The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) will hold its ‘4th Implmentation Cycle: Policy Session’ this May 2-13 in New York. As noted on a UN website, “The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit” and also referred to as the Rio Summit.
The United Nations has reported that, “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (said) that the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development, set to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 4-6, 2012 – 20 years after the Earth Summit of 1992, could prove to be one of the most transformative moments in international affairs.”
Likely topping the agenda of the CSD session next week and the Rio +20 in June 2012 will be the so-called ‘green economy’. A UN report says, “In February 2011, the UN Enviroment Programme released a report outlining how investing 2 per cent of global gross domestic product in ten sectors (or about $1.3 trillion annually) can catalyze the transition to a green economy.” The ‘green economy’ concept suggests that national and international policies could “grow the global economy at around the same rate if not higher than those forecast under current economic models.” It has also been written by proponents that, “In addition to higher growth, an overall transition to a green economy would realize per capita incomes higher than under current economic models, while reducing the ecological footprint by nearly 50 per cent in 2050, as compared to busines as usual.”
A report from the World Social Forum, that took place this past February in Dakar, Senegal, says Naomi Klein, Pablo Solon and Susan George pointed out that the green economy is “a new financial bubble, substituting carbon credits for money, likely to lead to an economic crash. Meanwhile, it allows corporations to buy pollution permits, under schemes like the European Union Emissions Trading System (ETS), REDD, and Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) – which are based on the ‘conservation’ (in fact, commodification) of Third World lands and forests, and the intensification of exports at the expense of domestic food. Speakers in other World Social Forum workshops called this process the new Enclosures, the taking of the global commons.”
Council of Canadians Blue Planet Project organizer Anil Naidoo will be present at the CSD session in New York. More details on that soon.
And a media release has noted, “The United Nations invited Jessica Ernst to present her story and make recommendations to governments at the 19th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development in New York next week.” Ernst is a southern Alberta landowner who has just launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Encana, the Alberta government and the province’s energy regulator because she claims fracking operations have polluted her well water. She will be in New York from May 1-6.
