongue. Now it’s May and we’re into the final mile of the road to Rio, where perhaps the largest gathering of its kind awaits in the form of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development and the parallel, alternative, space of the People’s Summit. And I no longer felt able to ignore the elephant in the room, the storm cloud one sees gathering in articles like Kingsnorth’s: disillusionment to the point of despair. Defeatism.
Although put forth as a sort of misunderstood eureka moment, Kingsnorth’s declaration of withdrawal—from the human world, from environmentalism, from politics, from the struggle—is not something new. Ever seen “Into the Wild”? In a very confusing and confused piece in Orion and in a lengthy email exchange published on Grist, Kingsnorth lets rip: the natural world has been irreversibly tanked by our rapacious species; the wild things have all been killed, captured and sold; the deep, dark, non-human night has been sullied with our fire and neon; “environmentalism,” which used to be about saving polar bears, is now obsessed with carbon reductions and heavy green industry. While I found myself sympathising, and agree broadly with the analysis of many anti-civilization thinkers—sharing their frustrations with the mainstream environmental movement, with the advance of greenwashed capitalism, with industrial civilization, even with our species itself—none of those sympathies or shared sentiments could assuage the sheer disappointment I felt upon opening that email and reading that article.
Given that he has withdrawn from that world, I’m not expecting to see Paul in Rio Centro, arguing over whether or not the UNEP should be a specialized agency or not. That’s fair enough, I suppose; policy is dry and frustrating and he was never interested in it anyway. But what disappoints me is that I also don’t expect to see him in Flamengo Park at the People’s Assembly, talking with peasant farmers and indigenous groups about how to best resist the commodification of nature.
One of the biggest expectations of Rio, from everyone, is around the issue of the so-called green economy. Basically, the capitalist proponents of a green economy expect that the UN will institutionalise private, corporate control over natural resources in order to protect them (presumably from poor people that depend on them). The anti-capitalists, marginalised people, and advocates of hand-in-hand environmental and social justice (which Kingsnorth dismisses as bizarre) expect the same. They’re mobilizing to try and fight such an outcome, and doing so regardless of how much angst and despair white middle class British ramblers feel.
Are such movements and organisations pushing the “environmentalism” that Kingsnorth now rejects? Are they environmentalists “in order to promote something called ‘sustainability,’” which Kingsnorth understands as “sustain[ing] human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people—us—feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” that is needed to do so”? Are they washed up Trotskyites, or hyper-capitalists, or what? No, but in fact it doesn’t matter, for they—you, me, he, she, we–are all tarred with the same brush: human. For all his talk of humanity being natural, of us being the environment, Paul does hate us some. That confused tension screams off the page. It’s hard to respond to. Like the purposefully useless sense of despair created by such an attitude, the tension is debilitating. Non-answers abound: eco-socialism is blasted for alienating “95%” of the population (whereas withdrawal alienates 100%), politics is blasted for being the machine through which humans destroy nature, not used as a tool through which to harmonise people and people, people and nature.
As I said, I truly empathise with his confusion. It is hard to discern genuine efforts to protect people and planet from genuine efforts to subvert the justice struggle. It is hard to enjoy having an ‘anthropocentric’ worldview, knowing our species destructive capabilities, just as it’s hard to hold an ‘ecocentric’ worldview if you are human. However, being concerned with human equality and human rights and human justice doesn’t mean we don’t value nature, don’t want to protect it just because it is there (look at how Bolivia is gaining support for their ‘rights of Mother Earth’ campaign). It doesn’t mean that sustainability is about preserving industrial civilization in its current form. Perhaps that is the UN definition, but it’s not mine, nor most of the environmental movement. Going to Rio—walking into the lion’s den that is the institutional approach—is terrifying and confusing. Watching 194 countries haggle over words is always exhausting. After all, they’re just words, does it really matter which ones and what order? Does it really matter that we are there given that all governments, not just Western ones, play the nation-state power game, ignoring the long term effects on people and nature?
Of course it does.
