Two UK-based think-tanks slam 2012 Earth Summit

GREAT Trust Council for Afrika International and Afrika Liberation Society, two UK-based think-tanks have dismissed the 2012 Earth Summit in Brazil as a failure.

At the close of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, heads of state and ministers from more than 190 nations signed off on a plan to set global sustainable development goals and other measures to strengthen global environmental management, tighten the protection of the oceans, improve food security and promote a "Green Economy".

Dr. Koku Adomdza, President of GREAT Trust, Council for Afrika International and Afrika Liberation Society, said in a statement issued to Ghana News Agency in Accra that the UN and Global Leadership have once again demonstrated their incompetence to deliver desirable outcomes.

He said the outcome of the conference in no way justifies the enormous expenditure, whilst there was lack of urgency and emergency to deal with the issues of poverty eradication.

Dr. Adomdza said the disconnection of sustainable development from a central tenet of human resources was critical and speaks volumes.

"If the UN were concerned about the plight of the world’s majority, who live precariously day by day without an income with severely malnourished mouths to feed the weak and infirm to cure anxieties of swathes of unemployed adults and hopeless skilled and unskilled youth, a qualitatively different outcome would have been delivered at Rio+20.

"We need new paradigms to attain sustainable development, not for some ‘high-level’ people, but for the ordinary Majority Citizens of the World who were created with certain inalienable fundamental human rights, but denied by incompetent global leadership.”

He noted that, the "main outcome of the Conference is a Plan to Set Sustainable Development Goals which Brazil described as the "crown jewels" of the conference. But the gems have not yet been chosen, let alone cut, polished and set."

He said developing countries wanted a $30bn per year fund to help in the transition to sustainability, but in the midst of a financial crisis in Europe nobody was willing to say how much money they would contribute.

Dr. Adomdza said instead, there was a promise to enhance funding, but by how much and by whom were left to future discussions.

There was frustration that Rio+20 did not do more to guarantee the reproductive rights of women or to protect the world's oceans. A plan to rescue the high seas.

"The strongest initiatives were made outside the negotiating halls where significant agreements have been struck on investing in public transport, commitments made to green accounting by corporations and strategies agreed by cities and judicial bodies on reducing environmental impacts. The dynamism has been found in a 10-day ’People's Summit’ and campaigns to reduce plastics in the ocean and create a new sanctuary in the Arctic."**