delivered by Wael Hmaidan, Climate Action Network

Watch the presentation Wael delivered to Rio+20 on behalf of NGOs at Rio.

Thank you, Vice-President.

I am making this statement on behalf of the NGOs in Rio+20.

It feels amazing to be in this room among all the world leaders, and feeling all this power around me that can shape the World. We all know the threat that is facing us, and I do not need to repeat the urgency. Science is very clear. If we do not change in the coming five to ten years the way our societies function, we will be threatening the survival of future generations and all other species on the planet. Nevertheless, you sitting here in this room have the power to reverse all of this. What you can do here is the ideal dream of each one of us: to have the opportunity to be the savors of the planet.

And yet we stand on the brink of Rio+20 being another failed attempt, with governments only trying to protect their narrow interests instead of inspiring the World and giving all of us back the faith in humanity that we need. If this happens, it would be a big waste of power, and a big waste of leadership opportunity.

You cannot have a document titled ‘the future we want’ without any mention of planetary boundaries, tipping points, or the Earth’s carrying capacity.  The text as it stands is completely out of touch with reality. Just to be clear, NGOs here in Rio in no way endorse this document. Already more than 1,000 organisations and individuals have signed in only one day a petition called “The Future We Don’t Want” that completely refuses the current text. It does not in any way reflect our aspiration, and therefore we demand that the words “in full participation with civil society” are removed from the first paragraph.

If you adopt the text in its current form, you will fail to secure a future for the coming generations, including your own children.

To mention a few examples of failures in the document:

In the issue of finding resources to implement sustainable development, we see countries using the economic crisis as an excuse, while at the same time spending 100s of billions of dollars subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, the most profitable industry in the world. The first thing you can do is eliminating the existing harmful subsidies, especially fossil fuel subsidies, which was voted as the number one issue during the civil society dialogue.

Under the oceans section, you have failed to give a clear mandate to even start negotiating an implementing agreement to stop the Wild West abuse of the high seas.

There are many other failures in the document related to women’s reproduction health, missed opportunities to start new global treaties on civil society participation and on sustainability reporting, the extraordinary lack of any reference to armed conflicts, nuclear energy (especially in light of the fukushima disaster), and many others.

But it is not too late. We do not believe that it is over. You are here for three more days, and you can still inspire us and the world. It would be a shame and a waste for you to only come here and sign off a document. We urge you to create new political will that would make us stand and applaud you as our true leaders.

Thank you

Negotiations here at Rio+20 appear to have come to a standstill.  Member states can’t seem to agree to much of anything; the multilateral process, intended to promote ‘cooperation, compromise and dialogue’, has turned into a frantic scramble to produce ‘some’ nay ‘any’ kind of tangible outcome of the conference. So far, ‘compromise’ has meant the deletion of entire paragraphs of text that countries have been unable to agree upon.  There is a real threat here that this enormous global opportunity could be wasted.

At this crucial moment delegations would do well to take heed to civil society groups, who have had no trouble coming to consensus on some of the most important outcomes from this summit, namely ending the nearly $1 trillion annual subsidy for fossil fuels.

Over the last several weeks thousands of people around the world have voted online for their sustainable development priorities as part of the Rio-Dialogues process.  The No.1 response was “take concrete steps to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.” In the lead up to Rio, Avaaz.org, 350.org and many others collected over a million signatures against these regressive handouts and yesterday on Twitter #endfossilfuelsubsidies was a top trending topic worldwide; while hundreds of youth and their allies marched through the Rio Centro complex to highlight that incentives for atmospheric pollution and outdated technologies are not part of the future we want. 

 The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, as part of its Vision 2050 report, said that by 2020 governments must “remove subsidies that encourage over-consumption and resource degradation.”   The Trade Union Assembly on Labour and the Environment, held last week, articulated a very different vision than the business community on many issues.  However, the two groups agreed on the importance of “fair and environmentally-sound tax policies” with labor calling for a “just transition” away from fossil fuel dependency.  Over 170 NGOs have co-signed a letter calling for a socially equitable phase out.  Similar calls have been made by other major groups for the scientific and technological community, youth and women , to name just a few.

Yet, despite all of this, over the past few days the text on subsidies has gotten increasingly weaker.  We must ask why.  One explanation is that civil society has not been given an appropriate space to voice the importance of this issue.  In an attempt to move these negotitations forward, the Brazilian government took energy negotiations behind closed doors at the beginning of the prepcom.  They facilitated discussions that included only a few key states and no representatives from civil society.  While this could be seen as a pragmatic move, ECO must dissent.  Fossil fuel subsidies are clearly a critical issue for civil society globally and must be brought into the center of deliberations in the coming days. Bringing in more voices, particularly those who have already come to consensus across ideological divides, enhances the credibility and productive potential of this process.

