Rio Conference described by Roger Martin, Chair of Population Matters
Edward Hill
The Rio Conference described by Roger Martin, Chair of Population Matters
Very best wishes ....Edward Hill
View from the Summit
Big Problems, Small Minds
Roger Martin, Chair, Population Matters
http://populationmatters.org/magazine/0812.pdf
As you will have read, the much-heralded Rio+20 Earth Summit was a damp squib, in depressing contrast to the other conference I also attended in Rio, of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) where Jane O’Sullivan of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) and I both gave papers. The Development lobby heavily outnumbered the Sustainability lobby, and the rubric ‘Green Growth’ means little more than conventional economic growth with some optional greenwash; the private sector representatives were quite happy with it - a bad sign. Even a paragraph in the ‘Rio Declaration’ on “the need for broader measures of progress to complement GDP” was deleted, though the UK announced it would introduce a system of “GDP+” by 2020. The Holy See were outrageously prominent in trying to suppress anything hinting at women’s reproductive rights; and the Americans were far more subordinate to their corporate sector and religious right than 20 years ago.
Quite the worst amendment forced on the text was the deletion of language advancing ‘Planetary Boundaries’, towards and beyond which we plunge enthusiastically on. The most substantive surviving reference to population is in paragraph 144: “We commit to systematically consider population trends and projections in our national, rural and urban development strategies and policies. Through forward-looking planning, we can seize the opportunities and address the challenges associated with demographic change including migration.” So the sub-text remains “Accept population growth as a given to be accommodated, not a variable to be tackled; and emphasise the illusory ‘opportunities”. Overall, it’s a huge backslide from Rio 20 years ago, when Secretary-General Maurice Strong could say bluntly: “Either we reduce our population voluntarily, or nature will do it for us brutally”.
I had to conclude that Governments basically don’t care if the planet collapses under us in 20 years time. Their concerns are to get re-elected by providing the short-term growth that unsustainable growth capitalism has persuaded us to demand. This raises the hugely challenging question of the tension between sustainability and democracy. The only solution is to persuade electorates to demand more sustainability and less consumption - easier said than done, when politics and the media are unanimously desperate for ‘growth’!
The government delegates were largely cloistered from the rest of us, so most of my time was spent attending relevant side events, sitting near the front, trying to get in a point or question, and talking briefly to the VIP speakers at the end, with luck exchanging cards for follow-up. I thus got in a population plug one-to-one with, inter alia, the Directors of the WTO, UNEP, World Food Programme and IPPF, Nick Clegg and Caroline Spelman, the Prime Minister of Bhutan (the sanest and most inspirational man in Rio, with a population policy and 12 economic recommendations to the world’s Governments), the M/D of Unilever, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Mary Robinson, Baroness Amos, Jeffrey Sachs, the UK Chief Scientist, Sir Bob Watson, the Heads of the Global Fund for Women, UN Foundation and Oxfam, the Danish Aid Minister, and the head of the Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia(!), among many others.
The International bodies and NGOs in the side events were - often to excess - the opposite of the jaded and defensive Government negotiators, simply listing the miracles needed to achieve a prosperous and sustainable world of limitless population, by hugely increasing the supply of everything, and asserting this as a ‘human right’ - thus implying a duty on others to provide it!. Apart from us and our US and Australian allies with whom we liaised closely, I heard no-one else saying plainly that it was desirable to work on reducing future demand as well, though some others hinted at it in oblique language (population ‘dynamics’ when they mean ‘growth’ etc.). The UNFPA and Population Action International, however, produced some much more strongly worded publications than hitherto. I met the author of, and commend, the UNFPA’s ‘Population Matters for Sustainable Development’, and Population Action International’s ‘Why Population Matters to Water Resources/Food Security/ Poverty Reduction’, especially the first.
A particularly hallucinatory but star-studded FAO session on their ‘Zero Hunger Challenge’ discussed abolishing hunger by 2050. The President of Niger spoke movingly about the ‘scandal’ of his hungry children; Nick Clegg agreed it was indeed a scandal; and the issue of hunger was discussed for an hour without a single reference to population - not even of Niger, with the highest population growth rate in the world, already unable to feed half its 16 million people, and projected to have 55 million in the next 38 years! I have copied the attached chart round those present, and pointed out that Niger’s most crying need is for help to reduce its fertility fast enough to avert disaster. No-one seriously believes that Niger can feed 55 million people in 2050, so the question as always comes back to how, not whether, growth will end - sooner by fewer births, or later by more deaths. A similar joint UNEP/ UNDP session on their otherwise admirable ‘Development/Environment Initiative’ also failed to mention population.
On the plus side: there is some quite good language in paras 145, 146 and 241 on gender equality etc, including: “We emphasize the need for the provision of universal access to reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health and the integration of reproductive health in national strategies and programmes” (para 145); there was a lot of intelligent criticism of GDP at both conferences; there was some real progress agreed on the Oceans; and Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network (GFN) received both the prestigious ‘Blue Planet’ Award and the ISEE’s ‘Kenneth Boulding Award’. This enhances the status of our Overshoot Index, which is a simple extrapolation from GFN data.
My own personal high point was getting in a question to Caroline Spelman’s panel on ‘Economics of Sustainable Development’. After a Bangladeshi professor gave a dismissive reply about GDP growth rate being much greater than population growth rate, Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University professor and recent Reith Lecturer) gave us a ringing endorsement with an impassioned affirmation of the need to address population growth. He was very informed on the subject, emphasised that almost all the growth would be in countries that are unable to support their current population and were heading for catastrophe, said it was disastrous that the focus of family planning had been limited to women’s rights and population taken off the agenda, and it wasn’t at all about imposing on poor people - they desperately wanted contraception. (We may be able to retrieve a recording of the session).
All in all, a fascinating but deeply depressing experience. I shall never know if I had any actual effect on anyone or anything. As with most of my international work, I have to say I do not think it would have been worth charging the costs to our own limited charitable funds. The professionals vastly out-number and out-gun us volunteers, and tend to have their own agendas; while the carbon cost to the planet of the whole jamboree must have been large (and no-one else is even going to contribute to PopOffsets!) The action now moves to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successors to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which end in 2015. I hope to muster some allies to get population growth and women’s rights recognised as ‘cross- cutting’ themes, relevant to the whole agenda. So we battle on.