I look to Rio with little but dread and fear. Positive official outcomes? Hah. We all expect the worst, and we all expect a struggle. It is the way of environmental politics. We all afford ourselves moments of despair, when we give up ‘hope’ (however it is defined) and accept the futility. But then we start again, much as Albert Camus described Sisyphus rolling and re-rolling his rock up a hill. This world is a political world, like it or not, and it is the abuse and appropriation of politics that drives the destruction that causes such suffering. If we love humanity and if we love the rest of nature, our millions of species strong family, then we must engage politics as a priority, in order to defend ourselves and our home.
So to Paul: this is not a dismissal or platitude, but a genuine outstretched hand. Come to Rio, even if just in spirit. Challenge the process, contest the space, take back power from corporate control, from corruption, from anti-naturalists. Don’t abandon it, don’t abandon us. If you see a picture of the world that is repulsive, that is rife with hollow words and hate-filled hearts, don’t withdraw! Re-draw! And do it with elegance and creativity.
Green economy: the square ball that negotiators struggle to roll
by Adrian Fernandez Jauregui
There is frustration and irritation revisiting, once more, the hallways and negotiating rooms of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). Despite the commonly used rhetoric about “moving forward” and “streamlining the text”, progress is slow and the outcome is uncertain.
In Working Group I negotiations (section three and five of the zero draft), the discussion on the Green economy is where disagreements between delegations are most fierce. In this section, crucial points for most countries are being negotiated and every one pulls in their own direction while trying to aim some low blows at anyone who opposes. What is more interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be a clear alliance. At least for now, we aren’t seeing the usual North vs South dichotomy. Some of the most contentious issues are the Green Economy roadmap; also related with commitments, deadlines, targets and goals; and technology transfer, information sharing, and economic assistance.
When the EU pushes for a road-map (the number one point for the EU), the G77 is not hesitant to bracket and delete any mention of the so called road-map. The EU idea of a green economy road-map is a set of commonly accepted guidelines that would be used to achieve commonly agreed goals. In theory this road-map should direct national and international policies, and create regulations that work for a green economy. Ironically enough, the green economy is not clearly defined but some important elements of it would be the phasing out of subsidies, especially those that are harmful to the environment (e.g. tuna fisheries and gasoline), the use of financial mechanisms to leverage natural services, and the main-streaming of green technology (energy and resource efficient, and not carbon intensive). The G77 is not a fan of this road-map for a number of reasons.
One of the most fundamental reasons is that the idea of commonly agreed targets and goals with the combination of specific commitments resembles too closely the infamous structural reforms that took place (and to a certain extent still do) in the vast majority of developing countries, imposed as a condition of foreign aid. The sovereign right of states to decide how they carry on their sustainable development programs is paramount to the G77. For them there is no one roadmap, but as Rene Orellana, head of the delegation of Bolivia, said “if necessary, there must be as many roadmaps as there are countries”
Another issue is that, in the eyes of the G77, the Earth Summit is not about transitioning to a Green Economy, it’s about Sustainable Development. Although those two might overlap, if there is a conversation about road-map it shouldn’t be towards the green economy, but towards sustainable development!
While the US, Canada, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand seem to share a common position with the G77 about committing to specific actions, deadlines, targets and goals, their reasons are diametrically opposed. From the perspective of those developed countries, anyone who rejects the idea of committing to the European road-map represents more expenses in the form of Official Development Assistance (ODA). These developed countries plus Norway, Japan and Australia among others see the green economy as an opportunity to guarantee access to new markets (green markets) for technology and information that enhance resource and energy efficiency. It is their priority to make sure that the document highlights the importance of intellectual property rights regulations and that transferring such property is determined in a bilateral basis (sold at the highest price that the market permits).
Many European countries are keen on the idea having the private sector play a greater role and share more responsibilities (whenever it is profitable) with the public sector. They are also major champions of protecting the markets of green technology and information. For the EU delegation, the way to achieve sustainability is to make it profitable. Once green technology (solar and wind energy, and more efficient and low carbon intensive ways of production) becomes more profitable than the alternative (carbon intensive sources of energy, and industries that use them) …. Thus, when the discussion is about markets and the role of the private sector they all join forces against the G77, criticizing their “unwillingness to achieve an agreement” and their insistence on “blocking the process”.
The perception of the G77 is slightly different. They wonder: now that we have more dynamic economies using technology that the industrialized world has used for decades you want to regulate and ban these technologies, so that you can sell us your new technology? There are a number of reasons to doubt of the intentions of those who preach the need to shift to more sustainable ways of production, but refuse to talk about more sustainable ways of consumption; the underlying problem.
After two weeks of negotiation the hyper inflated text has barely been reduced to nearly one hundred pages (of the no more than 20 pages they initially hoped to materialize). There is only two days left and the final outcome is not in sight. The question for us following the negotiations is: how are they going to reconcile their opposing positions?
A Reminder of Reality
By Julian Velez
This is a reflection of my time in the Sustainable Development negotiations that took place in New York City. These negotiations are called the “informal-informal negotiations”; they are a build up to the Rio+20 summit. I speak of Food Sovereignty as a refreshing term that contrasts with the concepts and environment that is present in this UN process.
I find the process of the UN so detached from the people and the places that are in most need and are more affected by all the adverse effects of this unsustainable society created on structures of inequity and unbalance at all levels, economic, social, environmental, political, spiritual, etc.
These negotiations happen within a space where the language that is spoken is the language of policy and politics: technical and cold as it comes out of the mouths of politicians and princes that most of the time don’t represent the needs of their people and our environment.
It has been twenty long years of discussions that don’t come down to concrete actions. Actions needed for a true change to benefit the world’s poor and our natural environment. Discussions that have not manifested in implementation of principles and plans that they set themselves.
Sometimes it looks like kids not being able to reach agreement and not being able to follow their own rules: the bullies bully instead of sharing, and the bullied don’t stand strong and united. It becomes a vicious cycle of inequity that impacts the people most in need, those least represented with the least voice.
If I don’t know real hunger, how I can truly fight for food justice? Our politicians are much farther from this reality, so how can they advocate for this when it is so foreign and isolated from the UN negotiations?
Then the people like me that have the resources to attend these meetings do not have a proper space to speak and be heard. Civil society sits and observes while the words reflecting human rights and justice are deleted, and then we have two minutes to complain and demand our needs. And we are supposed to feel grateful and satisfied with our chance to participate. Moreover the meetings where all the real decisions take place are closed to civil society.
We sit and watch how concepts like resilience come to the text. Resilience entails that everyone accepts current condition of the developing world as a burden, which they should learn how to carry. Did the world’s poor have a say in deciding whether or not to carry the burden of their condition?
I have noticed how these negotiations affect myself and my teammates. I feel detached from reality and from a certain level of humanity. And I see how we become snappy, technical, cold, impatient, righteous, and arrogant instead of being inclusive and open to hear others. This process distances us from our humanity and from being kind to each other.
We had the chance to speak to Azra Sayeed from Roots for Equity and she came like a breath of fresh air and a wake up call for the team and I. She came and knocked on our doors to remind us that there are real people that die of hunger and that those people are not us; and that oppression and poverty is a real condition, not a term, or a statistic or a GDP number. Like her organization, there are other NGOs that fight for food sovereignty, contrasting with the term or thematic issue of food security that is used in the context of the sustainable development discussions.
The term food security refers mainly to the production aspect of food and more specifically the amount of production. The problem is not that there is not enough food but that many people don’t have access to good, safe food, land, water or energy. The issue is much broader and the concept of food sovereignty embraces this.
Food sovereignty is to have access to land to grow food for your subsistence; with your own technologies and traditional ways; your own seed; access to water and energy; and a local market that doesn’t have to be bound to the rules and the control of the global market. Furthermore, food sovereignty must include independence from the oppressing corporate structures in order to live with dignity in your own ways; to empower the local community’s culture so a communal fabric can support the members in a more sustainable and whole way. This is a much more whole perspective than solutions that will not change the structures weaving this reality of food insecurity and poverty.
Food sovereignty is a term that brings back a sense of humanity and community to the table, which I think are two essential things for the negotiating process and to achieve sustainable development.
