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Issue 4

EYCE Campaign To Promote Ecological Justice 2011-2013

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Editorial ContentsDear reader,

Economic growth without care for the environment and sustainability is without doubt a wrong perspective. Green economy without rebalancing both, the use of resources, and the differences between the rich and the poor, is unattainable. Searching for change without citizens’ support, efforts, and planning is a dream. The 2012 RIO+20 meeting has been a hard experience for the civil society. The conference showed us that in an environment where people do not understand the numbers and consequences of their lifestyle choices, or the importance of caring, healthy change is not possible. Globalization implies the idea of managing change in a dynamic atmosphere in which the various demands of actors - politicians, representatives or lobbyists - and their needs may vary from one place to another. Nevertheless those differences bring on one core idea: The 21st century is in need of a more equitable pattern of consumption, a vision that will link economies, policies, and societies’ needs in an harmonic way – and, why not, individuals. This fourth issue of the Leaf tries to underline the connection between economy, ecology, politics and international relations. Christopher Ejugbo’s article is exploring the connectivity relationship between ecology and economy. Selene Bianco’s text is proposing a collection of solutions with impact on individual resource-consumption reduction; Pawel Pustelnik in his contribution shares the experience gained during the last EYCE campaign event, which took place in Minsk, as well as some tips that will encourage your active participation in ‘eco’ linked activities. Maike Gorsboth offers us a remarkable parallel between ‘A Jordan River Perspective’ story and nowadays situation. Last but not least we present you with a double interview with two of our collaborators regarding the civil society’s participation in the RIO+20 preparation and negotiations. We would like to warmly thank Erdem Colak for accepting to share his cartoons within the Leaf’s pages, and Tina Barnett, who patiently helped with the “fine tuning” of the texts. Finally, yet importantly, we hope you will enjoy the following pages!

Alina Marinescu and Alicia Hamet - editors of the fourth issue of the Leaf.

Editorial 1

EYCE’s Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice 2

To grow or not to grow? 3

Links, more links! 4

Man and his environment 7

A River Jordan motif 9

The political ecology of water: towards actualising Right to Water for urban poor in Nigeria 12

Insights from Rio+20 14

Is there a hope after Rio+20? 20 MEMS 22 Green Politics Events 23 EYCE Upcoming Events 23

Alina Marinescu is a member of the campaign coordination team for EYCE's Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice. She currently studies Intercultural Management at the UNESCO department University of Bucharest.

Alicia Hamet (right) is a member of the campaing coordination team as well as EYCE office volunteer. She has a master degree of Manage-ment of Cultural Institutions from the Institute of Political Studies of Lille.

by Selene Bianco

by Pawel Pustelnik

by Christopher Ejugbo

by Maike Gorsboth

by EYCE Campaign Coordination Team (CCT)

by Njideka Onwunyi

by Felix Beck and Mairon Lima

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EYCE’s Campaign to Promote Ecological Justiceby EYCE’ Campaign Coordination Team (CCT)

backgroundThe environment is one of the most, if not THE most, chal-lenging concern for contemporary society. It includes not only the obvious “green thinking”, but also issues concern-ing land use, water, food, pollution and waste, migration and a lot more. Very few young people are aware of the links between environment and issues like social justice, lack of education, poverty and armed conflicts.

Therefore, the Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice is based on a broad approach and seeks to explore those links. During the three years, the campaign will focus on the different political and theological perspectives, the promotion of an ecologically responsible way of thinking and living, the links between ecological justice and wealth and poverty, as well as the question of how the lack of nat-ural resources trigger armed conflicts and violence.

focusEYCE Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice was launched in March 2011 and aims at raising awareness on ecological issues from global and diverse perspectives among young Europeans, as well as at implementing practical changes and ecologically responsible solutions within the work of youth organisations and lives of young people. With the outcomes of the campaign we plan to contribute to the work of other actors in Europe and beyond, who work in the field of ecological justice.

In order to achieve the aim, the following objectives have been identified:

1. to raise awareness of ecological issues in Europe and beyond;

2. to study and analyse the developments from the con-ferences in Kyoto and Copenhagen;

3. to explore the relation between ecology, economy and politics, including reviewing ecology issues as basis for numerous conflicts;

4. to empower the organisations and/or individuals to tackle issues connected to ecological justice;

5. to enable the organisations and individuals to lobby for a greener Europe;

6. to provide practical advice and tips for ecologically re-sponsible lifestyles;

7. to develop a policy paper on ecological justice to be presented at EYCE’s General Meeting in 2013, which would entail implementing results of the Campaign as an integral part of the running of the Council.

Throughout the three years of the campaign it is planned to focus on three different aspects linked to ecological justice:

Ï 2011: approaching the issue from theological and po-litical perspectives;

Ï 2012: tackling the theme of ecology and justice and exploring the relation between ecology, economy and politics;

Ï 2013: sustainable paths forward;

elementsThe Campaign Coordination Team – a group of young vol-unteers coming from different social, cultural, denomina-tional and geographical backgrounds – are responsible for planning and implementing the activities of the campaign. The team is supported by a full time volunteer based in EYCE’s office in Brussels and two members of EYCE’s Execu-tive Committee. In order to provide a variety of thematic input and human resources, a Pool of Interested People has been created for the campaign, where people from EYCE’s network, its member and partner organisations belong to. You want to join that Pool? Write us an e-mail at cam-paign@eyce.org!

During the three years of the campaign, an on-line mag-azine on ecological justice, information leaflets, EYCE’s homepage and the Campaign’s Facebook page will provide both basic, as well as specific information on the themes addressed.

Are you interested in the campaign? See EYCE’s homep-age: www.eyce.org or visit and like us on Facebook: EYCE’s Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice.

You’re interested in joining the Pool of Interested People? You would liketo write articles for the magazine? You have any other idea or project you think we should know about? Or you simply have a question? Write to campaign@eyce.org or general.secretary@eyce.org.

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To grow or not to grow? by Selene Bianco

EYCE’s Campaign to Promote Ecological Justiceby EYCE’ Campaign Coordination Team (CCT)

Nowadays, we live with a deep feeling of crisis, both from an economic and an ethical point of view. Newspapers and television tell us that our economy needs to grow, in order to achieve recession. These reports suggest that without the increase of good production, our economic system and society would collapse and we will be poor and suffering. Thus, it looks like we need to sell and consume more, in order to increase our gross domestic product (GDP). Is it really the only solution?

During the 1970s, the economic theory of degrowth started to be developed. Later, one of its biggest promoters is a French Professor in Economics, Serge Latouche.One of the key concepts is to reduce the consumption of resources that are not goods, like packaging or fuel emitted when stuck in the traffic, which only produces trash or pollution. Let me give you an example.

