[Event] Rio+20 Roundtable Discussion Series – #1: Sustainable Development Governance

INVITATION: Rio+20 Roundtable Discussion Series – #1: Sustainable Development Governance, 30 June/1-5pm, PCA/Ortigas Center YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO JOIN THE ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION SERIES ON RIO+20: Collectively Organized by: Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) Earth Council-Philippines Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment-SEARICE Third World Network (TWN) First Roundtable Discussion: Institutional…

Human Rights Online Philippines

June 27, 2011

4–6 minutes

INVITATION: Rio+20 Roundtable Discussion Series – #1: Sustainable Development Governance, 30 June/1-5pm, PCA/Ortigas Center

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO JOIN THE ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION SERIES ON RIO+20:

Collectively Organized by:
Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group)
Earth Council-Philippines
Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment-SEARICE
Third World Network (TWN)

First Roundtable Discussion:
Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development (IFSD)
30 June 2010
1:00-5:00 PM

Partnership for Clean Air/CAI-Asia Conference Room
Unit 3504-05, 35th Floor, Robinson’s-Equitable Tower
ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City
Tel No: (63 2) 395 2843 to 45

The UN General Assembly, through Resolution 64/236, decided to hold a UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, more known as Earth Summit 2012 or Rio+20) on 4-6 June 2012 – 20 years after the groundbreaking UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. UNCED placed sustainable development at the center of world stage and gave birth to the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and a host of other multilateral environment agreements that adhere to the principles adopted by the international community in that landmark summit of world leaders. Twenty years later, the environmental problems that the Rio agreements aimed to address persisted, and have even worsened. The world’s biological diversity is seriously threatened, its remaining forests continue shrinking, the climate crisis is worsening and threatening the planet’s survival, and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption persist. As the implementation of the agreements proceeded, it has become clear that these are not just environmental agreements either, but have integral social and economic dimensions. In addition there are political commitments from the package of UN Conferences in the 1990s including on social development, women and financing development.

Rio+20 aims to renew the political commitment of the community of nations on the sustainable development agenda, review the progress of implementation of commitments made in 1992, assess the gaps in implementation, and identify new and emerging issues in sustainable development. The focus of the conference will include (not exclusively) on two themes: Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty alleviation, and institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD). The outcome of the process is a political document that will be negotiated by UN members in the two-year process for Rio+20 that started in May 2010. After two international preparatory committee meetings and one intersessional meeting all held at the UN headquarters in New York and half-way through the preparatory process, very few civil society organizations (CSOs) have actively engaged and many governments have notably shown lackluster interest in the debates. The interest and quality of participation, however, are expected to pick up in the final 12 months leading to Rio+20 with the conduct of regional preparatory meetings and the start of the actual negotiations on the draft political document.

The Roundtable Discussion Series on Rio+20 aims to raise the awareness and stimulate the interest of civil society organizations and other actors in the Philippines on the objectives and processes of Rio+20, opportunities for engagement, stakes involved, and the status of the debates and emerging positions. The discussions aim to come up with Philippine civil society positions on the themes and key issues in the Rio+20 agenda, and hopefully, strategies on how to best influence the position of the Philippine government in the preparatory processes and negotiations.

The first in the series of Roundtable Discussions on Rio+20 is on institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD), or the governance of sustainable development. An important component of the IFSD discourse is international environmental governance (IEG). While the discussion on IFSD in the first year of the Rio+20 preparatory process has not come up with promising ideas on effective and viable sustainable development governance framework, the IEG discourse is quite well developed over the past 10 years under the aegis of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and has come up with several concrete options. The Roundtable Discussion on IFSD will tackle the background, issues and options to serve as basis for the participants’ deliberations on the positions of Philippine CSOs that can be brought to the preparatory processes of Rio+20 and presented to the Philippine government as inputs to the national position.

Objectives:
1)   1) To provide information on the Rio+20 processes and what’s at stake for the Philippines and CSOs;
2)   2) To discuss the emerging positions on IFSD and key options on IEG, and how the IEG debate links with the IFSD theme at Rio+20;
3)   3) To formulate Philippine CSOs’ positions on IEG/IFSD that will be brought to related discussions at the national, regional and international levels in the preparatory processes for Rio+20; and
4)   4) To discuss strategies in effectively influencing the position of the Philippine government in the preparatory processes and negotiations for Rio+20.

Provisional Program:

1:00-1:30pm Registration

1:30-2:00pm Introduction and Overview of the Rio+20 Roundtable Discussion Series (Paul Borja, SEARICE)

2:00-2:30pm Background on Rio+20 Objectives and Themes, timelines to June 2012, what’s at stake for us? (Ella Antonio, Earth Council)

2:30-3:00pm Overview on the IFSD and IEG debates and options (Neth Daño, ETC Group)

3:00-4:45pm Discussion of issues and formulation Philippine CSO positions on IFSD/IEG

4:45-5:00pm Synthesis