Challenges Ahead of Rio+20 and Opportunities for Brazil and the Developing World in Advancing the Sustainable Development Agenda

Rio+20, Brazil and the BRICS

An Assessment of Performance towards Sustainability

Saulo Rodrigues-Filho, PhD

Center for Sustainable Development – CDSUniversity of Brasília – UnB


IPC-UNDP Meeting, Brasília, 9th of March 2012


The proposal to hold a new Conference of the United Nations for Sustainable Development was introduced by the former President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2007, in the opening speech at the 62nd General Assembly of the United Nations. Considering the global crisis on its multiple dimensions, the dominant background during the Conference should be seen as an opportunity to share commitments for the adoption of new solutions, more creative and consistent with modern times.




Because of their position as emerging countries, BRICS are assuming a major role in international agreements.

Some crucial factors for this role are their economic growth with a better income distribution and their efforts

to establish and compliance with environmental goals.

According to the official Positioning Statement sent by the Brazilian Government to the UN Secretary on 1st of

November 2011, some of the goals of sustainable development should be associated with:




· Eradication of extreme poverty· Food Security and nutrition

· Access to suitable jobs (socially fair and environmentally sound)

· Access to appropriate sources of energy· Equity – intra and inter-generations, among and within

countries· Gender and Women Empowerment

· Micro-entrepreneurship and microfinance· Innovation for sustainability

· Access to adequate sources of water· Balance the ecological footprint of society to the

planet’s carrying capacityCenter for Sustainable Development – CDS

University of Brasília – UnBCenter for Sustainable Development – CDS

University of Brasília – UnB


Institutional Dimension of International Governance

The creation of a permanent coordination at a high UN level aggregating all international institutions that deal with development initiatives would have a considerable political impact and effectiveness.

Brazil’s position supports that Rio +20 seeks launching the reform of ECOSOC for turning this Council a central forum for sustainable development issues, dealing with equal weight their environmental, economic and social dimensions.




Analysis of strategic aspects for development in emerging countries

XXI Century has began with an important inflection on the historically decreasing values of natural resources, as mirrored in the prices of commodities through the XX century. Since 2003, we are likely entering a new age of valuation of raw material and energy, which is arguably caused by both high growth rates in populous emerging countries and the increasing notion of a finite world, as reflected in evidence of a human-driven climate change, an overshooting ecological footprint and the ever increasing loss of biodiversity and other natural assets.




If this assumption is valid, it is very likely to be followed by the revision of an important mainstream economic thought, according to which losses of natural capital can ever be compensated by technological innovation. This assumption seems no longer to be valid. Market alone has never showed itself to be able to incorporate an appropriate valuation for some important aspects associated with human wellbeing, such as social inequality, environmental services, human rights, less useful living species and ethical principles.




Due to its inherent inability to deal with those important aspects of development, as far as life and future is concerned, markets require a proper regulation from states and international organizations. The roots of this inability might also help explaining the recent and long-lasting financial crisis. Following the principle of an infinite world, market-oriented forces have now managed to include green economy as the main directive for Rio+20. Green economy is all and only about efficiency, in the use and management of material and energy, which strongly depends on the intensity of capital and technological development. Center for Sustainable Development – CDS

University of Brasília – UnBCenter for Sustainable Development – CDS

University of Brasília – UnB

CompasSus is not an assessment toll in itself, but rather a conceptual framework, an attempt to highlight different operational concepts of sustainability behind assessment systems.

It is based on the assumption that sustainability assessment models should go beyond the assessment of land use changes.

CompasSus – Compass of Sustainability



Most of the sustainability assessment models disregard material flow accounts together with its associated natural capital consumption, leading to a limited notion of sustainability.

It is argued that consideration of import/export of materials, energy and wastes is needed to achieve an integrated and fair sustainability assessment.

Intragenerational equity - Sustainability can not be decoupled from the global perspective, as well as it is not achievable at the expenses of externalities abroad (social and environmental justice).




Since the 1990´s, sustainability has been one of the most addressed goals for the design of policies, programs, plans and projects in different sectors of governments, business and non-governmental organizations (conceptual ambiguousness leading to vulgarization)

Aiming at the current need for assessing sustainability performance of territorial development processes, the objective of this article is to explore strengths of different assessment models, such as:

- Ecological Footprint (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996);

- Barometer of Sustainability, or Wellbeing Index (Prescott-Allen, 2001).




Some Important International Initiatives on Aggregation of SDI

- Millennium Development Goals (UNSD, 2005)- Ecological Footprint (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996)- Well-being Assessment or Barometer of Sustainability (Prescott-Allen, 1999)- ESI - Environmental Sustainability Index (Yale/Columbia, 2005)- ISEW – Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (Daly and Cobb, 1989) - The Dashboard of Sustainability (IISD, 2002).




