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36 GREEN ECONOMY Challenges and opportunities Green economy and/or sustainable development? Donald Sawyer 1 Green Economy, in addition to international governance and poverty eradication, will be a central theme of the <strong>Rio+20</strong> conference in 2012 (UN, 2011). This term, which first emerged in the context of the Earth Summit in 1992 (Adams, 1997), was recently elaborated upon in a United Nations Environment Programme report published in six languages (UNEP, 2011). In short order, an apparent global consensus was reached (Belinky, 2011). Green Economy seems to be an alternative to Sustainable Development, which had been acclaimed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Green Economy is directly related to climate change: low carbon, energy efficiency, renewable energy etc. (Gouvello, 2010; ESMAP, 2010). In order to compensate for the strong emphasis on climate since 2007, biodiversity and ecosystems were reincorporated in the international discourse through an initiative called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), organized by UNEP and funded by the European Commission and European governments 2 (Sukhdev, 2010, 2011). However, the environmental impacts of industrial pollution and urban waste (the “brown agenda”) as well as oceans, surface and ground water (the “blue agenda”) are not receiving the attention they deserve. Flows of atmospheric water (“aerial rivers”), which could be the focus of a “white agenda”, remain invisible in the policy arena (Salati, 2009; Arraut et al., 2011). The treatment given to Green Economy will make big differences for public policies, the role of the State (the governance that we have now) and production and consumption patterns. It will generate a wide variety of repercussions throughout Brazil and the world. The expected positive effects may not materialize and various unexpected negative effects could lead to unpleasant surprises if there is not adequate analysis of all the relevant factors at play. Nº 8 • June 2011 1. Professor at the Center for Sustainable Development of the University of Brasília (CDS/ UnB) and Associate Researcher at the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN). The research was carried out with support from the European Union, through the projects on “Eco-social Links among Brazilian Forests: Sustainable Livelihoods in Productive Landscapes” (FLORELOS) and “Environmental Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean” (ENGOV), among other sources, but does not necessarily represent the viewpoints of these institutions or sources, being the exclusive responsibility of the author. 2. Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
37 GREEN ECONOMY Challenges and opportunities Green economy and/or sustainable development? Donald Sawyer Caution is required in use of the term Green Economy, apparently instead of Sustainable Development, a term sometimes considered worn out and misused (FASE, 2011). Great care must be taken to avoid outcomes that are insignificant or even perverse, especially by diverting attention to issues and territories that are of secondary importance, without maintaining diverse ecosystems functions or attending to present and future human needs. Despite the similarities, Green Economy runs great risks of being transformed into something very different from Sustainable Development. Although it is vague, the term Sustainable Development (Brundtland, 1987) and its explicit meaning (meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs) were approved by all the countries in the world in 1992. It must be remembered that any consensual diplomatic language, especially as a result of global agreements, is necessarily vague. Green Economy, in addition to lacking strong political support, may be worse than Sustainable Development in terms of its implicit meaning and its possible uses and abuses. Since it requires meeting the needs of present and future generations, i.e establishing both intra- and intergenerational equity, Sustainable Development is necessarily systemic in space and time and among sectors. Green Economy, on the other hand, may not go beyond superficial inclusion of a few new sectors or additional layers. Green activities or projects currently in fashion might not go far beyond photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, remote national parks, recycling schemes, organic farms and jungle lodges, without changing what really counts: unsustainable production and consumption patterns. Green Economy can easily be turned into cosmetic greenwashing, not to mention doing little or nothing to reduce poverty. Green Economy, based on monetary valuation and economic instruments, tends to reduce everything to monetary values, foreseeing payments made by polluters and received by environmental service providers (World Bank, 2010). This does not necessarily imply “market environmentalism” (FASE, 2011), but it is not true that everything in life is or should be commodities. We cannot avoid cost-benefit calculations and the reality of the financial world, but not everything in society, the population and nature can be reduced to goods or services. There are no markets for human beings, cultures, rights, health, flora, fauna or ecological functions. Nº 8 • June 2011 Worse yet is the probability that there will never be enough money in Brazil or the world to pay for all the existing environmental services. For example, if the Legal Reserves and Permanent Preservation Areas defined in the Brazilian Forest Code have a total area of 100 million hectares and the owners receive only $200 per hectare per year to not deforest these areas, a conservative estimate, the annual total cost would be $20 billion. The Brazilian Family Grant
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