View previous stories
	Sustainable Humanity by Jeffrey D. Sachs Director of The Earth Institute USA   Sustainable development means achieving economic growth that is widely shared and that protects the earth’s vital resources. Our current global economy, however, is not sustainable, with more than one billion people left behind by economic progress and the earth’s environment suffering terrible damage from human activity. Sustainable development requires mobilizing new technologies that are guided by shared social values.   United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has rightly declared sustainable development to be at the top of the global agenda. We have entered a dangerous period in which a huge and growing population, combined with rapid economic growth, now threatens to have a catastrophic impact on the earth’s climate, biodiversity, and fresh-water supplies. Scientists call this new period the Anthropocene – in which human beings have become the main causes of the earth’s physical and biological changes.   The Secretary-General’s Global Sustainability Panel has issued a new report that outlines a framework for sustainable development. The GSP rightly notes that sustainable development has three pillars: ending extreme poverty; ensuring that prosperity is shared by all, including women, youth, and minorities; and protecting the natural environment. These can be termed the economic, social, and environmental pillars of sustainable development, or, more simply, the “triple bottom line” of sustainable development.   The GSP has called for world leaders to adopt a new set of Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, that will help to shape global policies and actions after the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Whereas the MDGs focus on reducing extreme poverty, the SDGs will focus on all three pillars of sustainable development: ending extreme poverty, sharing the benefits of economic development for all of society, and protecting the Earth.   It is, of course, one thing to set SDGs and quite another to achieve them. The problem can be seen by looking at one key challenge: climate change.   Today, there are seven billion people on the planet, and each one, on average, is responsible for the release each year of a bit more than four tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This CO2 is emitted when we burn coal, oil, and gas to produce electricity, drive our cars, or heat our homes. All told, humans emit roughly 30 billion tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere, enough to change the climate sharply within a few decades.   By 2050, there will most likely be more than nine billion people. If these people are richer than people today (and therefore using more energy per person), total emissions worldwide could double or even triple. This is the great dilemma: we need to emit less CO2, but we are on a global path to emit much more.   We should care about that scenario, because remaining on a path of rising global emissions is almost certain to cause havoc and suffering for billions of people as they are hit by a torrent of droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and more. We have already experienced the onset of this misery in recent years, with a spate of devastating famines, floods, and other climate-related disasters.   So, how can the world’s people – especially its poor people – benefit from more electricity and more access to modern transportation, but in a way that saves the planet rather than destroys it? The truth is that we can’t – unless we improve dramatically the technologies that we use.   We need to use energy far more wisely while shifting from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources. Such decisive improvements are certainly possible and economically realistic.   Consider the energy inefficiency of an automobile, for example. We currently move around 1,000 to 2,000 kilograms of machinery to transport only one or just a few people, each weighing perhaps 75 kilograms (165 lbs.). And we do so using an internal combustion engine that utilizes only a small part of the energy released by burning the gasoline. Most of the energy is lost as waste heat.   We could therefore achieve huge reductions in CO2 emissions by converting to small, lightweight, battery-powered vehicles running on highly efficient electric motors and charged by a low-carbon energy source such as solar power. Even better, by shifting to electric vehicles, we would be able to use cutting-edge information technology to make them smart – even smart enough to drive themselves using advanced data-processing and positioning systems.   The benefits of information and communications technologies can be found in every area of human activity: better farming using GPS and micro-dosing of fertilizers; precision manufacturing; buildings that know how to economize on energy use; and, of course, the transformative, distance-erasing power of the Internet. Mobile broadband is already connecting even the most distant villages in rural Africa and India, thereby cutting down significantly on the need for travel.   Banking is now done by phone, and so, too, is a growing range of medical diagnostics. Electronic books are beamed directly to handheld devices, without the need for bookshops, travel, and the pulp and paper of physical books. Education is increasingly online as well, and will soon enable students everywhere to receive first-rate instruction at almost a zero “marginal” cost for enrolling another student.   Yet getting from here to sustainable development will not just be a matter of technology. It will also be a matter of market incentives, government regulations, and public support for research and development. But, even more fundamental than policies and governance will be the challenge of values. We must understand our shared fate, and embrace sustainable development as a common commitment to decency for all human beings, today and in the future.   http://earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1025 Visit the related web page
