A Survey of Rio+20

The Rio+20 Conference ended over the last weekend and many reports suggest that this meeting achieved nothing partly because the expectations were too high, views so far apart and the real expectations not clearly spelt out. In this piece, Jagdish Bhagwati states that he is unsurprised because of many reasons starting with the emptiness of the phrase "sustainable development". Not only has this term of reference become cliche' but it also illustrates why those who insist on it as a precondition for development are oblivious of the real tradeoffs that poor people need. In the short essay, he also states how matters unconnected to the environment are allowed onto the agenda and become part of the declarations in a way that shows the inability to focus on small and smart solutions.

Unlike Jagdish, I have no problem with any self-appointed group of activists trying to hoist their pet policy solutions on the rest of us. I would rather that they understood much better that multilateral institutions that take on every agenda are the best candidates for failure on all of them. And as a person who attends smaller conferences on select trade and regulatory matters, I think that a conference dedicated to global growth would be far more useful than Rio+40. The environment is certainly important but all who come for the conference must recall that this was about the environment and that the train can only pull in so much. The framing of global problems is one of the skills that today's society lacks.