'Seize moment' call at Rio summit

18 June 2012 Last updated at 18:14 GMT By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News, Rio de Janeiro

Governments must seize the "historic opportunity" of the Rio+20 summit to put the world on a new sustainable course, says a panel of Nobel laureates, ministers and scientists.

The evidence that society is "on the edge of a threshhold of a future with unprecedented environmental risks" is unequivocal, they conclude.

Their declaration will be presented to government delegations here.

In the main negotiations, nations are reportedly closing in on an agreement.

The Brazilian government, which is now chairing the talks, wants negotiators to finish work on the draft text by the end of Monday.

Heads of government from about 130 countries, and ministers from others, will begin their session on Wednesday and would sign off the text by the end of the week.

While the majority of people here expect a deal to be done, there are warnings from various organisations that it will not go nearly far enough towards sorting out the environment and development issues facing humanity.

Without explicitly criticising the draft agreement, the panel's declaration makes it clear that they agree.

"The combined effects of climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience at a time of increased demand, poses a real threat to humanity's welfare," they write.

"There is an unacceptable risk that human pressures on the planet, should they continue on a business as usual trajectory, will trigger abrupt and irreversible changes with catastrophic outcomes for human societies and life as we know it."

Continue reading the main story

Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS)

Granting countries the right to gain financially from the exploitation of biological resources discovered on their territory. Aims to prevent biopiracy. Agreement made at the UN CBC meeting in Nagoya, Japan in 2010. Rio+20 will see further discussion particularly of resources from international waters.

The group of more than 30 signatories includes Nobel laureates such as Carlo Rubbia, Walter Kohn, Douglas Osheroff and Lee Tseh Lee, as well as politicians including Brazil's Environment minister Izabella Teixiera and Finland's recently ex-President Tarja Halonen.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister and World Health Organization chief who led the Brundtland Commission on sustainable development in 1987, was also on the panel.

Prof Will Steffen from the Australian National University, one of the leading scientists in the group, said he hoped the declaration would make the implications of ministers' choices clear to them.

"There are intrinisic limits to the planet's capacity, and we must recognise that we're transgressing them - in fact, have transgressed some of them," he told BBC News.

"Business as usual is not an option."

Continue reading the main story

• How able is the planet to meet increasing demand?
• In 1960, a little over half the planet's land, forests and
  fisheries were needed to meet human consumption.
• By the late 1970s, consumption was equal to one planet.
• By the first years of this century, one-and-a-half planets
  were needed to meet consumption.

  This deficit can only be met by the depletion of renewable
  resources and increased pollution.

However, after delegates had had a few days to discuss the Brazilian government's draft text that it issued on Friday evening, many concluded that on many points, a continuation of business as usual is exactly what it promises.

"There's little in this document that changes what happens next week when governments go home," said Jim Leape, director of WWF International.

"This was never going to be a conference that solved everything; but it still can be a conference that puts the world on a different path."

European governments among others are understood to be seeking to strengthen the document.

However, tales from the talks - in which journalists are not permitted - suggest the Brazilians are taking a hardline approach to changes.

One delegate described their approach as "you've had two years to sort it out - there's no more time, so here it is".

Direct endorsement

It is believed that Brazilian President Dilma Roussef wants to present a completed document to G20 leaders meeting in Mexico on Monday and Tuesday.

This would allow leaders of G20 nations who are not coming to Rio, such as US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, to give the document a degree of direct endorsement.

Among areas of disagreement on the current text, the US wants to avoid putting talks on protecting oceans under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the EU wants progress on sustainable development goals (SDGs) that go beyond merely agreeing the principle of having them, and African nations are looking for a speicifc pledge of finance to help them "green" their economies.

But it is unclear whether any of these blocs will object strongly enough to challenge the draft agreement once prime ministers and presidents are here.

Tarja Halonen, who co-chaired UN chief Ban Ki-moon's Global Sustainability Panel, said the Nobel laureates' declaration could and should encourage leaders to raise their ambitions.

"What this says to negotiators is they need to push harder, they must be encouraged to do more," she told BBC News.

"The most important thing we are telling them is the urgency."

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