Nations finished a draft final declaration for the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development that will be discussed today by heads of state and government.
To decide on the version of the document that would be discussed by leaders, the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) received support from the international community to include the principle of the sovereign right of each country to choose its own model of sustainable development.
This news was announced Wednesday by Venezuelan delegate Claudia Salerno during an interview with Radio Nacional de Venezuela just before a ministerial meeting.
“I can say with pride that the ALBA countries put up a good fight at the United Nations and yesterday when the conference document was approved, we were able to re-appropriate that concept that they tried to impose on us, that of the green economy,” Salerno said.
“The green economy that was approved yesterday is no longer a model, a mask for capitalism, as they wanted, a neocolonial instrument. We were able to include the sovereign right of each country to choose its model of sustainable development, because there are multiple models of development, not just one,” she said.
Salerno added that the negotiating text includes another item proposed by ALBA which states that among all the models and visions that exist with regard to sustainable development, the green economy is a tool that all states can use to address issues such as control of energy consumption and others, but not as a single model designed by industrialized countries.
Salerno noted that Rio+20 is not unfolding in the same way as other recent UN climate change conferences, such as 2010 in Copenhagen, when a small group of countries created a document behind closed doors and then tried to impose it on others.
“Thanks to the government of Brazil and its attempt to give space to everyone in the discussion, they could not create those so-called green rooms in which 20 countries holed up and imposed things,” she said.
“Yesterday the document was finalized and today the presidents will have a debate about how to implement the agreements that were reached, which represents an extraordinary methodological change because it changes the mechanics of the multilateral dynamics of recent years,” she said.
The Rio+20 Conference takes place from Wednesday to Friday of this week (June 20 to 22). The draft document will be discussed at high-level meetings by heads of state and other top government representatives from the 193 UN member countries.
AVN / Press – Venezuelan Embassy to the U.S. / June 20, 2012
