Climate Action 2011-2012

The road to rio
© Nepenthes
The road ahead is blocked by a number of issues, including: finance, apportioning responsibility and addressing uncertainties.
Long hard roads to
Durban and Rio
190 climateactionprogramme.org
By Elizabeth Thompson
As I sit to write this article, which I do in my personal
capacity, the lyrics of Jamaican reggae icon Jimmy Cliff’s
‘Hard Road to Travel’ come to mind.
“It’s a hard road to travel and a rough, rough way to go,
But I can’t turn back, my heart is fixed.
My mind is made up. I’ll never stop.
My faith will see me through.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has
identified sustainable development and climate change as
the two top priorities of his second term. On the matter
of attaining inclusive sustainable development, one must
embrace Jimmy Cliff’s sentiments of being firm in mind and
forging ahead without turning back, not out of a sense of
resolute stubbornness but because the planet and its people
need hope and sustained effort in crafting solutions to the
challenges which we are facing. The UN is also uniquely
placed to assist countries with these objectives.
Indeed, the confluence of crises and circumstances which
have given rise to the current global tensions, uncertainty
and upheavals – economic, ecological and social – require
three things of all of us as individuals, but particularly of
governments and the international institutions which connect
them. First, we must accept responsibility that the current
difficulties have been driven by our lifestyles and consumption
patterns and in that regard, we must change. Second, there
must be an acknowledgement that current development
models do not address the existing problem. And third,
governments and businesses must formulate and implement
new approaches which will preserve our natural resources
while allowing investment in human and social capital,
together with business prosperity and economic growth.
The Durban, rio journeys
The original Rio conference was iconic, created global
excitement, popularised Agenda 21 as a definitive statement
on environmental and development issues, promulgated
an integrated approach to development, presented society,
economy and ecology as being equally important threads
in the tapestry of development, and introduced new
language and concepts into the development lexicon. Rio
was also the birth mother of three new conventions, on
Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification. Kyoto was
itself ground-breaking, not only because it placed climate
change on the multilateral agenda, but because, although