Many people drink water from plastic bottles. Markets make us think that it is better than tap water. In fact, buying bottled water means also extracting oil from the ground, refining it and shaping it to bottles. Then, water

needs to be carried from the source to an industry, where bottles are filled up. At the end, this product is transported to a shop where we go and buy it, probably using a car, to carry the bottles, as few liters of water are heavy. This means we pay not only for the water itself, but also for the oil used to build bottles and to carry the goods from the source to the industry, then to shops and houses. Moreover, all this oil consumption increases environment pollution and energy consumption. Thus, why many people prefer it rather than tap water? Is it maybe better from a chemical or bacteriological point of view? Surely not, because we have drinkable water at home. Sometimes tap water contains too much clorine, but if we let it in a jug for some time, most of it will evaporate. If this is not enough, we can buy filters to purify it. So, why do we choose bottled water?It has been estimated that for a family of four people, the cost of of buying bottled water amounts between 320 and 720 euros per year, with a consumption of at least 32 liters of oil1.If we buy bottled water, we make our GDP increase, but does it make our life better? We can spend less in terms of money, pollution and time by drinking tap water. That would be a reduction of the consumption of resources which are not goods and is an example of degrowth behaviour.

In general, we can reduce the amount of packaging and transport expenses by choosing 0-miles food or by self-production of goods, for example growing our own vegetables or hand-making bread, yoghurt and so on. In Italy the GAS phenomenon (“Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale” or “Ethical Purchasing Groups”) is succesfully taking place. It consists in a group of consumers which cooperates in order to buy food and other goods directly from local producers at a fair price. 1. We can also consume less by creating alternative money systems, i.e. by cooperatively exchanging for free services that usually are erogated with fee. For example, in our present

photo by Selene Bianco

photo by Selene Bianco

Selene Bianco works in the field of Public Health. She is a member of FGEI, the Italian Youth Evangelical Federation.

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society we often treat elderly people like a burden and prefer to leave them in a retirement house instead of taking care of them. In the past, people dedicated more time to elderly people within the family, which keeps alive our historical memory and knowledge got by experience and can help us in taking care of our children. Currently, are we able to recover the habits of self-production, of non mercantile exchange and to dedicate more time to old members of our family?

Other possible ecological “degrowth behaviours” are the purchase of fair trade products, the reduction of energy waste, the exploitation of green technologies, the repair-reuse-recycle system. This kind of consumption would reduce the use of fuels and the production of goods that we can replace by repairing old ones or by self-production. Thus, it would make our country’s Gross Domestic Product decreases, in contrast with what our economy and our governments are asking us.

If we save money through self-production instead of buying an equivalent good, we can use it in several different ways. If we use it to buy another good that we are not able to produce, our impact on GDP is null. If we keep that money at home, we make GDP decrease, whereas if we put it into a bank that would invest it, it would increase. My favourite option is the following one. If we need less money, we can work less and dedicate our free time to human relations, to our family, to our spiritual needs or hobbies, or simply to increase our self-production.

If we need to produce and consume more, we also need to dedicate more time in working rather than spending it with our family and friends. In present society, people often choose to work more to be able to buy and then consume more. Often parents choose that option and, instead of dedicating more time to their children, express their love to their children using the

money they earn to buy them gifts. Is that the kind of wellbeing that we want in our lives?

Moreover, we know that our Earth has a limited amount of resources and we can not consume more than what can be produced.Nowadays, about one fifth of the world experience water scarcity, the soil is degrading and we are producing more than five times the amount of CO2 emissions to which we need to reduce by 2050 in order to avoid climate chaos2. The current model of consumer society is destroying ecosystems and pushing many species to extinction. From 1980 to 2008, on average 52 animal species a year became closer to extinction and the rate at which species are becoming extinct is estimated up to 1000 times higher today than in the pre-industrial times3.As we can see, we cannot grow indefinitely. In fact, during last decades we have been exploiting much more than what the earth can produce and definitely more than our true needs. For example, every year we trash 1300 millions of tons of eatable food, while in many countries people are still dying from starvation. This should make us think that the current economical model of growth should be questioned.

Is it really necessary for countries to increase their GDP? In many cases, growth has increased the gap between the rich and the poor, and thus inequalities between citizens of the same countryiii. In 2009, the Commission of the European Communities produced a document, called “GDP and beyond”, in which the reliability of GDP as standard benchmark for measure of macro-economic activity is discussed. Since GDP is not able to provide measures of environmental sustainability or social inclusion, other indicators are needed to be taken into account in policy analysis and debates. In this document,4 other measures of global wellbeing of a country are suggested. The Italian institute for statistics

(ISTAT) and the National Council for Economics and Work (CNEL) built up a project for measuring equitable and sustainable well-being, considering a list of so-called BES indicators, where BES stands for “benessere equo e sostenibile”, i.e. “fair and sustainable wellbeing”5. They take into account topics such as environment, health, economic well-being, education and training, work and life balance, social relations, security, subjective well-being, landscape and cultural heritage, research and innovation, quality of services, policy and institutions.

As Serge Latouche teaches, economy should be a simple means of human life and not its purpose. Happiness can be reached by satisfying a limited number of needs, so we need to understand what is enough for us and what we really need. What is needed to change the world is a decolonization of our imagination and a de-economization of minds6. Degrowth should be organised not only to preserve the environment, but also to re-establish social justice in our world.

We should start by becoming different consumers and try to influence the market with our choices. Changing our single behaviour would be a first step for us to live in a sustainable way and find a better balance with the earth. Anyway, it seems to be hard to change the economic system that rules our society.Is a new world really possible?

1. M. Pallante “La decrescita felice. La qualità della vita non dipende dal Pil”, Editori Riuniti 2007.2. A. Leonard “The Story of Stuff”, Free Press 2010.3. AAVV, The Worldwatch Institute, “State of the World 2012”, Island Press 2012.4 h t t p : / / w w w . b e y o n d -g d p . e u / i n d i c a t o r s . h t m l5 http://www.misuredelbenessere.i t / i n d e x . p h p ? i d = 4 86. Serge Latouche, “Farewell to Growth”, Polity Press 2009.

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Links, more links !By Pawel Pustelnik

The movements of a butterfly can cause a tornado thousands of kilometres away from the little being. If these interactions can happen, thinking of connections in the environmental field is dreadful.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND In June this year-I was facilitating one of the sessions at the EYCE’s training course that took place in Minsk and was entitled “Taking steps towards an ecologically responsible society: Economic and political aspects of ecological justice”. Our aim was to firstly understand basic notions related to eco-justice and subsequently try to see what are the relations between them. The effect was stunning – a piece of paper occupying space larger than a standard living room covered with arrows and names: biopiracy, emissions trading, carbon sequestration, e-waste export, eco-terrorism, eco-theology... I remember myself shouting “Links! More links! I want to see the connections, arrows, networks!” Even though at first sight the proposed notions (over 30 terms related to eco-justice) seemed loosely related with each other, the links have been found, which opens the discussion towards thinking about a broader picture: do we see links between ecology, politics and economy? Who are the actors engaged and what are the cross-cutting processes that are happening in this domain? Who are the leaders and who are the laggards on the stage. Obviously, I am not going to answer all that questions – a book would not be enough to analyse these issues. I would like to go back again to Minsk and see what was important for us, young people, in the whole interplay and how these various comprehensions can be placed in a wider debate

JUSTICE

The issue of justice was definitely the most prominent in the discussions. Consciously or not, the ideas presented were derived from ecologism. It provides a viable critique of the capitalist society that is to be blamed for both the ecological breakdown as well as the market-based mechanisms that are supposed to save what remains untouched. With regards to justice, the relationship is more complicated than just between a human being and the nature. The issues that are entering the stage stem from the idea of global justice between all the people living on the Earth. In relation to that, individuals' understanding needs to be addressed again. For example, just as the mentioned butterfly affects seemingly not related weather phenomena, in the same way the emissions from one place cause temperature rise and in result sea-level rise that potentially threatens the whole Earth’s population. Currently, those who pay the most are small island states as well as Bangladesh or Cambodia, countries that are definitely not as responsible for the changes as relatively safe Europe or the US, that have been historically the most intensively polluting areas. It is not just that the burden of climate change lies more on certain people than the others. A similar issue arises when it comes to the access to water. In all arid areas of the world the pressure is growing. More and more of them are being solved forcefully, which only deepens unfairness of the whole situation.

MAKING MONEY, BEING JUST OR BOTH?

²Given the recent economic crisis and the loss of credibility of financial institutions presence of economical dimensions appears as a highly contentious issue. When we focus on

current approaches to eco-justice, it is easy to see how intrinsic the interests are. The first relation that comes to my mind is the fair trade movement, which addresses the problem of just pay and honesty in terms of sales agreements. The whole system is designed with the participation of the producers, it engages international decision-making, a strong present of civil society organisation is visible and of course, it is mostly about the money. Guaranteed payments, stable prices of commodities and fair treatment of the workers is embedded in the economical dimension. The link to nature can be made via agricultural context of the whole undertaking. Fair trade is also understood as a model for sustainable development as it offers an example of both socially responsible business and caring for nature. The other link that we made was related to a very broad topic of so called flexible mechanisms that were established to combat climate change. Here the name “flexible” equals

Pawel Pustelnik is a PhD student at Cardiff University. He research-es issues related to environmen-tal impacts of international avia-tion and carbon dioxide trading systems. In his free time he likes running, cooking and reading. Pawel is currently trying to under-stand why it is so rainy in Wales...

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“market-based mechanisms”. In their frameworks pollution becomes a commodity (a product) that can be sold on an open market. Not many companies would decide to pay for the pollutions they emit; therefore for example in Europe large polluters are legally obliged to trade their emissions. The money gathered from the programme should be directed to climate change mitigation / adaptation. Here again the economy is surrounded by the political arrangements. And not just because of the fact that the politicians are trying to sell their ideas and advertise their mind-products. The projects such as emissions trading would be impossible or very difficult to achieve without political engagement and facilitation. Fair trade can be seen as partly influenced by the politics. Other issues discussed such as e-waste export or biopiracy were rather excluded from the triangle politics-economy-ecology as they rather refer to ecology and economy only.

IT IS ALL ABOUT DECISION-MAKING The triangle that we were trying to explore would not be full without politics. Of course, economy and ecology are related with each other in a fairly obvious way, how about politics? When it comes to eco-justice, the political framework shapes the context. This is especially valid if the international dimension is added. The most of the decisions are taken during high level stakeholders meetings and the intensity of commodity exchanges is influenced by states’ strategies.What is more, the policy processes are usually ignited by the politicians who react to the reality they are living in. On the other side there is the whole issue of environmental politics, which looks at the decision-making processes (or politics) with a special attention for ideas and theories focusing on ecology. Thanks to a recent rapid development of the discipline more attention

is being given to the ecological dimension of decision-making. A growing body of literature reflects this trend well. It is even claimed that the field became extremely widespread and therefore “diluted”: “(...) as environmental politics has become increasingly mainstream, so environmental activism has become increasingly reconciled to reformist strategies that work within the legislative process and the boundaries of civil society” (Carter 2010, p.354). No matter how inaccessible the stakeholders might seem, the NGOs and especially environmental NGOs (ENGOs) are well-established and able to exercise pressure on the decision-making processes. They are active in agenda setting, dissemination of information and monitor if the agreements are kept. Sometimes their role is shown as secondary, but this is not true for most of the cases. “Due to their critical role in service delivery and implementation, civil society organizations have long been

photo by Pawel Pustelnik

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recognized as ‘partners’ of the UN system, especially in environmental negotiations” (Gemmill and Bamidele-Izu 2002, p. 6). This importance has been easily recognised by the participants of the session. It seems that the sub-link of NGOs is the most visible for the youth – they are more reliable, easier to access and promise more active approach to the problems. And the links? They seem to be pretty obvious: NGOs are supposed to represent the public and influence the policy making while giving the voice to less powerful interests.

AN INDIVIDUAL CAN BE AN ECO-HERO

In Minsk we ended up with a large

sheet full of links and perhaps a slightly better understanding of the global links that are present in the set of economy-politics-ecology. Certain issues have been uncovered and perhaps seen for the first time. The most important issue is however to see those in everyday life or while involving in the whole debate on sustainable development in various contexts that we are representing. After all, since the problems that eco-justice is dealing with were and are being caused by human beings (individually or through their enterprises), the individual behaviours are equally potent to reverse the changes. Socio-economic justice that people are striving for needs a strong support of eco-justice heroes who are addressing abuses of political and economic power in the field of

environment. If a butterfly can do so much, a human being must try as well.

REFERENCES

Carter, N. 2010. The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gemmill B. and Bamidele-Izu, A. The Role of NGOs and Civil Society in global environmental governance. In: Esty DC, Ivanova MH (Eds). Global environmental governance: Options & opportunities. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy; 2002. p. 1-24.

photo by Alicia Hamet

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Man and his environmentby Christopher Ejugbo

There are various ways of defining or describing ecology. However, it can broadly be defined as “ the relationship between living organisms and their environment”. Given our anthropocentric nature, we are inclined to believe that we humans are the central and most significant organism. Our discussions of ecology therefore tend to focus on the human relationship with other living organism as well as the natural environment.

It is very easy to infer from the above that interaction between humans themselves, which is a prerequisite for any economic activity, is embedded in the very definition of ecology. Our ability to collectively manage our resources for own common good is what constitutes the economy.

Humans have long believed, either through superstition or observation, in the idea of a limited “carrying capacity” of the environment, and that there is relationship between their attitudes to their environment and their economic output. The state of our environment determine our food production (plants and animals), the availability of water, our physical and mental well-being as well as those of our livestock and domesticated pets, availability of energy and other resources.

It is important to note that it is not the availability of these resources that lead to better economies but our management of them. Thomas Malthus, a 17th century English economist, is believed to be the one of the first academics to openly write about our human impact on our environment and the subsequent impact on our economic output, mostly food supply. Even though his analysis of human impact was centred around the human exponential population growth versus the arithmetic growth of food production, a major conclusion is that our survival to present date is a result of economic choices we have been making, even though he also

added that natural disasters such as plagues will also help check our impact.

Human economic activities and its negative impact on the natural environment has been analysed in more recent times by Garrett Hardin, a 20th century American ecologist, in his famous essay “the tragedy of the commons”. The idea of the tragedy of the commons is that multiple individuals carrying out their economic activities for their individual benefits will eventually lead to the depletion of their resources or/and destruction of their natural environment. Examples of such activities include overgrazing, farming, and fishing. Taking his argument further, it should not be difficult to arrive at how our individual economic activities in modern lives such as driving to work, using our laptops, having a bath, have the impact of depletion and/or destruction of more shared resources such as air and rivers. Obviously Hardin assumed that humans were not knowledgeable enough or incapable or recognising their impact and devising mechanisms for checking and limiting the consequences. This thought that we are incapable of understanding and managing this relationship between ecology and the economy has rightly be challenged by many, notabley Elinor Ostrom, an American political economist who sadly passed away in June this year.

She argued that humans have long recognised this interdependency, and have created system to govern their use of their resources.

The two points of view expressed above actually amounts to the type of economic system in use. In a command economy, the common consensus is that decision regarding resource management need to be made by a central body collectively,

Christopher Ejugbo is a sustain-ability professional who writes and comments extensively on various sustainability issues. Twitter: https://twitter.com/cejugbo

Blogger: http://cejugbo.blogspot.co.uk

Photo by Christopjer Ejugbo

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whereas in a liberal economy these decisions are entrusted on individuals. There are abundant examples of successful recognition of this principle and its manipulation for to create better conditions:

FISHING AND FISHERY

Fishing used to be a free for all activity in many parts of the world. However, we have learned to create regulations to ensure the sustainability of this economic activity. Measures taken in various places have included privatisation, fishing quotas, fish farming, fishing seasons, net sizes, fishing licences, fishing ban in certain areas, and a ban on catching various types of fish. Societies that carried out these measures have found themselves in a better economic position.

In addition to regulated economic activities i.e. fishing, we have also tried to limit our impact on the fish habitat. The negative impact includes pollution through dumping of solid wastes, sewage, chemical

run-off from agricultural activities, and fossil fuel combustion. These have often led to acidification and blockages, which have been known to destroy aquatic habitats.

This same principle can and has been used for other activities such as collecting snails, hunting, grazing and so on. We have realized that without maintaining a balance, we might through over-exploitation destroy the environment that we depend on for our livelihood.

FORESTRY

Our forests, apart from being a source of energy (biomass) and raw material for various economic activities such as carpentry, are habitats for various organisms. There are a lot of measures in place to limit illegal logging which refers to cutting and selling timber without appropriate permission. We pretty much understand how unchecked logging can lead to desertification, erosion, and extinction of rare species, even though we have not been able to use any

economic metrics to support the case. The same argument can be used for other activities such as farming where lack of regulation can have unwanted impacts.

In conclusion, we need to continue to develop our knowledge on this interconnectivity between ecology and the economy. This knowledge needs to be shared and disseminated continually. We, all the other organisms and the natural environment, are all in it together!

Photo by Christopher Ejugbo

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by Maike Gorsboth

Since 2007 Maike Gorsboth has been working at the World Council of Churches in Geneva as coordinator of the Ecumenical Wat er Network, which is an international network of churches and other Christian or-ganizations people's access to wa-ter around the world. Before that she was already involved in educa-tion, campaigning, and advocacy related to the human right to wa-ter with organizations like FIAN In-ternational and Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World in Germany).

“How do we hear both the cry of the poor, and the cry of the earth and not play these off against each other, to the detriment of both?” asked the late Steve de Gruchy, theologian from South Africa, in an article he wrote in early 2009.

He was writing in the context of a severe outbreak of Cholera in Zimbabwe which had already cost thousands of lives, and he had decided to write a theological reflection about “sewage” – about “shit” as he used to more clearly put it himself.

“Theological reflection begins in the midst of the struggle for life. This is where God is at work,” Steve de Gruchy wrote about why he chose this topic for a discussion of the ethics of

sustainability. “We must ground the concept of sustainability in the material reality of people in the struggle for life. And so we begin at the bottom, with what threatens life today, sewage.”

The starting point for Steve’s reflection were three current news events: one about the plans to replace the “bucket system” in poor South African communities, another addressing concerns over increasing water scarcity and pollution, and the third about the Cholera outbreak spreading from Zimbabwe to South Africa.

Steve de Gruchy saw in these three stories an example of the links, and tensions, between ecology and economy. He noted that “rising political and economic aspirations”

- not only reflecting human greed and rampant consumerism but also legitimate human aspirations of the poor - were “colliding with collapsing management of public assets and growing shortages of the earth’s resources (water), and leading to an impending health disaster in which it is the poor who will die (cholera).”

How find a way out of this tension? Steve de Gruchy proposed to start with the acknowledgement that in today’s globalized world “we all live downstream”. He noted that “previous civilizations may have got away with flushing the problem downstream, but in a globalized world there is no downstream - or more correctly, “we all live downstream”.

In consequence, he found that “rather than just a brown agenda that focuses on poverty, or a green agenda that focuses on the environment, we need an olive agenda that blends both and finds a new way of being human that recognises that the earth does not belong to

A River Jordan motif

Photo by Maike Gorsboth

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us but that we belong to the earth.”

From a theological perspective, Steve de Gruchy called for going “beyond the liberation/creation impasse”, exploring the “River Jordan motif” in search of a spirituality and ethics in service of the sustainability agenda:

“Here I am thinking of the image of standing before the Jordan River and taking responsibility for what it means to live in the land that one is entering. I am thinking of a people who have been given a law about how to live with their neighbours, to tend the earth, to regulate their economic system, to treat their animals, to take time off, all in such a way that they might ‘live long on the land’. It is a vision for sustainability that seeks to balance the economic with the ecological, and it is rooted in a spirituality of respect of the liberating God who hates slavery while being concerned for the land at the same time. It is the place where the liberation motif and the creation

motif come together, not in some romantic time before history began, but in the reality of human struggles in history. It is a spirituality and an ethic for the one oikos that we inhabit.”

In the River Jordan motif, Steve de Gruchy found five ethical principles that he thought could assist us to engage with the reality of sewage, water shortages and cholera:

Responsibility: The Jordan River motif balances freedom ‘from’ with freedom ‘to’. Exodus celebrates a freedom ‘from’ – from slavery, bondage, oppression, poverty, injustice, unfreedom. Liberation struggles focus on the constraints that must be removed – but the earth crisis involves a recognition that environmental constraints are legitimate constraints.

THE COMMONS

The Jordan River motif points to the

land - the earth - as a communal gift rather than as private property. The Land of Promise is a gift, a publicspace, common property. The Sabbath and Jubilee laws draw from this fundamentalposition, as does the command to care for strangers and aliens. In this understanding of the gift of the land, we see the deep inter-relationship between economy and ecology, the concerns of the poor and the concerns of the earth.

LEGAL LIMITATIONS

The Jordan River motif is a rules-based motif. The TenCommandments – along with the wider Torah - served as a binding legal framework for social life together in the Land of Promise. There was to be no Free Market, but rather the community had rules to govern and control the economy. In the light of the complexities of modern life we may find that we need a wider

Photo by Maike Gorsboth

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set of legal rules, but they need to serve the same purpose: to bind the strong and to limit the powerful.

VOCATION

As Moses makes it clear on the eve of the crossing of the Jordan, each citizen is called to give account for their life as a contribution to the common good, both here and now, and in an intergenerational sense as well (Deut 30:19). The task is not to control, accumulate, consume, and waste; but to live in harmony with the land and one’s neighbours, assist those in need, honour the wealth of the wider community rather than private wealth, and take responsibility for one’s waste.

CELEBRATION

Rooted strongly within the Jordan River motif is the idea of communalcommemoration, of remembering, of celebrating. (…) These celebrations are related both to the history of liberation (The Passover - Ex 34:18), and to the rhythms of creation (The Festival of Weeks - Ex 34:22), a reminder of that freedom from slavery and freedom to enjoy the milk and honey of the land are both rooted in God’s graciousness. An ethic that honours freedom in this way, understands music, dance, art, celebration.

Steve de Gruchy’s complete article on “Dealing with our own sewage: Spirituality and Ethics in the Sustainability Agenda” is available electronically at www.o i ko u m e n e . o r g / e n / a c t i v i t i e s /ewn-home/resources-and-l inks/

Steve de Gruchy EWN “Seven Weeks for Water” 2009

While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan. (Joshua 3:15-17)

The cholera crisis in Zimbabwe is a chilling illustration of the crucial link between water, sanitation, health and political responsibility. By the middle of February 2009, the WHO noted that over 70,000 people were infected and 3,524 had died.

WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM Cholera is a clear indication that economics and ecology are deeply integrated, and that water is at the intersection of the two. The economic system, via industry, agriculture, and the human impact upon climate change is placing huge stress on our water resources, and in turn these diminishing resources impact severely upon the quality of life of the poor and marginalized.

This should not surprise us. The Greek word for home or household is oikos. Our words economy and ecology both come from that word. Economy is oikos-nomos, rules of the household. Ecology is oikos-logos, wisdom of the household. We inhabit one household, the globe. From a water perspective “we all live downstream”.

The link between economy and ecology is usually missing from our theological models. Liberation theologies focus on the Exodus tradition, and are concerned with economics and poverty. Creation theologies focus on the Genesis tradition, and are concerned with ecology and the environment. Isolated from each other, these theologies miss the fact that “we all live downstream”. We need to find a theological vision that integrates them.

A JORDAN RIVER PERSPECTIVE Here I think a Jordan River perspective is helpful. It points to the People of Israel as they are about to enter the Land of Promise. They are people of the Exodus, liberated from

slavery. But now they are not just free. They are about to take on the responsibility of creating a society that honours both humanity and the earth. This is, after all, a land that will flow with milk and honey for generations to come.

A Jordan River perspective also reminds us of the strong links that the bible has to water. The Jordan river flows from life (Sea of Gailiee) to death, (Dead Sea). It reminds us that human choices are taken between these two options, connecting economics and ecology, the Passover Festival (liberation) with the Festival of Weeks (creation).

Such a perspective cannot be a legitimation of the modern state of Israel or other imperial projects, for it is rooted in the Deuteronomic code of justice for the widow, the alien and the oppressed.

Indeed the Jordan River perspective holds together economics and ecology, recognizing that “we all live downstream”. It is a reminder that freedom is worth nothing for the poor if we cannot deal with sewage.

One of South Africa's most prominent theologians, Prof Steve de Gruchy was an ordained minister in the Unit-ed Congregational Church of South-ern Africa (UCCSA) and Professor of Theology and Development at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He also served as the Head of the School of Religion and Theology and was editor of the Journal of The-ology for Southern Africa from 2003.

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Peter Gleick, one of the world’s leading water specialists argues that “water is quite different to other “commodities”, and with growing global water scarcity there needs to be a right to water to protect the poor, weak and vulnerable from having an essential ingredient of life priced beyond their ability to pay”. Nigeria is one of the countries in sub-Sahara Africa whose records on general access to water supply by the citizens remain very poor. The Nigerian cities in particular are plagued with increased rise of squatter settlements, overcrowding dwellings, water pollution and inadequate water services. For the urban poor in Nigeria in cities, the quest for water is a daily hard fought struggle especially due to factors such as climate change and global warming giving rise to territorial conflicts, especially in the Northern part. This is unfortunate for a country whose surface water resources is estimated to be about 267 billion m3/annum while its groundwater resource is estimated at about 52 billion m3 of groundwater potential. Pre-independence water regulatory instruments revolved around ‘right of ownership’, legislation and ‘measures to integrate and regulate standard practices’, some academics believe that the colonialist neither anticipated nor approved of the growth of large

African urban populations, possibly to avoid political subversion and social disorganization hence the enactment of the said laws which basically aim at protecting the small colonial population resident in the cities. The inability of the numerous post-independence programmes and related ones to deliver the targeted results of comprehensively addressing the problems arising from water supply may probably have been responsible for the recent emergence of several focused reforms and initiatives, unfortunately, these policies are majorly private sector driven. While the human right imperatives of water and sanitation needs for the citizenry is clearly and universally recognized at international level (and domesticated by many other countries), Nigerian policy makers choose to ignore the " human right " dimension of such needs in total preference for full commoditization and privatization even when such goals are hardly defended by the realities of socioeconomic condition of the population.

WATER REFORMS AND URBAN POOR IN LAGOS

Lagos, being a coastal city, is currently the fifth largest city in the

world with a population of over 15 million inhabitants, the foremost manufacturing and port city in West Africa, and the hub of business and economic development in Nigeria. Lagos is an urban complex that embodies tremendous contrasts. As the former national capital and the major port of the largest country in Africa, it is a powerful magnet for migrants from all over Nigeria. The rapid urban growth which Nigeria has experienced is well manifested in Lagos, the major parts of which are the product of modern economic, social and political forces in interaction with traditional culture which was the factor that distinguished life in the city from that in the countryside. Unfortunately, the rapid urbanisation has led to the proliferation of numerous slums, especially on the coastline parts and creeks. Safe water availability tendency in Lagos can be traced from the colonial, pre-independence and early post-independence days; During this period there were special areas for the colonialists within the city where

The political ecology of waterBy Nidjeka Onwunyi

Photo by Nidjeka Onwunyi

Njideka Onwunyi holds a Masters degree in Environmental Manage-ment from the University of La-gos. She is a volunteer for a faith based grassroot Water and Sani-tation NGO in Nigeria, and was a participant at the World Council of Churches/Lutheran World Federa-tion Youth for Ecojustice training in Durban, South Africa between November and December 2011.

Towards actualising Right to Water for urban poor in Nigeria

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houses were directly connected to water supply. This trend still continues today. Consequently, a combination of the high cost of accessing public supply network, service irregularity of public supplies and discriminatory service practices in favour of the influential members of the society has led to the rise and popularity of commercial water operators as well as a preference for private borehole in individual compounds by the rich. Therefore, wholesome and safe water could be seen as available to only the privileged few in Lagos making water supply coverage currently stand at a mere 26%. In recent years, the city has been experiencing increased water shortages and salt water intrusion of low groundwater tables especially in the coastal slum communities. The dryness and pollution of the wells and community taps has left them at the mercy of these private water vendors ; a very thriving business in the metropolis. It is common for one to observe children in the early hours of the morning and evenings walking

long distances to get water for their households, fights and extortions at available community taps are also a common occurrence as different community groups attempt to stake claim to the water source. The effect of this is multifaceted as it undermines the overall ability for the country to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

SEEKING JUSTICE FOR THE URBAN POOR

The few water and sanitation NGOs have been quite active as the voice of the urban poor in their quest to get justice. The Lagos Water Corporation in the face of rising demand and emerging trends, decided to take an ambitious step at reforming the troubled sector through adopting a new water and sanitation policy, civil societies endeavoured to play an active role in ensuring that the new policy should include pro-poor conditions/targeted subsidies for the urban poor, the introduction of climate resilient technologies while taking into consideration urban slums, and

progressive tariffs for large users. Civil societies have made enormous efforts to ensure promotion of accountability and transparency, and is currently advocating for the domesticating of a United Nations resolution on right to water and sanitation in order to ensure adequate water supply coverage. Another problem that also faces the actualisation of right to water is the sad knowledge that majority of the urban poor especially the youth are not enlightened with regards to this issue, this is the reason why as part of our Eco-justice/Climate change awareness project, Youth for Eco-justice Nigeria went about educating youths in the church communities on the need to be aware of these issues, how they affect us, and how to in the near future advocate for water justice.

It is our hope that with the forthcoming passing of the policy into law in Lagos, and subsequently in other Nigerian cities, the urban poor shall experience succour for their present predicament, and a more sustainable urban Nigerian society can be achieved.

Photo byNidjeka Onwunyi

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Insights from Rio+20by Felix Beck and Mairon G. BastosLima

Mairon G. Bastos Lima is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Envi-ronmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam. He is also part of the coordination team of EYCE’s Cam-paign to Promote Ecological Justice.

Given that, my realistic hope was that at least they would succeed in launching the process for having Sustainable Development Goals (which they have), and – with a bit more of optimist – a framework convention on oceans and a Sustainable Development Council as a high-level body at the United Nations. But these ones did not materialize.

Felix: Having participated in a number of preliminary negotiations and preparatory meetings, I was expecting complex and difficult negotiations. It was clear to me Rio+20 would not be able to deliver the breakthrough for global Sustainable Development that we need so urgently. However, I hoped for bold agreement on at least some of the proposals that were discussed in the lead-up, such as a reform of the governance structures.

What was your agenda for the Rio+20? Can you tell us something about the role you were playing during the conference and the program you followed during the conference?

Felix: Before the conference, I helped with organizing the “Youth Blast”, a pre-conference where thousands of young

What were your hopes and expectations before the meeting?

Mairon: The real hope and expectations or the realistic ones? The real hopes, of course, were that this event could lead to some major change in countries' policies towards the environment, and that some meaningful international agreements could take place, as happened in 1992 with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which were all “born” at that conference. I believe that is what most people would like to have seen. There are so many needs nowadays: a decent international agreement on the protection of forests, a framework for sustainable agriculture; and, an agreement on the use of oceans in international waters, to name a few.

However, working on this area, I know that these hopes were quite unrealistic. As the world becomes multi-polarized (in terms of geopolitics), countries are becoming more nationalistic and protectionist in their approach, so they are hardly willing to compromise on anything.

Felix Beck (felix.beck@agljv.de) was one of two Official German Youth Delegates to the UN Confer-ence on Sustainable Development "Rio+20". Mandated by the Ger-man Federal Youth Council (DBJR), he acted as an advisor of the Ger-man delegation on youth issues. Felix is a board member of EYCE's member organization AEJ. He is cur-rently studying public, international and environmental law in Freiburg.

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people were discussing the themes of Rio+20, but also thinking ahead of Rio+20. During the negotiations, I acted in multiple roles: As a member of the German governmental delegation, I not only followed the negotiations, but also advised my delegation on youth issues and took part in delegation meetings. Next to that, I helped coordinating a task force of young people working on governance issues.

All of this led to a quite busy schedule: On the way to the conference venue, I was reading my mail and documents, and made a schedule for the day. During the day at the conference center I, of course, spent most of my time in negotiation rooms. Next to that, there were plenty of meetings with my delegation, UN officials, the governance task force and other young people. When there was some free time, I was again checking my email (next to mobile phones, email was used for most of the onsite coordination!) or having lunch with colleagues or friends. On the bus back late at night, I was trying to write blog articles and other reports, and again deal with a lot of e-mails.

Mairon: I had two roles in there. First, I was a delegate for the Earth System Governance project, a 10-year collaborative project among different universities and institutes around

the world doing research on environmental policy and governance. I have been working with this project for my own PhD research at the VU University Amsterdam, so I went to represent the network there and see what network I could garner. My second role was as a presenter. I was invited by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), through their special office on socially-inclusive development, based in Brasília (Brazil’s capital), to participate and give a presentation at their side-event on social dimensions of a green economy. I also ended up chairing a session for the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), as they asked me to at the last minute.

How important was the dialogue about sustainable development for Rio+20 and the political leaders in your opinion?

Mairon: Way below what it should have been. To start with, and just as an illustration of the political (un)willingness, there was the whole fuss about shifting the date of the conference because of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, which the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, and

Photo by Felix Beck

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a number of other leaders said they would attend, and so couldn’t make it to Rio. The whole conference was changed to accommodate that – something I had never seen before at an event of this magnitude and importance –, and then in the end those politicians did not show up anyway. Other leaders, like Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama also failed to appear. Without an engagement from the top segments of various governments, negotiators could agree to compromise on very little. That is why they came to the negotiations in Rio with a very raw document. The negotiations prior to the conference were extremely slow.

For lobbyists, numbers are important. We therefore would like to know how you evaluate the level of participation of the civil society in the negociations?

Felix: Civil society was making Rio+20 one of the biggest conferences in the UN history. In a way, all civil society representatives, including young people like Mairon and me, were ‘lobbyists’ as we advocated for the interests of young people. The outcome document now claims that the conference was held “with the full participation of civil society”. This is not true. Civil society was expelled from the assembly rooms during the final negotiations, and each of the 9 interest groups (which are called ‘Major Groups’) was only allowed to address the conference once. However, I observed that only a few civil society representatives were really able to lobby the delegations and have influence on the negotiations. Most of these had already taken part in all the preparatory New York negotiations and not only knew the negotiators, but also the history of the lead-up to Rio.

Mairon: Numbers are important, and the official figures tell us nearly 50, 000 people participated at the conference, most of them from civil society. However, it is important to see what kind of participation is that. They devised a “People’s Summit”, which hosted most of the social movement protests and civil society events – but it was far, far away from the actual document-making process, both in terms of geography (more than 10km away) and in influence. All civil society could do was to come up with a document that would be (in theory) read by the heads of state at their summit. But the reality was that the influence of civil society in the whole process was minimal. That is not a fault of Rio per se; it is how all these conferences go. All the decision-making is in the hands of the government delegations. Period. It seems to me, the rest is just to allow people to speak up and think they are participating otherwise

they could grow restless and create some real trouble.

How would you describe the dynamics of the negotiations during the event in Rio this year?

Felix: As governments had to reach a consensus in order to adopt the declaration, negotiations often were slow and complicated. In Rio, the negotiations therefore resumed where they had left off in New York a couple of days before, and many complained that there was no sense of urgency visible. When the Brazilian government took over the facilitation of the talks a few days before the high-level segment started, things gained pace. They were engaging a lot to reach a compromise, and thus removing or weakening many controversial issued from the text. Many say that this was the only way to reach any consensus in Rio, but the Brazilian strategy also caused many chances for a stronger outcome being put off the table.

Mairon: Extremely slow, to the point of frustration. I watched delegates debate for half an hour whether and why the term “a menu of indicators” was more suitable or not than “a set of indicators”. Honestly, I felt like shaking each one of those negotiators back into reality to give them a sense of urgency! Time is extremely limited for the number of points that have to be negotiated, but the bulk of it is spent on grammar and, exact wording. I was not surprised at all when on the last day of the preparatory meetings (prior to the arrival of the heads of state) they had hardly agreed on anything. To put it simply, for the most part the attitude I saw in the negotiations was: You don’t give me what I want, I don’t give you want, and we move on. There was no give-and-take, which, I think, is essential for a negotiation process where you want to get somewhere.

Civil society had high hopes in the Rio event, hopes the leaders will reach a common understanding despite negative predictions. Thinking about the results of Rio+20, would you consider that sustainable development is part of an ideal outcome for the conference?

Mairon: I think it is, but more at the level of discourse and rhetoric than at the level of practice. Now the

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adjective “sustainable” is everywhere, and everybody speaks of “green” this, “low-carbon” that. It’s been made banal, to an extent. On the one hand, this helps spread the idea of sustainability and make it more known. On the other hand, it is necessary to watch or for the many cases of “greenwashing”, i.e. when policies, governments or companies pretend to be green.

Felix: In a way, it was predictable that many civil society actors were disappointed with the outcome. Looking at the results, that is more than understandable. However, many had expectations that hardly could be fulfilled! Actually, the preparatory process never made me believe that Rio+20 would bring major achievements. Negotiations were difficult and all those proposals that would’ve made up a good outcome were highly contentious in the negotiations leading up to Rio. At the end, I was not surprised that many of those proposals do not appear in the final document.

Nevertheless, after the conference many called Rio+20 a ‘failure’ and a ‘missed chance’. Indeed, we need to be clear that Rio did not deliver the decisions that are so urgently needed to keep this planet a livable place, limit climate change and mitigate its effects, fight the loss of biodiversity, achieve more social justice, ensure access to food, water, sanitation, health and education for everyone, etc. Looking at all these challenges, one can hardly argue the Rio+20 outcome is ‘ideal’.

Having said this, it would be easy to blame the UN and international negotiations on the future of our planet. Many say they are too slow, not effective enough and, anyway, never go beyond talking. And of course, this is not completely wrong. What would be the alternative, though? As long as negotiations don’t cease, there’s at least hope that the international community is at some point able to turn the tables and truly commit to sustainable policies. We can’t afford to lose that hope.

Photo by Felix Beck

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Since the meeting took place in Rio, many representatives or individuals compared this year event with the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. What was new or different this time?

Felix: The summit this year took place in a historical place: not only the same city, but the same conference center where the UN met, almost exactly twenty years after the first Earth Summit. Indeed, the 1992 summit brought a number of substantial achievements, the most famous of them being the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

However, I have the impression that nowadays the first Rio summit is often glorified. Despite its achievements, at that time it was paralyzed by deep turf battles between industrialized and developing nations. Simply spoken, the first were demanding global commitment to protection of the environment, while the latter demanded their right to economic development and only wanted to be bound to environmental commitments later.

In its principles, this phenomenon barely changed since – with the major difference that a number of former developing countries like China, India and Brazil are undergoing massive economic growth and development, with breathtaking harms to the local and global environment. On the other hand, policies in the “old” industrialized countries have by far not made enough progress with mainstreaming environment and sustainable development policies.

Mairon: Geopolitics are different, and the economic crisis hitting rich countries also made it more difficult for them to agree on anything. Back in 1992 there was a clear understanding of the world as developed countries (North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan), and it was the developing countries that needed help. Nowadays the world has become much more competitive. Rich countries such as the US are afraid of giving out much (for instance, technology transfer) because they see countries like China catching up. European negotiators in the room were always claiming that they cannot afford to provide financial assistance to poorer countries because of the Euro crisis. This made things difficult. And that is also why climate negotiations, for instance, have gotten really stuck and there is no successor to the Kyoto Protocol for beyond 2012. Meanwhile, the US and Europe argue that emerging economies should do more, but they forget that those countries, such as Brazil, China and India still have huge poverty and socioeconomic inequalities to address,

and that their human development indexes or income per capita are still far below those of developed countries.

How do you picture the political situation and the lifestyle during the next 10 years? How would you think the future for the next generations will be? How will political leadership change?

Mairon: It is hard to say how political leadership will be, because this always depends on specific individuals rising up in the political ranks in their own countries, and eventually changing things-hopefully for the good. But I would say that in 10 years we will be in a world that is further down on the trends we are seeing. Let’s face it: all predictions are that countries like Brazil, China and India will play a much more important role, politically and economically, than they do today. For instance, nobody speaks of the G7 or the G8 anymore. Since the financial crisis hit rich countries hard, the main forum has become the G20, which is much more inclusive. So we are undoubtedly heading towards greater multi-polarity. This may be problematic to the environment if countries do not learn to negotiate.

Regarding lifestyles, I think there is growing consciousness about environmental problems (thank God! It was about time!), but many people still fail to connect their daily habits to environmental issues. Take agriculture, for instance. Most people do not link it to their eating habits. They do not realize that, for instance, fast-food chains are not only damaging people’s health but also sustaining a type of chemical-input intensive agriculture, based on monocultures, and feedlot livestock farming that are very detrimental to the environment. Most people still do not realize that food and

Photo by Felix Beck

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agriculture are two ends of the same system. Hopefully this awareness will grow, and as connectivity also improves, maybe more and more people will learn and engage.

Felix: Our generation is one of the first ones that already grew up in the ‘global village’. While some of today’s young people are taking advantage of the benefits of globalization, many cannot, even in Europe. The multitude of crises in Europe shows how unsustainable many policies were in the past years, and there’s no alternative to a fundamental change of course. At the same time, we need to be careful not to lose our cultural identities in a globalized world and a challenged Europe – increasing intolerance and extremism is definitely a challenge the world will face in the coming years.

Like everyone else, I can only speculate about how political circumstances will in the future and whether the needed change of course will be possible. Of course, I hope that the international community is in future able to settle disputes peacefully and cautiously intervene were violence appears. I also hope that people will find back to their roots, and reclaim patterns of local production (particularly of food) and sustainable consumption.And of course, I won’t give up hope that one time there will policies that help sustaining and safeguarding the creation rather than support its destruction.

What are your recommendations for the next volunteers/colleagues that want to join your cause and the upcoming conferences?

Felix: There is no doubt: engaging in UN processes is an exhausting and daunting thing to do, and I completely understand the decision of everyone who pulls out. Nevertheless, Earth Negotiations are in urgent need of dedicated young people who keep pressurizing governments and demanding stronger commitments and true action from them.

If you plan to step into the ring, I urge you to prepare well and not to despair. Prepare well, because negotiators and politicians will only listen to you when you exactly know what you’re talking about and what you want from them. Don’t despair, because that single conference will neither save the world nor cause it to end. Sleep well, eat enough and try to get out of the conference center at least for half an hour every day.

Mairon: My recommendation is: do it! These events are great learning experiences. And however little we can actually do at these major events, they are a major opportunity to see how the processes are, and to network with other people working on similar issues. Fortunately, that is the one thing that is improving: civil society can participate more and more at these events; if not in terms of being part of the decision-making, then at least as observers.

What was the main thought, idea, or positive feedback that you decided to take home at the end of the conference?

Mairon: My one main thought was the plain observation that national interests (or supranational interests, in the case of the European Union) are trampling global concerns that are common to humankind. That was clear. Now, in terms of positive feedback, I think it is the clear understanding that we need to figure out how to go about this. What I mean is: it does not help if you think of ideal worlds without having a clue of how to get there from the point where we are. We need to understand how the system works, and then understand how to make it more sustainable. In particular, it revealed to me the importance of national policies and how they can make a huge difference. If you change your lifestyle and manage to influence your neighbors or family, that is great. But if you manage to influence policy-making, then you can achieve a million times more, because that is what makes the law (to become more tuned to sustainability) that is where taxpayers’ money is. So, in the end, it’s a matter of democracy.

Felix: Next to all the downsides of Rio+20, I got to know some outstanding people in Rio; people who are truly dedicated to their work for a sustainable future; both dreamers and realists, creative and pragmatic folks; people who decided to go back local after the conference and people who still believe in global negotiations. I made some great friends not only in Brazil, but also in all these months of preparation. Next to all the things I was able to learn from them and I will always remember all the great moments we had together.

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Is there a hope after Rio+20?

The panel discussion „What hope after Rio+20? Contribution of various stakeholders to a sustainable future” took place on the 17th of October 2012 at Maison du Protestantisme in Brussels and was organised in the framework of EYCE Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice, which aims at promoting ecological justice and sustainable ways of life.

The aim of the panel discussion was to bring together various stakeholders to discuss the outcomes of United Nations Conference of Sustainable Development, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2012, also known as Rio+20. Many actors, especially representatives of the civil society, have considered the outcomes of the conference disappointing. Moreover, it has been criticised by many, for both its inefficiency and lack of concrete measures to be taken and tangible results. With the panel discussion EYCE sought to understand, what are the concrete actions and measures that can be taken up by various groups in society to secure the results in sustainable development, which world leaders failed to achieve.

The panel discussion brought together 3 guest speakers to contribute to its content: Rev. Peter Pavlovic, representing Church and Society Commission of Conference of

European Churches (CEC), as well as the European Christian Environmental Network (ECEN), Mr. Lloyd Russel-Moyle from European Youth Forum (YFJ) and Mr. Rob van der Meer, representing Heidelberg Cement on the side of industry.

Mr. Russel-Moyle, representing European Youth Forum, pointed out that the outcomes of the Rio+20 conference cannot be regarded as entirely negative and explained the “hooks” where the outcomes of the conference can be turned into the positive results. He pointed out that the conference has managed to discuss moving beyond measuring wealth entirely by GDP and looked onto alternative ways to measure wealth. Mr. Russel-Moyle highlighted the importance of necessity to move beyond the current economic system and emphasize more the role of civil society, which might lead to change the patterns of people’s thinking.

Rev. Peter Pavlovic, representing Church and Society Commission of CEC, mainly drew up the general difficulties in making new substantial international agreements dues to many-folded nature of international relations today. He pointed out the fact that the Rio+20 report has been agreed beforehand, which made the negotiations pointless and vague. Most importantly he highlighted the ethical and spiritual aspect of sustainable development, growth and negotiations between different actors involved in the negotiations. He underlined the need of cooperation between the governments and civil society, churches included to ensure fruitful sectoral approach and reach out to wider target group.

Mr. van der Meer, representative of Heidelberg Cement revealed an attractive and practical approach to the sustainable development issues from the side of industries. He explained the measures of sustainability already being taken by a number of world’s industries, based on voluntarily, non-

binding agreements. He elaborated on failures of multilateral and unilateral approaches, highlighting the need to look into the sectoral approach in order to secure more sustainable approach to industries. Similarly to the other speakers he draw upon the current economical model and the mindset of wealth and unlimited growth, which created great obstacles for sustainable development.

In the course of the panel discussion an interesting debate between the panellists developed, as well as contributions from the audience to the discussion were received.

Following up the questions raised during the panel discussion, EYCE will continue the work promoting ecological justice with its member and partner organisations, especially focusing on taking into account the points raised during the discussion during the final year of the campaign, which will have the special focus on sustainability.

EYCE would like to use the opportunity and once again thank all the speakers and guest present at the panel discussion!

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project on how to turn the whole EYCE green. 27 Member Organisations depicted in 27 unique Eco-Heroes towards one goal: a more sustainable way of living for our planet. Criteria and methods of evaluating the sustainability of the network, as well as tools for ecologically harmless actions were discussed under five main areas of focus: transport, office, worship, hardware and education. The project will be implemented from early 2013 onwards and the green members will be acknowledged by a certificate.

More information will be displayed on our website www.eyce.org and will be sent out to our members soon. If you are interested in this project or if you want to help us to turn EYCE’s network green, contact us on campaign@eyce.org.

Join the green wave and help us going towards a sustainable future by turning your organisation green too. With your help we might support all 27 members to become daily Eco-Heroes!

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Be Eco-Heroes!

HOW TO MAKE EYCE MORE SUSTAINABLE?

Our world is at stake and an urgent change is needed. But, shouldn’t we start by changing ourselves? EYCE wants to lead the change and so, we (representatives of the national member organizations, executive committee and the office staff) gathered in Warsaw to plan how to turn greener.

The biannual meeting of the EYCE National Correspondents took place from 26th – 29th of October 2012 in Warsaw, Poland, and brought together dozen young people representing both the national ecumenical youth movement as well as the EYCE’s headquarters.

During the meeting we were mainly focused on EYCE’s Campaign to Promote Ecological Justice and the future eco-friendly actions of the Council and its member organisations. In accordance to the next year campaign’s topic – sustainability – the participants developed a

Are YOU sustainable?Did you know 2012 was the 20th Anniversary of the EU Ecolabel? It now has 26 sets of criteria for non-food and nonmedical product groups and covers 1357 licences and counting.

Consume responsibly! Look for the EU Ecolabel certified products to make Europe more sustainable!

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EYCE Upcoming Events

Young people should be at the forefront of global change and in-novation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society's margins, all of us will be impoverished. Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies.

Kofi Annan

Young people embody our hope for change. EYCE aims to accom-pany them to further develop their skills and empower these real stakeholders of our tomorrow. Addressing the diverse and major issues facing our current society, EYCE wants to provide young people with a panel of activities, where they can increase their skills and knowledge in an entertaining and non-formal environ-ment. Please find out below about our upcoming events for 2013 and get involved in shaping the future you wish to see tomorrow and for the future generations.

Ï 14th - 21st of April, 2013, "Shape Democracy! Youth Leaders Promoting Participation and Equality", Romania.

Ï 18th - 25th August 2013, "Be the Generation of Peace! A sem-inar to enhance the participation and contribution of young people to peace processes", Serbia.

Ï 24th November - 1st December 2013, "Taking Steps Towards an Ecologically Responsible Society: Contributions of faith based youth organisations to sustainability" - the closing study session of EYCE's Campaign to Promote Ecological Jus-tice, European Youth Centre Budapest, Hungary or European Youth Centre Strasbourg, France. 10th - 17th of March, 2013, "Shape Democracy! