We can forget about fixing the planet鈥檚 ecosystems and climate until we have fixed government systems, a panel of leading international environmental scientists declared in London on Friday. The solution, they said, may not lie with governments at all.
鈥淲e are disillusioned. The current political system is broken,鈥� said , the UK government鈥檚 chief environmental science advisor, who chaired the meeting.
The panel, all winners of the prestigious , often seen as the Nobel prize for environmental science, were meeting to prepare a statement for the Earth Summit 2012, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June 鈥� 20 years after the original Earth Summit in that city.
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The world has wasted the intervening years, the group said. Ecosystems are disappearing ever faster, the world is still warming, and two 1992 treaties, on climate change and species loss, have failed to achieve their aims. Governments, the group said, were largely to blame.
鈥淟ast time in Rio we had an unreasonable faith in governments. Since then we鈥檝e lost our innocence in believing government was wise and benevolent and far-sighted. That鈥檚 been blown completely out of the water,鈥� said Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, a non-profit organisation based in London.
Not remotely sustainable
鈥淓ssentially nothing has changed in 20 years. We are not remotely on a course to be sustainable,鈥� Watson said.
鈥淲hat鈥檚 most discouraging is a loss of feeling that government would help us,鈥� said Harold Mooney, a veteran biologist from Stanford University.
No one held out much hope that the forthcoming summit would usher in a new era. Politicians do not seem interested. The 1992 summit lasted two weeks, attracted most of the world鈥檚 leaders and garnered huge headlines. But this year鈥檚 event will last just three days, and so far China鈥檚 president Hu Jintao is the only head of state scheduled to attend.
鈥淭he UN text [for the summit declaration] is weak,鈥� said energy researcher Jos茅 Goldemberg, who was Brazil鈥檚 environment secretary at the time of the first summit.
Key priorities
The top priorities, according to Watson, are ending the fossil-fuel era to curb climate change, and investing in limiting population by making contraception available to all.
But neither were likely to happen because, said Syukuro Manabe, a climate modeller at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 鈥�the political system is not motivated to worry about the future鈥�.
The laureates said leadership was most likely to come from local government, NGOs and corporations, rather than national leaders or the UN. 鈥淒ecision-makers should learn from and scale up grass-roots action and knowledge in areas like energy, food, water and natural resources,鈥� the panel declared.
鈥淲e do believe that the political system can be reformed, and that there will be technical solutions. But time is not on our side,鈥� Watson said.
