Felix Dodds: The Future of Sustainable Development

After the Copenhagen summit, sustainable development was to some extent dead globally. The Rio+20 process brought together everybody to reimagine how they must address the critical challenges that we’re facing in the next 20 years. At Rio+20 there was agreement that there should be a set of sustainable development goals and those will be part of what will be the new Millennium Development Goal landscape post-2015. That’s a very significant development. And why is it significant? Because over the last 10 years and more, once the Millennium Development Goals were agreed, global development funding focused on trying to deliver those goals. So it gave a focus to the global community on what needed to be addressed, and on many of those global goals it has had quite an impact. The same thing would happen after 2015 with a set of sustainable development goals. We’ll see a focus of funding, of activity, around trying to address those global challenges.

Another critical element is that for the first time at the global level we discussed the issue of economy. It was the first attempt by the global community to really address how the economic pillar of sustainable development should be integrated into the other areas. Though one would have hoped for something a little more advanced or significant, there are a number of initiatives that have come out of that that will have a significant impact on the future. One of the key activities from Rio I would underline is the initiative from the World Bank where over 50 countries and 86 private companies have joined forces behind the move to factor the value of natural assets like clean air, clean water, forests and other ecosystems into business decision-making and countries’ systems of national accounting. Watch this space to see how this develops over the next few years.

The other important aspect is addressing the issue of governance. Both organizations at the global level that deal with sustainable development, primarily UNEP and the Commission on Sustainable Development, their roles were addressed. In the area of UNEP, they were upgraded to universal membership. They only had 58 members before, so they’re truly now the voice of the environment at the global level. And the Commission on Sustainable Development hadn’t succeeded very well since 2004. They needed a higher level political forum, and that’s about to be set up.

It depends if they attended the meeting. A number who said that didn’t attend. Also whether or not they actually went to preparatory meetings. A lot turned up at the summit and made a judgment at that point. If you understood at the beginning what was possible and had worked over the last three years [in the context of today’s global economic situation], then you would call the summit a success.

What Rio taught us about process is that you need more time to build trust among the key players than often is expected. To discuss the economy you needed a lot more time to have people have the conversation in a constructive way. In 1992 developed governments made a commitment to development aid to the tune of a $145-billion-a-year transfer from north to south. This was never delivered and in the first 10 years went down. Only when the MDGs were agreed to did [overseas development aid] go up. There’s this real feeling from developing countries that they made this commitment, then developed countries don’t deliver the money to help developing countries make the transition to a more sustainable path of development. The results of this can be seen in India and China in their development paths, particularly  in their contribution to climate change. So you need more time to be able to address coming to new conclusions.

People will look back and say the development of the sustainable development goals was a critical time when the world community was able to come together and agree to focus on those particular areas. Then I think once those are set the community, whether industry or NGOs or whatever, will be critical in helping governments deliver those goals. We know governments alone can’t deliver those.

I think what Rio+20 did was to start to rebuild a base of trust between key governments at the global level. That base that came out of Rio is already being built up in a way that makes me think that 2015 will be a significant year for not only development goals but also a new climate agreement. It’s possible we will look back 20 years from now and say, “that is what made it all possible.”

Some in the private sector are on the side of angels and some aren’t. Those who are need to be more vocal. Companies that say they are green should use their advertising budgets to say they need to see much firmer leadership in the sense of using that space to show they are going to be a part of the solution. We also need to point out the companies that aren’t doing the right thing and point out why they’re bad. We need to be firm with companies not supporting a move toward sustainable development and let them know that’s not going to work. The development of a global framework for sustainability reporting for all companies listed on the stock exchange and promoted by much of the financial sector, such as AVIVA, is something that all companies should get behind.

I think so. The trust wasn’t there at Copenhagen. We had to go and rebuild a whole set of relationships around the conversations that have to happen. So the ground is being prepared for 2015. We don’t know for sure if the government leaders at that time will make the right decisions. But provided the work has been done properly, clearly the space is there for that to happen and that’s the important thing. I think things are urgent but things have been set up for them to happen.