A louder voice for civil society at Rio+20?

This article was also published at Riomatters.org, a UN sponsored blog discussing the upcoming Rio+20 summit.

Since the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in 1992, nine major groups of civil society have been given important roles to play as partners in sustainable development. I got to speak with Kiara Worth, the Organizing Partner for the UN Commission for Sustainable Development Major Group for Children and Youth, ahead of the Rio+20 summit to discuss her thoughts on the main goals for Rio+20, participation from youth on key issues and a greater role for civil society through the arts.

RD: What do you see as the main goals for Rio+20?
KW: To advance participation of young people at local, national and global levels to influence sustainable development according to a youth specific policy; and to inspire local action for the implementation of sustainable development.
Rio+20 is an opportunity for youth around the world to be involved in ways they haven’t been before. We can create a world in which human potential is explored, and celebrate our differences via performance arts – bigger notions of sustainable development.
In fact, Rio+20 is the most important conference because it lays the framework for everything else – so not as ‘sexy’ as climate change or other self-contained issues, which reflects the broader challenge of sustainable development as a whole: a massive integrated array of things that is harder to manage. It is difficult to support, there will be lots of challenges, because it requires people to change the way things work. There are a lot of governments that are quite comfortable with their economic and social positioning at the moment, why would they change things?
Ultimately it’s about building that energy, its about giving people the idea that things can be different, its just about how you can make it different. And that’s social transformation, that’s whats so exciting that can come about from these conferences hosted by the UN that are independent of the policy outcomes.

RD: What kind of tangible outcomes do you see emerging from Rio+20?
KW: In terms of concrete outcomes, we are aiming for a stronger policy document that will hold governments accountable. We want to focus on a new concept of sustainable development, to redesign the way the world works – focusing on equity, justice, youth. The outcome document should also include a continued focus on human rights – there needs to be a discussion on how governments are weakening references to human rights obligations from the outcome document.
Additionally, we hope to inspire a youth movement: There have been discussions around whether the negotiations are going to be successful, and whether there is going to be a legally binding document. Will people come to action? Largely the expectation is no, but there is still an opportunity to empower young people across the world to engage in policy negotiations at the local level.
Rio+20 is about building the process of how people engage in the process, rather than just about the outcome document. We have had a focus on policy through our contributions to the Zero draft. Along with formal negotiations, networks have been set up with thousands of youth around the world contributing to policy. Various task forces have aligned to different topics that have contributed to drafting the texts.

RD: How are you planning to get participation from a variety of youth at and beyond Rio+20?

KW: At Rio+20, we have targeted a Youth Blast – a conference of the youth, and the official young people side event at Rio+20. Beyond the Rio+20 summit, we have an e-participation plan. It’s not just about attending Rio+20, its about the youth involving themselves in the process and implementing at the local level.
Youth Blast: About 3000 people registered to attend, and it was divided into 2 segments from 7-12th June.
Objectives of Youth Blast:
a) build capacity: provide young people with the tools to effectively engage in the process at Rio+20
b) strategize for Major Group’s participation at Rio+20
c) develop a post rio+20 agenda that incorporates the outcomes at Rio
7-8 June: Brazilian days – To support the local movement, these sessions were oriented for Brazilian youth in Rio
10-12: International days – The Brazilian youth movement was introduced to the international youth movement in preparation for the main Rio+20 summit.
How: Plenary sessions in the mornings were followed by 2 ‘streams of engagement’ breakout sessions: The first was a policy overview, while the second was an elective stream, consisting of over workshops organized by youth around the world running 45-90 min sessions – over 300 applications to host workshops were received, including youth activism, stories, art workshops, policy workshops.
While only 500 people turned up, likely due to the high cost of international travel and accommodation costs in Rio, that too over a week before the final Rio+20 negotiations, those who had a chance to attend had diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Youth Blast participants at work. Photo courtesy of Sébastian Duyck

Sébastien Duyck, from the Adopt a Negotiator Project, for instance, provided his thoughts: “Walking around the Youth Blast is indeed a unique experience, inspired youth painting banners, while high-level UN officials share their expectations and accept to be challenged by uncompromising activists in relation to the activities of the bodies under their supervision… While discussions on banning (fossil fuel subsidies) were in full swing, another group engaged in discussions with Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director.”