	Human rights norms must give new direction to globalization by Olivier De Schutter United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food   26 January 2012   The UN expert on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, has urged ministers gathered in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum to acknowledge the relationship between globalization and human rights, saying that “globalization should serve human rights and sustainable development, rather than being a process blind to its impacts on the individuals affected.”   “Human rights norms must give new direction to globalization as strategies are being sought to re-launch and expand the global economy,” urged De Schutter.   Referring to the theme of this year’s meeting in Davos, “The Great Transformation,” De Schutter said that the real great transformation must go beyond rectifying the imbalances in developed world debt to GDP ratios.   “We must finally pay attention to the wider imbalances that are the symptoms of unfettered globalization. All around the world people have fallen foul of economic processes that consign whole regions to abandonment or degradation and trap whole population groups in perpetual poverty,” he said.   “Bilateral trade and investment agreements are the gateway through which globalization passes on its way to redefining the economic landscape of a country. These agreements often set in motion a process of restructuring that shakes up the existing foundations of an economy.” These bilateral deals are rapidly increasing, and as many as 6,000 investment agreements are currently in place.   Governments of sovereign States must submit any deal on the table to a ‘human rights-proofing,’ in the form of a human rights impact assessment, in order to discharge their obligations to their citizens,” the independent expert stressed.   “A Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) is not merely a question of gauging environmental sustainability or the impact of a deal on progress towards specific development goals. It is about protecting the inalienable rights of each and every person in the face of changing economic conditions,” De Schutter said.   “States are duty-bound to respect human rights, such as the right to food, and to regulate private actors to ensure that they do not infringe upon such rights. States must, therefore, not allow themselves to be locked into deals that impair their ability to comply with their human rights commitments; nor should they force such deals on other States, whatever concessions the other party appears ready to make, for the sake of securing access to export markets or attracting investors.”   States must ensure that human rights are genuinely protected in the remit of trade and investment agreements, setting out conditions to ensure the integrity and transparency of the agreements, and to ensure that they take into account the situation of the most vulnerable segments of the population. They also must identify how to deal with trade-offs, when certain groups gain from the agreement, while others lose out.   To support such efforts, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food will present to the UN Human Rights Council, at its session in March 2012, a set of guiding principles for conducting human rights impact assessments of trade and investment agreements.   Carrying out a human rights impact assessment, for instance, should serve to support the assessment by the European Parliament of the Free Trade Agreement that is currently being finalized in negotiations between the Government of India and the European Commission. Some estimates suggest that the tariff liberalization encouraged by the draft agreement in the dairy and poultry sectors could threaten the livelihoods of 14 million very poor households in India, half of them landless, who depend on milk production, and that marginal farmers supplementing their livelihoods by keeping backyard poultry could also be severely affected by the rise in imports of fresh poultry meat from the EU.   Small street vendors -- 10 million people in total -- could be affected by the liberalization of investment in the retail sector, also as a result of the agreement under preparation.   “Such social consequences of trade and investment liberalization have direct impacts on the right to food," De Schutter noted. “The methodology I will propose in the guiding principles is a way to ensure that governments do not disregard their human rights obligations in negotiating such agreements.”   November 2011   Upcoming trade talks must focus on right to adequate food, UN expert stresses.   “The world is in the midst of a food crisis which requires a rapid policy response. But the World Trade Organization agenda has failed to adapt, and developing countries are rightly concerned that their hands will be tied by trade rules.” This is the warning from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, as he issued recommendations to put the human right to adequate food at the top of the WTO agenda, one month before a key summit.   “Food security is the elephant in the room which the WTO must address. Trade did not feed the hungry when food was cheap and abundant, and is even less able to do so now that prices are sky-high. Global food imports shall be worth 1.3 trillion USD in 2011, and the food import bills of the least developed countries have soared by over a third over the last year. The G20 has acknowledged that excessive reliance on food imports has left people in developing countries increasingly vulnerable to price shocks and food shortages,” Mr. De Schutter said, adding: “The WTO must now do the same”.   The future of the Doha Round and the global trading system will be under discussion at the December 15-17 WTO ministerial conference in Geneva. “We must avoid face-saving, short-term solutions aimed at hauling Doha over the line,” the independent expert said. “Instead, we should grasp the opportunity to ask what kind of trade rules will allow us to combat food insecurity and realize the human right to food.”   Higher tariffs, temporary import restrictions, state purchase from small-holders, active marketing boards, safety net insurance schemes, and targeted farm subsidies are increasingly acknowledged as vital measures to rehabilitate local food production capacity in developing countries.   But WTO rules leave little space for developing countries to put these measures in place. “Even if certain policies are not disallowed, they are certainly discouraged by the complexity of the rules and the threat of legal action,” Mr. De Schutter said. “Current efforts to build humanitarian food reserves in Africa must tip-toe around the WTO rulebook. This is the world turned upside down. WTO rules should revolve around the human right to adequate food, not the other way around.”   “It is a problem of principle: the WTO continues to pursue the outdated goal of increasing trade for its own sake rather than encouraging more trade only insofar as it increases human wellbeing. It therefore treats food security policies as an unwelcome deviation from this path. Instead we need an environment that encourages bold policies to improve food security.”   “If the Doha Round is to move forward, it must lift any possible constraints on policies aimed at securing the right to food: such measures should include food stock-holding that aims to reduce price volatility and ensure access to adequate food at the local level.” The Special Rapporteur called for an expert panel to be convened to reconcile food security and trade concerns; for a protocol to be established to monitor the impacts of trade on food prices; and for a general waiver to exempt food security-related measures from the WTO disciplines without penalty. Visit the related web page
	View more stories