Transcript Seminar on Policy Studies - Global Development Research

Global
Environmental Policy
MOVING FORWARD WITH
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
HARI SRINIVAS
ROOM: I-312 / 079-565-7406
Emergence of the Concept
 The concept
of sustainable
development emerged
from the post-War
environmental
movement, which
recognized the negative
impacts of human
growth and development
on the environment and
communities.
1962 - Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring"
Rachel Louise Carson (1907 1964) publishes "Silent Spring".
This book brings together research
on toxicology, ecology and
epidemiology to suggest that
agricultural pesticides are building
to catastrophic levels.
It shatters the assumption that the
environment has an infinite
capacity to absorb pollutants and
unleashes a new wave of
environmentalism.
Environmental Disasters
 Top 10 of anthropogenic and natural environmental disasters
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Bhopal: the Union Carbide gas leak
Chernobyl: Russian nuclear power plant explosion
Seveso: Italian dioxin crisis
The 1952 London smog disaster
Major oil spills of the 20th and 21st century
The Love Canal chemical waste dump
The Baia Mare cyanide spill
The European BSE crisis
Spanish waste water spill
The Three Mile Island near nuclear disasters
More incidents: http://www.lenntech.com/environmental-disasters.htm
The Stockholm Declaration
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
in 1972 was the first major meeting to look at how human
activity was affecting the environment.
A declaration highlighted problems of pollution,
destruction of resources, damage to the environment,
danger to species and the need to enhance human
social well being.
The conference acknowledged the need for countries
to improve the living standards of their population
and stated twenty six principles that would ensure the
development was sustainable.
United Nations Environment Programme
United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP)
Out of the Stockholm Conference, the
United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) was formed with a mandate to
promote the idea of environmentallysound development.
Based in Nairobi, Kenya, UNEP provided
the UN with an agency to examine the
world's growing environmental and
development problems with a view to
making recommendations to national
governments and international bodies on
appropriate actions.
Brundtland Commission
 In 1987, the UN-sponsored
Brundtland Commission released
Our Common Future, a report that
captured widespread concerns about
the environment and poverty in
many parts of the world.
 The Brundtland report said that
economic development cannot stop,
but it must change course to fit
within the planet's ecological limits.
 It also popularized the term
“sustainable development”
Excerpt: Our Common Future
 Major, unintended changes are occurring in the
atmosphere, in soils, in waters, among plants and
animals.
 Nature is bountiful but it is also fragile and finely
balanced.
 There are thresholds that cannot be crossed without
endangering the basic integrity of the system.
 Today we are close to many of those thresholds.
Limits to Growth
Commissioned by the Club of Rome, the rerpot,
“Limits to Growth” attempts to model the
consequences of a growing human population in a
world of finite resources, concluding that current
patterns of growth cannot be sustained indefinitely.
BALANCE
Human
Populations
Natural
Resources
Rio Earth Summit
In 1992, more than 100 countries met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for
the first international Earth Summit. The meeting addressed the
urgent problems of environmental protection, social and
economic development.
Several major agreements were made:
• The Convention on Climate Change - limits emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon
dioxide and methane
• The Convention on Biological Diversity - gives countries responsibility for conserving
species diversity and using biological resources in a sustainable way.
• The Rio Declaration and the Forest Principles - sets out the principles of sustainable
development and pledges to reduce deforestation.
• Agenda 21 - a plan for achieving sustainable development in the 21st century.
Rio Earth Summit: Agenda 21
 The Rio Summit produced a major plan
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for sustainable development called
Agenda 21.
It proposes that poverty can be reduced
by giving people access to the resources
they need to support themselves.
Nations agreed to assist others to
develop in a way that will minimise the
environmental impact of their economic
growth.
Agenda 21 calls on countries to reduce
pollution, emissions and the use of
precious natural resources.
It called for partnerships between
governments and other stakeholders to
carry out these tasks
Rio Earth Summit: Agenda 21
Some of the more important chapters are:
• 5. Demographics & Sustainability
• 7. Human Settlements (the foundation for
"sustainable communities")
• 10. Planning & Management of Land
• 18. Management of Water
• 30. The role of Business & Industry
• 38. International Mechanisms & Institutions
Agenda 21 calls for the creation of:
"...National strategies, plans, policies, and
processes which are crucial in achieving a
sustainable world."
Jo’burg Summit
Johannesburg 2002 "Rio+10"
Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, countries met to review progress towards
sustainable development.
The conference focussed on poverty and the access to safe drinking water and
sanitation. It agreed several aims, including:
• To reduce the number of people that are not connected to clean drinking water
supplies from over 1 billion to 500 million by the year 2015.
• To halve the number of people without proper sanitation to 1.2 billion.
• To increase the use of sustainable energy sources and restore depleted fish stocks.
Rio Summit - 2012
Rio+20 was organized, 20 years after the
first Rio Summit, again in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil for the 3rd United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development
The Conference focused on two themes: (a) a green
economy in the context of sustainable
development; and (b) the institutional
framework for sustainable development.
Rio+20 highlighted seven areas for priority
attention; these include decent jobs, energy,
sustainable cities, food security and sustainable
agriculture, water, oceans and disaster readiness.
“The Future we Want”
KEY POINTS:
• launching a process to establish sustainable
development goals;
• detailing how the green economy can be used as a
tool to achieve sustainable development;
• establishing a new forum for sustainable
development;
• promoting corporate sustainability
• taking steps to assess the well‐being of a country;
• developing a strategy for sustainable development
financing;
• adopting a framework for tackling sustainable
consumption and production;
• focusing on improving gender equality;
• stressing the need to engage civil society and
incorporate science into policy; and
• recognizing the importance of voluntary
commitments on sustainable development.
Sustainability Timeline
1972
Business and
Sustainability
Millennium
Development
Goals
New Sustainable
Development Goals
United Nations activities on Sustainable Development
Focus on
economic
growth only
Initiatives by
NGOs and
civil society
Millennium
Ecosystem
Assessment
2012
Green
Economy
UN Millennium Development Goals
Agreed by 189 countries in 2000
to be achieved by 2015!
Follow-up to the MDGs
MDGs will
end in
2015
• Bad news: not all the goals were
achieved, particularly with respect
to water, sanitation, environment
and health
• Good news: Discussions are
now underway globally to develop
a follow-up to the MDGs:
• These new goals for the next
decade – 2015-2025, will be
called the “Sustainability Goals”
Green Economy
What is a Green Economy?
 Increase in public and
private investment in
green sectors
 Increase in quantity &
quality of jobs in green
sectors
 Increase in share of
green sectors in GDP
• Decrease in
Energy/resource use per
unit of production
• Decrease in CO2 and
pollution level/GDP
• Decrease in wasteful
consumption
Green Economy
A number of themes and issues can
be brought together within the
overall concept of a “green”
economy
Sustainability Flow
Multilateral
Environmental
Agreements
Major Industrial
Accidents
Influential
Books and
Reports
United Nations
Conferences
Activities by major
international NGOs
Emphasis on
Sustainable
Development
and the
intersection
of economy,
ecology and
sociology
National
Government
Commitments
Activities by
NPOs and Civil
Society