Our Ideas

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Summit or Earth Summit. Again this year, a range of global actors will gather in Rio to look back on what was achieved over the past two decades and the sustainability challenges ahead.

No question about it- the world is a very different place than it was in 1992. Back then, China had only recently embarked on the liberalisation of its economy. Meanwhile India had just ended the “License Raj”, the elaborate licenses, regulations and red tape that were a part of the Indian economy between 1947 and 1990.

What a difference 20 years makes. China is now just years away from eclipsing the U.S. as the world’s largest economy while India has unleashed a wave of growth that raised tens of millions out of poverty.

Fast forward to Delhi in 2012 and the 12^th annual edition of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) which took place from February 2-4 in, you guessed it, Delhi. The conference theme? “Protecting the Global Commons: 20 Years Post Rio.”

Dozens of experts in a variety of disciplines shared their perspectives at DSDS on a range of issues from the state of the oceans and global food systems to the impacts of climate change and the challenges posed by humans’ voracious appetite for consumption. (For more detail on the specific plenaries, click here.)

The conference included heads-of-state like the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, who delivered the opening address, the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, who won an award for her leadership on sustainability, and the President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, who spoke of the challenges of being an island nation in an ocean that is creeping ever higher.

Other speakers (and there were dozens) included:

• Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and member of the UN Secretary General’s Global Sustainability Panel
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Governor of California, actor and Founding Chair, R20 – Regions of Climate Change
• Dr. Elinor Ostrom, Professor, Indiana University and Nobel Laureate
• Mr. Peter Bakker, President, World Business Council for Sustainable Development
• Yvo de Boer, Special Global Advisor, Climate Change and Sustainability, KPMG and former Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and
• Stéphane Dion, former Liberal leader and MP in the Canadian House of Commons

A straw poll with the majority of attendees indicated that they think the world has seen significant progress on the sustainability agenda over the past 20 years. And, if you think about, in many ways this is true. Sustainability is now a “main street” concept, while many green brands like Whole Foods and Seventh Generation have become mainstream. Meanwhile, traditional brands like Starbucks and Walmart have also embraced sustainability (at least to a certain degree).

Even so, the challenges ahead for the global community are enormous.  Consider for a moment that, as revealed at the conference, global demand for food will rise by 50% by 2030, 18 short years from now. Similarly, demand for energy will rise 45% and for water will rise 30%. No wonder- close to three billion people are expected to enter the middle class during that timeframe. It’s a shift that is unprecedented in human history and comes at a time when less than a billion people in the west have already pushed the earth to its limits.

Most people in developed countries are oblivious to this reality. For all intents and purposes, they are steering into the future using a rearview mirror. They have no clue about what lies ahead.

By saying this, I certainly don’t mean to criticise developing countries for aspiring to the lifestyle we’ve all grown accustomed to. Who wouldn’t want that mobility, comfort and luxury? The reality, though, is that our expectations were somewhat manageable when less than a quarter of humanity lived a live of privilege. In future, though, we’ll need three or four planets to accommodate the demands of a rapidly developing world. However, we only have one planet. And she’s under stress.

As I looked around the posh, air-conditioned Taj Palace Hotel in India’s capital, eating food from the four corners of the earth, served on imported china served by legions of staff paid a few dollars a day, the irony was palpable. People living a charmed life stood around wringing their hands about the implications of a lifestyle they had embraced while scaring each other about the looming crisis. Rather than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, it seemed to me we should have spent more time building a different kind of vessel. Time will tell if we get that message soon enough.

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Junxion’s Peter ter Weeme lives in Delhi, India, and works on projects forwarding environmental and social sustainability around the globe. A key focus, Peter has more than 15 years experience working on renewable energy and energy conservation issues.