The Future We Really Want: The Why, and What
By: The Informal-informals [Earth] Team
Earth in Brackets has critically examined the history of sustainable development negotiations, outcome documents, and implementation, and has found it to be, with the exception of small gains made in the implementation of Agenda 21, uninspiring. Current institutions under the UN lack the coherence, jurisdiction and consistency to fully address issues of sustainable development, and there has not been sufficient action addressing these issues. As time progresses, the interconnected crises the world is facing are accumulating and intensifying, making them ever more difficult to combat. The Millenium Development Goals, while ambitious, seem to have been forgotten about and are unlikely to be completed by 2015. Implementation of Agenda 21 has been highly unsatisfactory. Now, there is The Future We Want, a document we find to be lacking in ambition, and which is, despite some participants’ best efforts, being increasingly diluted in the negotiations precluding the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
Therefore, as international youth from [Earth] and the College of the Atlantic, and as voices of the future with a vested interest in the outcome of UNCSD, we have developed The Future We Really Want. We stress that The Future We Really Want is not an all-encompassing final document, but rather a reflection of the work of a focused group of individuals over the course of a concentrated study on the Rio process. It includes some, but not all, of the issues, goals, and actions that we are most passionate about, and that we believe are critical for consideration if there is to be true progress towards sustainable development. It is part of our platform for dialogue and change, both in our own communities, and the greater community of our allies and those with whom we must work harder to collaborate and whom we welcome into productive discussions.
Below, we present some of the key issues and statements outlined in the document:
Overarching Points
- Negotiators must be truly conscious of their responsibility to future generations, to their constituents, and to one another. Increased political will and commitment to sustainable development and poverty eradication are needed to ensure accelerated fulfillment of sustainable development objectives, and re-commitment to inclusive, transparent and effective multilateralism is needed to better ensure the full and fair participation of all relevant stakeholders.
- All States have Common But Differentiated Responsibilities – there are historical ecological, social, and economic obligations, therefore countries must take action proportional to their capacity to do so and proportional to the level of harm they have inflicted on society and the global environment.
- There is inequitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunities, necessitating full cooperation among member states in supporting multilateral development strategies.
- States should reiterate their commitment to the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with a renewed emphasis on the recognition of all human rights including, inter alia, the rights to clean water, food sovereignty, and development.
- Neo-liberal economic policies are detrimental to sustainable development. Only a deep reform in the economic system will ensure the equitable fulfillment of sustainable development goals.
- The economy should serve to fulfill basic human rights and need, and should be based on cooperation beyond consumption and growth while avoiding detrimental effects on the environment. To this effect, we encourage countries to work towards localization, internal development, and move away from growth.
- The creation of a new Sustainable Development Council, with a progressive mandate that fully integrates all stakeholders in the decision-making process, would provide support for members to effectively communicate, negotiate, and implement their policies, and would provide a platform through which there could be an exchange of relevant information, including implementation assessment, creating a stronger and more coherent process.
Thematic issues
- Water is a necessity for human life and is needed for basic well-being and dignity: Countries must guarantee access to responsible quantities of clean and safe water, and should also cooperate more closely in order to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to water-related crises. The right to water should also be extended to Earth’s organisms and ecosystems; the protection and allocation of safe and clean water resources to natural processes and habitats is indispensable for avoiding the endangerment of essential hydrological cycles.
- Cities have become our main habitat, and there can be no sustainable world without sustainable cities. Unsustainable urban expansion and the increase in mega-cities aggravate problems of poverty, waste, and pollution. For this reason, intermediate city development and a retrofit of existing cities should be encouraged. In order to address international issues arising from city-level problems, States’ policies should support and facilitate the evolution of sustainable cities from both a national and local level and allow the development of self-sufficiency in city management.
- Earth has a carrying capacity: There are scientific indicators of optimum and maximum sustainable yields that define the limits on how much humans can produce and consume. In order to adequately discourage over-consumption, shift to cleaner production patterns and fulfill basic human needs–especially in the areas of food, water, and energy–sustainable patterns of production and consumption must be adopted in accordance with the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities.
- Food is a fundamental human right that must be acknowledged by all states. Food security is a tool that is closely intertwined with sustainable development, and, with a shift towards localized production and consumption, can strengthen, revitalize, and empower local communities, and reduce international food dependency. Food sovereignty is also vital to sustainable development and is the fundamental right of communities to have control over and/or access to, inter alia, arable land, agricultural and marine resources, seeds, the methods of food production, and nutritional food.
Read the full text of The Future We Really Want
What They Forgot to Mention
By Clara de Iturbe
The preceding day felt way too long and the tension in the air you felt when entering the ECOSOC room the morning after said a lot about what was coming next. Lengthy discussions of the Food Security thematic area—whose title has not yet been agreed upon—demonstrated that the North and the South have very specific agendas and that they are not ready to cooperate in certain areas yet. This was obviously predictable and it somehow kept the negotiations real. Israel and its last-minute additions remained obscure to the rest of the people present in the room, since they were yet to be analyzed by the other negotiating parties. These paragraphs will add to the many more that are to be considered, reconsidered and over considered in the next stages of the negotiation.
The rush I was feeling while being surrounded by so much reality, however, was clouded when I stepped back and realized that some vital aspects concerning food security were missing in the discussions. The amendments and new additions by the North and the G77 were many times not only repetitive and whimsical, but also lacking. Many issues were vaguely mentioned, and some major ones were not subject to discussion because they were simply not there at all—not mentioned even by the almighty G77. For instance, neither the text nor the amendments make reference to the food crisis. This is worrying as it should be the core of any proposed text or actions. By analyzing the implications and causes of the food crisis it is possible to figure out where the flaws of the current food system are and open in-depth discussions over what has to be done to overcome it. By forgetting to mention it, they are also forgetting the existing contradiction in the fact that almost one billion people are currently food insecure while the world cereal production showed a historical peak in 2008. Moreover, this obscures the threat of clean biofuels to food prices and the huge political influence that the private sector has in this matter. The lack of reference to the food crisis undermines the importance of price stability and obscures the issue of speculation of food prices raised by the G77—which was rapidly bracketed by Australia.
On a not-so-different note, it seems like they also forgot that not everything concerning food security is about food production. Again, the overemphasis on production, or rather the extreme minimizing of food distribution and consumption patterns makes me wonder what their concept of achieving food security is, especially being clear that malnutrition is a challenge for both North and South. The only vague mention to distribution was proposed by the US yet in a context of sustainability—which is indeed important—but certainly does not address equity.
But let’s suppose for a moment that the negotiators actually cared about the sustainable production and distribution of food. If so, how can we explain that they also forgot to mention meat production—excluding fish? With the North and emerging economies increasing their meat consumption this should be a major area of debate, since this, besides being a great cause of land degradation and GHG emissions, is incredibly energy and water inefficient. Furthermore, the oxymoronic proposal of the US, EU, Norway, NZ and amongst other MDCs of encouraging a sustainable intensification of agriculture that makes charming promises of efficiency and increased yields, makes me worry that it might someday replace sustainable production. Also, only the G77 seemed to remember that this can in no ways be achieved without technology and information transfers and that, in fact, small scale farmers still supply around 70% of the world food while the oligopoly of agricultural technologies and GM seeds is held by only a handful of multinational corporations.
In the document, the US eagerly highlights the importance of agriculture for the Green Economy, but they prefer to forget the G77 appeals to actions at local and national levels. This will continue to create tensions between the countries with acute free-market approaches like the US, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia.
As these issues were being forgotten, many things were going on in the room. Delegations were very vocal: The right to food to which the US, the EU and other MDCs politely opposed; Mexico’s push for protecting traditional farming methods made the EU very uncomfortable; and Japan, surprisingly advocated for a more inclusive and localized food production. So, not all is looking so bad. Regardless of the EU effort to bracket any mention of indigenous farmers–as they consider it an ‘unclear concept’–one vastly addressed point of agreement was gender equality and the integration of other stakeholders in the process. The importance of land tenure was surprisingly mentioned too by an MDC.
I was not expecting that more comprehensive and ‘radical’ concepts like Food Sovereignty be mentioned, but it was very disappointing to find that the core aspects of the food crisis and the underlying inequity in the systems of production, distribution and consumption were not considered. So, I guess this blog entry was about what they forgot to mention, but not only that. It was about the good, bad and the ugly; about what is attainable, and politically unlikely; and about the issues that are so important that they simply prefer to ignore.
