Christian Aid on Rio+20: missing the target

Reactions to the U.N. sponsored Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro Brazil (June 20-22) have been mixed. Dr. Alison Doig, senior advisor on Sustainable Development for the U.K. based advocacy organization Christian Aid is critical about what she thinks the conference accomplished, saying it was ‘stunning only its lack of urgency.’

'The truth is that 20 years after the Earth Summit in Rio, at a time when 1.4 billion people in the world live in desperate poverty and the environment is in crisis, governments have produced an agreement which is stunning only in its lack of urgency. We leave Rio with a text that contains no deadlines for countries to take action and lamentably few other targets.

'We are disappointed that the world's most powerful countries have given so little momentum to sustainable development but we remain determined to build on what Rio+20 has given us - and to inspire others to join us.

'There is some hope that Rio will yet have a positive legacy, because leaders have committed to create a new set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) which will set the direction of global development work from 2015.

‘The SDGs could help make global food production more sustainable and ensure that many millions more people can enjoy clean water and sustainable, modern energy. But this will only happen if citizens keep up the pressure as work to shape the goals continues.'

Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Tracey McClure, Dr. Doig says social justice perhaps suffered the most in the conference’s concluding document. “there was a complete lack of targets and goals and commitments within that.”

“There were a number of countries, mostly the very rich developed countries… who were determined to get the language of responsibility out of the text…so the lack of targets and lack of responsibility of the wealthy countries who have caused much of the problem” weaken the document “so the social justice element has been strongly missed out.”

In this interview, Dr. Doig indicates that food security, sustainable food and water systems and access to energy should be rights guaranteed for all, including the poor; corporations should be held accountable for carbon emissions and transparency, and local communities must be involved in deciding environmental and other goals…

Listen to the full interview with Dr. Doig: