The Future We Want

TWENTY years , there was the Earth Summit. Gathering in Rio de Janiero, world leaders agreed an ambitious blueprint for a secure future. They sought to balance the imperatives robust economic growth and the needs of a growing population the ecological necessity to conserve our planet’s precious resources — land, air and water. And they agreed that the way to do this was to break the old economic model and invent a new . They called it sustainable development.

Two decades later, we are to the future. The challenges facing humanity today are the same as , only larger. Slowly, we have to realize that we have entered a new era. Some even call it a new geological epoch, human activity is fundamentally altering Earth’s dynamics.

Global economic growth capita has combined a world population (passing 7 billion last year) to put unprecedented stress fragile ecosystems. We recognize that we can not continue burn and consume our way to prosperity. Yet we have embraced the obvious solution — the only possible solution, now as it 20 years ago: sustainable development.

Fortunately, we have a chance to act. In less a month, world leaders will gather in Rio — this time for the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20. And once again, Rio offers a generational opportunity to hit the reset button: to a new course a future that balances the economic, social and environmental dimensions of prosperity and human well-being.

More 130 heads of state and government will be there, joined by estimated 50,000 business leaders, mayors, activists and investors — a global coalition change. But success is guaranteed. To secure our world for future generations — and these are indeed the stakes — we need the partnership and full engagement of global leaders, rich nations and poor, small countries and large. Their overarching challenge: to galvanize global support a transformative agenda for change — to set motion a conceptual revolution in how we think about creating dynamic sustainable growth for the 21st century beyond.

This agenda is for national leaders decide, in line the aspirations of their people. If I to offer advice as U.N. secretary general, it would be to focus three “clusters” of outcomes that will mark Rio+20 as the watershed that it should be.

First, Rio+20 should inspire new thinking — and action. Clearly, the old economic model is breaking . In too many places, growth stalled. Jobs are lagging. Gaps are growing rich and poor, and we see alarming scarcities of food, fuel and the natural resources which civilization depends.

At Rio, negotiators will seek to build the success of the Millennium Development Goals, have helped lift millions out of poverty. A new emphasis sustainability can offer economists call a “triple bottom line” — job-rich economic growth coupled with environmental protection and social inclusion.

Second, Rio+20 should be about people — a people’s summit that offers concrete hope real improvements in daily lives. Options before the negotiators declaring a “zero hunger” future — zero stunting of children lack of adequate nutrition, zero waste of food and agricultural inputs in societies people do not get enough to eat.

Rio+20 should also give voice those we hear from often: women and young people. Women hold up half the sky; they deserve equal standing society. We should empower , as engines of economic dynamism and social development. And young people — the very face of future: are we creating opportunities for them, nearly 80 million of will be entering the workforce every year?

Third, Rio+20 should issue a clarion call action: waste not. Mother Earth has been kind to us. Let humanity reciprocate respecting her natural boundaries. At Rio, governments should call smarter use of resources. Our oceans must be protected. must our water, air and forests. Our cities must be made liveable — places we inhabit in greater harmony with nature.

At Rio+20, I will call on governments, business and other coalitions to advance my own Sustainable Energy for All initiative. The goal: universal access to sustainable energy, a doubling of energy efficiency and a doubling of the use renewable sources of energy by 2030.

Because so many of today’s challenges are global, they demand a global response — collective power exercised in powerful partnership. Now is the moment for narrow squabbling. This is a moment world leaders and their people to unite in common purpose around a shared vision of our common future — the future we want.


Adapted from: The Slovak Spectator, June 11, 2012.