E-participation plan: We will have thousands of people updating social media, not just on Facebook but also through livestreaming, and tweeting, to build the youth movement across the globe. We’ve hosted several #mycity+20 conferences (like #NY+20, in partnership with the Ford Foundation and others) which has got the youth excited about contributing to Rio+20. Our twitter account, @MGCY_UNCSD continues to post live from Rio, and we encourage people to use the hashtag #beyondrio to input ideas on how young people can build a movement after Rio+20.

RD: Can you elaborate on how you foresee a greater role for civil society through the arts?
KW: The arts can help revive the spirit of Rio: both by instilling greater participation of civil society, and by helping people shift paradigms through motivation and inspiration. Ultimately, the only way we can rethink our perception of wealth is by changing behaviors.
The arts are a mechanism to build relationships, find points of interest and
commonality. The role of art in sustainable development is huge: we can ‘Inspire the future’, reviving the spirit of Rio from ‘92 – Through the arts, video, and social media, we can mobilize a space where people can share ideas, stories, and have a platform to engage with each other.
We’ve had various people around the world have competitions, drawing symbols for Rio+20. At the Youth Blast, there were creative workshops, creative spaces for banners, paint, story cabinets and an exchange of cultures. Our website is and will continue to be a platform where people can engage, network and sustain contact post Rio+20.

NGOs lobbying International Organizations: How to set agendas effectively

This article was first posted on 13 November 2011 at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (at Harvard University) blog

The reason there are 9 “Major Groups” of stakeholders as part of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is because these groups are the ones who are pushy and vocal.
Felix Dodds (Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum), shared his tips during a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School on November 10 2011: “By getting involved early, you can have a huge impact on influencing the policy agenda”.

Even when governments are not ready to engage and we want to keep up momentum, there are lots of ways conversations can be kept moving – from coffee chats in capital corridors to more formal discussion with officials on their priorities, constant engagement leads to a strong trust-based bond.
Naturally, the desire to get involved early must be complemented with enough substance in order to get the attention of international organizations. Some ways to do that include a) writing background papers – promoting ideas, workshops, information leading up to a major event b) providing policy recommendations for instance on how to reshape financial markets (indices, governance, incentives, state owned investment vehicles) c) building alliances with key players in industry, for instance on the issue of corporate accountability for sustainability.

While this makes sense as a broad strategy, an audience member raised a question that is likely to be an obstacle to actionable progress: How do we make sure governments collaborate, agree, and execute?

Dodds suggested that the main way had to be by instituting review mechanisms that reward delivery. “NGOs play a role in holding accountability: we have done that very badly over the years – one of the missing links is parliaments. Parliaments could be part of as an annual review mechanism. There is no reason why parliaments can’t hold the executive branch of the government accountable.”
Another useful question was understanding whether this process is replicable outside the sustainable development arena (e.g. health, human rights, etc). Dodds was unambiguous in his response – Yes. In the fields of HIV/Aids and human rights, NGOs had demonstrated that they could set the agenda.
One of the things that Dodds wants to see is more UN summits taking place away from New York. It would be particularly important to have the 2015 MDG Summit hosted by a developing country. “Once we have a pooled expertise, then we get to have a more coherent input to the process”. This winds back to his earlier point – the beginning is the most important bit – if you get things right in agenda setting, governments trust you since you’ve been working with them over a period of time, so they take your ideas.

In my own experience setting up the Office of Climate Change and Development for the Government of Papua New Guinea, I found a lot of these principles to be valid. We appreciated the expertise of NGOs understanding how to get things done on the ground, and by engaging them early, developed a comprehensive, prioritized set of stakeholder interactions in different formats for various provinces. Furthermore, the indigenous people we spoke to felt much more comfortable pursuing ambitious initiatives knowing that NGOs, international organizations and the government together agreed that it was the best course of action.

Rahul Daswani is a pursuing a Masters in Public Policy Degree at the Harvard Kennedy School.