Rio+20 summit co-ordinator seeks to put agriculture centre stage
UN executive Brice Lalonde says pinpointing one key area will focus minds and boost progress on other development goals
- guardian.co.uk,
Rio+20 co-ordinator Brice Lalonde wants to focus on agriculture at next year's summit in Brazil. Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP
The Rio+20 global development summit co-ordinator is pushing for a tight focus on agriculture in an attempt to inject new energy into the landmark event, the Guardian has learned. Such a departure from UN tradition could be controversial, but Brice Lalonde, the UN's co-ordinator for the meeting, argues it would be more effective than the traditional laundry list of aspirations in pushing countries to meet clearly defined goals.
Agriculture is a dominant concern in a year of famine and rising global food prices, and Lalonde believes focusing on the subject would help concentrate minds on the summit. He also argues it is impossible to work on agriculture in isolation; countries would, by default, have to make progress on other development goals.
"My personal view is to concentrate on one major, overarching topic," Lalonde said. "When you work on agriculture, you can do it with all the goals associated with it: land use, biodiversity, women's empowerment, energy and water."
In Washington, as in other world capitals, officials are now beginning to think ahead to the Rio summit, which will be held in June next year. The summit organisers have settled on a slogan: "The future we want." They held their first real meeting in Rio last week, and countries are due to submit their proposals for the conference by 1 November. The Brookings Institution had its first discussion on Rio+20 this week.
But there is already debate about how the summit can rise above the deep disappointments of the UN's other big experiments in global action – implementing the millennium development goals and acting on climate change. Earlier summits, such as the meeting on biodiversity, set impossibly lofty goals like bringing ecosystem degradation to a halt by 2020.
The climate talks have stalled, not least because it now looks very unlikely governments or the private sector will come up with a $100bn green fund by 2020. Some have even questioned whether existing UN institutions help or hinder efforts to reduce poverty and protect the environment. The UN's original mission was peace and security, the argument goes. It is not set up to promote sustainable development.
However, the immediate preoccupation is how to get the most out of Rio. While Lalonde favours a focus on agriculture, others are pushing for the summit to focus on energy, women's empowerment and social justice. Some would like Rio to concentrate on protecting the oceans, or improving life in cities.
Lalonde believes, however, that the most effective strategy would be to push for an agricultural revolution incorporating technological advances. In support of his view that adopting an overarching goal would by default require progress in other areas, he points to Africa, where most farmers are women; any gains in agriculture will automatically improve the status of women, Lalonde argues.
But his proposals made only passing mention of education, and there was little directly on climate change.
Lalonde's ideas, though generating interest, also remain controversial. Many see Rio as a moment to redefine the entire idea of development, making it less about GDP and growth and more about quality of life and environment. William Brown, a former scientific advisor to the interior secretary who is now a fellow at Brookings, said it would be difficult to refocus Rio at this stage, having originally billed it as an event on the green economy and better governance. "They can't drop the governance issue, and a regulatory global or world environmental organisation won't fly with the US (or others, who would be delighted to nod quietly as the US objected), " he wrote in an email.
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