The Brazilian Presidency and the UNCSD have an enormous opportunity but they need to act fast.  By bringing fossil fuel subsidy reform into the heart of negotiations they can demonstrate a commitment to responsive leadership,and to the global mandate they have received.  This would significantly improve the actual and perceived legitimacy of this process and would be an important first step toward advancing a more ambitious agenda.

There are no guarantees that subsidy reform will make it into a final text.  However, there is a strong case to made that by discussing it openly we can find language acceptable to all parties. For example, it appears that some countries are worried that a phase out would undermine their ability to develop or would create a domestic political backlash.  These concerns can be assuaged by discussion that includes actors like Switzerland, Costa Rica or Ethiopia.  These delegations will surely be happy to talk about how their countries have removed perverse energy incentives and found more effective ways to protect the poor and reinvest in projects that drive positive feedbacks for sustainable development.  Civil Society groups can offer enormous insight based on their research and experience in affected communities.

We have an important choice to make.  We can continue grasping at straws over issues that are stuck in the mud or we can directly tackle one of the largest obstacles to achieving a green economy that alleviates poverty and strengthens opportunities for development.  Civil society has provided a path, now leaders need to take it.

Award given for lifetime commitment to blocking progress on climate and environmental protection

Rio de Janeiro - In an unprecedented move, the Fossil of the Day award broke protocol today to award a special fossil to big oil and their friends. The award is a recognition of the back room, dirty tactics that the fossil fuel industry and lobby has used here in Rio and for years to block progress on climate change and sustainable development. 

The corporations were also singled out for being some of the biggest recipients of the narly $1 trillion in subsidies handed out each year to big polluters. The award comes on the eve of a corporate business event including a session entitled "Fossil Fuels and Sustainability" that features representatives of Petrobras, BP and Shell. The text of the Fossil Award read as follows:

Today's fossil award is an extra special one, a never before seen or heard of Fossil of the Day...a Fossil First here in Rio.

The recipients of this Fossil have for years stood in the shadows, and in the way of real progress on climate change and sustainable development. Around the globe they are the worlds largest climate criminals, responsible for spilling millions of barrels of oil in the natural world, and dumping billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the aptmosphere.

Let's get a (oil) drumroll please for today's Fossils! Those big bad polluters!

Shell! Exxon-Mobil! BP! Chevron! and a special Brazilian Rio Fossil for our sponsors here at Rio+20 Petrobras!  Honorable mention goes to all the oil barons, king coals and gas giants around the globe! Our top four recipients collectively made nearly $140 billion dollars in 2011, all while working against the adoption of strong, ambitious climate legislation in countries around the globe, digging deeper into dirty energy. All four are major players in the tar sands and part of a new rush to develop oil in the Arctic - despite their roles in major disasters like the Deepwater Horizon, the Kalamazoo river spill, the Exxon Valdez and the list goes on.

Oh yeah, and they're all part of that prestigious trillion dollar club, recipients of massive polluter handouts.

Petrobras gets a special spot for coming on as a sponsor of Rio+20 while trying to break the resistance of fishermen of Rio’s Bahia de Guanabara with violence. The fishermen have been struggling to defend their livelihoods against Petrobras’ oil spills.

The Fossil of the Day ceremony was also the target of a mock protest by "Billionaires for Subsidies", a group of youth drawing attention to the influence of big polluters here in Rio and on climate progress around the globe. The fossil fuel companies were targetted for attempting to hijack the agenda in Rio, but also for lobbying to weaken climate commitments for governments around the world. 

Governments came together in Rio to agree on basic principles and process forward for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of the foundations for the process is that it should not divert attention, funding or other resources from accelerating progress towards the current set of 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This MDG process and the related MDG review process are one track for the time pre-2015.

Reviewing the 2015 goals is good, but we need to also plan for the future. The post-2015 process aims to design a global development framework to succeed the MDGs in 2015. This thinking obviously needs to happen now, rather than after 2015. The UN has already set these wheels in motion even before the SDGs appeared on the horizon. Last year they appointed a UN task team on post-2015 that produced a report on the post-2015 roadmap which will be published shortly. A UN high-level panel on post 2015 was appointed with three co-chairs and further members to be announced after Rio+20. Further, the UN SG appointed a Special Advisor on post-2015, and post-2015 stakeholder consultations have already begun to take place.

From its onset, the SDGs were meant to be part of this post-2015 track. Columbia was clear about that and so was everybody else. SDGs are meant to ensure that the post-2015 development framework, the new set of goals, will genuinely integrate environment and poverty concerns.  Hence it is paramount that Rio+20 indicates clearly how and when the SDG process will be integrated into the post-2015 track.

This is where it gets tricky. At the moment Rio+20 runs the risk of setting up a third track. This should be avoided at all costs. Having one SDG process in addition to the existing post-2015 process would be a waste of time, effort and resources and will lead to duplication, confusion and delays. And after all, creating a third track poses very real risks of distracting from achieving track one, the current set of MDGs.