Rio +20: States cry foul over bureaucratic challenge to sovereignty

By Timothy Herrmann | March 15, 2012

Member states are expressing concern this week that the Secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) is overstepping its boundaries in the Rio negotiation process by championing its own bureaucratic goals over those of member states in the Rio +20 process.

Over the past three days, the UNCSD has held a series of briefings led by Nikhil Seth, Director, DSD/DESA, and Head of the Office of the UNCSD Secretariat, on the progress that has been made thus far in the Rio +20 negotiations. While they were initially intended only to brief countries and other interested parties on how the negotiations were proceeding, they became heated when the Secretariat proffered its own view of the way negotiations have proceeded thus far and attempted to summarize the views of member states.

According to member states, summarizing the positions of state parties involved in the negotiations is not the job of the Secretariat especially since states are still heavily involved in the negotiation of the final outcome document. In addition, many states worry that since Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has adopted Rio +20 as his own personal project, the Secretariat of UNCSD may attempt to force its own vision for Rio on member states rather than allowing them to drive the process. This dynamic made itself evident when Director Nikhil Seth began speaking about certain core proposals of the outcome document as if they were are already a reality, even though very little if anything at all has been agreed upon in the document thus far.

As it stands, two of the more controversial aspects of the Rio +20 process are the proposals for the Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development (IFSD) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Both were addressed during the briefings. For people unfamiliar with the Rio +20 process, there is no agreement currently on what kind of infrastructure will be required to ensure that the goals set out within the final Rio +20 document will ever be achieved. While some would like to see the draft document include a Sustainable Development Council to monitor global sustainable development (along the lines of a Human Rights Council), others would prefer to see the capacity of the existing UN Commission on Sustainable Development strengthened. There is even talk of expanding the function of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in order to monitor the goals set in Rio for sustainable development. Up to now however, nothing has been set in stone. Each proposal has its own consequences in terms of bureaucratic growth and funding and states involved in negotiations disagree both about their final form as well as role in governance.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are more controversial still. The idea behind the SDGs is similar to that of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in that they are meant to set certain targets for the entire world. However, unlike the MDGs, the targets would seek to protect the environment and encourage a green economy rather than explicitly bring the developed world out of poverty, hunger, and disease. One of the main concerns of member states is that, in order to be effective, the SDGs would need to be integrated with the MDGs which are due to expire in 2015. The possibility of integrating them into a single set of goals is proving difficult however, because whereas the MDGs were focused on the problems faced by the developing world, the SDGs would be universal and concern the practices of all member states. It is also not clear how the economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development could be merged with “social” concerns specific to the MDGs. Many developing nations are also concerned that merging the SDGs with the MDGs would take focus away from the real needs of the developing world and rob them of much needed funding.

The entire process is further complicated by the fact that the very concept of sustainable development still remains ambiguous for nearly all member states and has yet to be normatively defined. Within the draft document containing all the proposals being negotiated, not one aspect has yet to be fully agreed upon. During this weeks briefings, it was clear that the process still has a long ways to go.

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