Question:
The Earth summit Rio+20 was very disappointing to experts and activists. National and European media did not cover much of the summit. Is the interest of the public and the citizens in climate protection diminishing in Europe?
My answer:
The Rio+20 summit was not about climate protection alone, it was about sustainable development in its social, environmental, and economic dimens ➔
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Question:
The Earth summit Rio+20 was very disappointing to experts and activists. National and European media did not cover much of the summit. Is the interest of the public and the citizens in climate protection diminishing in Europe?
My answer:
The Rio+20 summit was not about climate protection alone, it was about sustainable development in its social, environmental, and economic dimensions, articulated around the rather vague concept of “Green Growth”. But it is true that the outcome was disappointing from an environmental perspective, as no concrete targets, timetables, or financial commitments were agreed upon. Rio+20 thus confirmed the political stalemate in international environmental negotiations that is visible since the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. It is a result of three main factors: first of all, the new emerging economies now raise their voice in all sorts of international negotiations. Even though some of them (e.g. China and Brazil) begin to take into account sustainability issues in their domestic policies, they defend an agenda that places economic growth at the forefront, and react very harshly to everything they perceive as interference in their internal affairs. Secondly, Europe struggles to find its place in the new geopolitical configuration and has lost its leadership role in international environmental negotiations. The current depth crisis exacerbates this situation. Finally, the US is too divided internally after 20 years of intense and successful lobbying against environmental policies to take any kind of commitments. In the climate case, the situation is further complicated by the actual boom of extraction of unconventional gas and oil reserves that is about to transform the US into a net exporter of fossil fuels. To sum up, I think that we witness a period where environmental themes are low on the national and international agendas. This has transient (e.g. financial crisis and Arab revolts) and structural (new geopolitical configuration) reasons.