TIME FOR A SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC PARADIGM
(INPUT FOR THE DRAFT OUTCOME DOCUMENT FOR RIO+20)
ROYAL GOVERNMENT OF BHUTAN
Introduction
In June, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, the world?s assembled leaders vowed to ?cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem? (Article 7). In order ?to achieve sustainable development?, they further pledged to ?reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption? (Article 8).
On the same occasion, the Rio partners adopted the landmark Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose declared objective was ?stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.?
Now, 20 years later, we should be gathering to celebrate our progress towards attaining these vital and noble goals, on which our future survival literally depends. Instead, sadly, it is a time for tears. It is a time for deeply sober reflection on our failures to meet the Rio aspirations of 20 years ago, and on our blind progression on a dangerously unsustainable path that threatens the survival not only of our own but of many other species of life on Earth.
Instead of progress, we have perilously accelerated ecosystem decline. In the 1990s, CO2 em issions increased by an average of 1.1% per year. Since 2000, they have increased by more than 3% per year. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, based on the best and most comprehensive scientific evidence available, concludes that two-thirds of the world?s ecosystem services are now in serious decline. And ecological footprint assessments show that humanity is now using up natural resources at a 35% faster rate than nature can regenerate.
And we know too that this ecological destruction is not separate from global economic realities that are increasingly dividing rich from poor: ?
? that 20% of the world?s people consume 86% of its goods while the poorest 20% consume just 1.3%;
? that the richest 20% use 58% of all energy and the poorest 20% less than 4%;
? that 20% of people produce 63% of the world?s greenhouse gas emissions while another 20% produce only 2%;
? that 12% of the world?s people use 85% of the world?s water;
? that the richest 20% consume 84% of all paper and have 87% of all vehicles, while the poorest 20% use less than 1% of each.
The stress of poverty on countless millions of our fellow human beings is no less than the stress on the planet of the lifestyles of the rich.
This is neither the time nor the place for a detailed litany of the world?s environmental woes or of its gross inequities. We are all too familiar with the news of melting icecaps and receding glaciers, resource depletion, species extinction, preventable disease, war, famine, and more.
But this 20-year marker is certainly the appropriate historical moment to acknowledge that we literally cannot afford another 10 years on the same trajectory as since Rio 1992. Business as usual is certain doom for the world ? or at least for the habitability of the planet by human beings and many other species.
And so it behoves us now to take a brutally honest look at why we have been so shockingly incapable of implementing the noble aspirations of Rio 1992, and it
particularly behoves us not to fall into the same trap again. If we care at all about this precious planet that sustains us, there is much at stake in this analysis and the actions we now take.