The ecological economic literature on weak and strong sustainability has explored some important values and interpretations affecting a desired operational concept of sustainability (Daly, 1997; Bartelmus, 1999; Bartelmus, 2004).

The concept of critical natural capital, for example, has a pivotal role for defining strong sustainability. The remaining question is:

How to define the sub-set of natural capital, or thresholds, beyond which man-made substitutes are not achievable?




Until this question is not properly answered, for addressing trade-offs between global and local/regional approaches, the CompasSus conceptual framework proposes a hemispheric representation for assessing sustainability, whereas:

- the left hemisphere reflects a weak sustainability approach, with focus on local/regional impacts, here represented by the Barometer of Sustainability (composed of 70 indicators);

- the right hemisphere mirrors a strong sustainability focused on global impacts and its implications, by considering earth´s carrying capacity an important component of sustainability, represented by the Ecological Footprint (compose of one headline indicator).




Wellbeing, Footprint and Climate Change

It is argued that both models have their own limitations, while a combination of both, together with a proxy of climate change enhancement (one headline indicator), provides a more comprehensive assessment.

It is argued that both tolls represent complementary perspectives of different operational concepts of sustainable development, namely strong and weak sustainability.

Therefore, the proposed CompasSus Assessment consists of a conceptual framework based on complementary perspectives of sustainability, namely global and local/regional.




Human

Ecosystem

NS(sust.)

N(non-sust.)


The Barometer of Sustainability is a performance assessment designed to measure human and ecosystem wellbeing, following two axes, one for each dimension (Prescott-Allen, 2001).

Ecosystem Wellbeing Index (EWI)

Land. How well a country conserves the diversity of its natural land ecosystems [4 indicators] and maintains the quality of the ecosystems that it develops [1 indicator].

Water. River conversion by dams [2 indicators]. The water quality of drainage basins [17 indicators]. Water withdrawal as a percentage of the national supply from precipitation [1 indicator]. Inadequate data prevented coverage of the sea.

Barometer of Sustainability

Ecosystem Wellbeing Index (EWI) – cont.

Air. Emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances to the global atmosphere [2 indicators]. The quality of city air [9 indicators].

Species and genes. How well a country conserves its wild species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and higher plants [2 indicators], and the variety of its domesticated livestock breeds [2 indicators].

Resource use. How much energy a country consumes [2 indicators]. The demands its agriculture, fishing, and timber sectors place on resources [9 indicators].

Source: IUCN, 2005


Human Wellbeing Index (HWI)

Health and population. How long people may expect to live in good health [1 indicator]. The stability of family size [1 indicator].

Wealth. How well needs are met for income, food, safe water, and sanitation [6 indicators]. The size and condition of the national economy, including inflation, unemployment, and the debt burden [8 indicators].

Knowledge and culture. Education (primary, secondary, and tertiary school enrollment rates) and communication (accessibility and reliability of the telephone system and use of the Internet) [6 indicators]. Lack of a suitable indicator prevented coverage of culture.

Source: IUCN, 2005


Human Wellbeing Index (HWI) – cont.

Community. Freedom and governance (political rights, civil liberties, press freedom, and corruption) [4 indicators]. Peacefulness (military expenditure and deaths from armed conflicts and terrorism) [2 indicators]. Violent crime rates [4 indicators].

Equity. Household equity: the difference in income share between the richest and poorest fifths of the population [1 indicator]. Gender equity: disparities between males and females in income, education, and parliamentary decision-making [3 indicators].

Source: IUCN, 2005


Ecological Footprint

The Ecological Footprint is an assessment tool of the carrying capacity of natural systems in relation to the consumption of a given population or country.

The assessment is based on land units and assumes that each human activity uses resources and produces waste flows that can be converted to a biologically productive area necessary to provide these functions (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Wackernagel et al, 1997).

The main advantage of this toll is the clear statement of natural limits in relation to the type of economic growth, which are either absent or left to stakeholders definition in other tolls.

Ecological Footprint by country

Source: WWF (2006)

It shows the implications of, for instance, 85% of the global energy suply being consumed by just 25% of the world population




ConclusionsCompasSus proposes an approach that can in principle be applied to any sustainability assessment tool of land use changes, since its operational development is still running and requires further research efforts.

A modelling toll is as good as the decisions it gives rise, if any.

Sustainability means provision of food to my children (Brasilian small-farmer).

Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

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Challenges Ahead of Rio+20 and Opportunities for Brazil and the Developing World in Advancing the Sustainable Development Agenda