Collateral benefits of Rio+20

Summits are like long marriages. At the end, ‘If everyone is equally unhappy, it means that everyone is equally happy,’ as UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs Sha Zukang, who was the secretary-general of Rio+20, so memorably put it.

Whether the recent summit on ‘sustainable development’ in the beautiful Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro achieved ‘a substantive path-breaking outcome’ or if it was ‘a missed historical opportunity,’ as most commentators said, is one of those issues we can debate till the cows come home. I suspect the exercise would be as useful as trying to figure out who the erring partner is in a marital feud. A more interesting issue, at this point, is the conference’s collateral benefits.

Two outcomes immediately come to mind. First, whatever one may think of Rio+ 20, everyone agrees that it has done wonders for Brand Brazil. Second, behind-the-scenes negotiations before prime ministers and presidents arrived en masse demonstrated yet again that emerging economies — notably Brazil, China, India, and to some extent South Africa — can effectively strategise on key issues for their common good, despite their much-talked about differences.

This was particularly evident during the tortuous negotiations on technology transfer and intellectual property rights.
The obvious beneficiary of Rio+20 is host country Brazil. The largest country in South America, an emerging economic power, and member of several influential geopolitical groupings, including BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Brazil is now successfully branding itself as a sustainability messiah. A country of 200 million people (roughly the population of Uttar Pradesh) it has not been unscathed by the global financial crisis. Its GDP growth fell from 7.5% in 2010 to 3.5% last year. Despite this, it officially overtook Britain as the world’s sixth largest economy this March.

Now, Brazil is positioning itself as a nation at the cutting edge of clean and renewable energies and also inclusive economic growth policies. In the last decade, extreme poverty in the Brazilian population came down by 70%. In the same period, deforestation rate decreased by 75%. On the sidelines of Rio+20, Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega listed his government’s initiatives to shore up Brazil’s sustainability credentials. Some examples: Brazil has invested in ethanol, in hydroelectricity and other initiatives that are compatible with its geography; 95% of new cars in the country are flexfuel, (they can switch between ethanol and petrol); 87% of electricity comes from renewable sources, while in OECD countries this is only 13%. Since 2002, the production of grains has increased by 60% with only a 20% rise in cultivated area.

“Of course, we have many challenges ahead, but we are proud of what we have achieved so far,” said Mantega. Indeed, Brazil faces the classic problems of all emerging economies. You still see people sleeping on pavements and rummaging through trash cans for food in parts of Rio though the standard of living has improved vastly for most people in recent years. The Brazilian government has also come under fire in recent times for its failure to respect indigenous rights and continuing with the construction of the Belo Monte Dam in the Amazon.

The second spin-off of Rio+20 is the strengthening of coordination between major emerging economies on thorny issues. Brazil, India, China and South Africa played a pivotal role during negotiations between developed and developing countries on transfer of green technology and intellectual property rights. Major industrial countries, home to most ‘green technologies’, do not see eye to eye with developing countries (represented by the Group of 77+China) on how such technologies should be transferred to the developing world so that the latter can transition to greater sustainability.

Developing countries argue that if they are to go down the green economy path, they must be assisted and not just lectured. They want green technologies on favourable terms and point to mechanisms within the existing intellectual property regime that can help that. Predictably, this is not sweet music to industrialised countries who steadfastly oppose use of such mechanisms, termed flexibilities, calling it an attempt to weaken the framework of intellectual property rights which they say is central to innovation.

At Rio, neither side got its way fully, but coordinated behind-the-scenes work by Brazil, India, China and to some extent South Africa ensured that in the final outcome document, references to IPR had not been completely taken off the table, as some rich countries reportedly wanted.

For India, both these outcomes are useful markers on the road ahead.

The author is a Delhi-based writer.

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