Rio, Rhetoric and Rights at Risk

At the time of this writing, UN Member States are moving from the informal discussions of the past week to more-formal negotiations and amendments to the zero-draft outcome document that is to reflect the consensus at the Rio+20 “Peoples Summit,” At Rio de Janeiro, 20–22 June 2012.

The Major Groups representing civil society are presently excluded from making statements or inputs at this crucial stage, despite those stakeholders’ participation on the floor of the Preparatory Committee meetings and intersessional meetings. Civil society organizations likely will not be allowed to make submissions or participate fully in the working negotiation group meetings that are to follow. Although UN DESA compiled a version of the draft showing all the revisions suggested by Major Groups, those inputs so far have not been included in the official negotiating text.

The whole human rights framework is under direct attack through this process, with certain States calling for deletion or “bracketing” of all safeguards and protections within the draft document. Prominent instead is a persistently neoliberal framework dubbed the “Green Economy,” which promises to have profound consequences by further commodifying nature for the future.

 In the face of this process, several concerned civil society organizations, including HIC, have issued a joint letter to the United Nations Secretary General calling for restoration of human rights and environmental safeguards. (View the petition here.) The civic initiative seeks an outcome document that lives up to its proposed title: “The Future We Want.”

 The nongovernmental bloc seeks to include States’ recognition and reaffirmed commitment to the human rights to food, safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, the right to development and others. The right to a clean and healthy environment, essential to the realization of human needs and, perforce, rights, remains weak in the governments’ draft.  Even principles previously agreed upon at Rio in 1992—namely, the polluter pays principle, precautionary principle and common-but-differentiated responsibility (CBDR)—are being bracketed.

The State delegations that have advanced proposals on pricing and full cost recovery include the EU, Turkey, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Canada’s delegation has succeeded to weaken the forum’s ministerial document on the human right to water. That effort has created an opportunity for multinational water corporations to consolidate plans further to privatize nature at Rio+20, while the banking industry coincides with its own plans to integrate water trading into futures markets and create derivative water-based financial instruments. The consequent privatization of water has accelerated dramatically, signaling a setback for the human right to water as already resolved by the UN in July 2010[i] and provided for in human rights law.[ii]

[i]  General Assembly, “The human right to water and sanitation,” A/64/L.63/Rev.1.

[ii]  Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, articles 11 and 12, with corresponding General Comment No. 15.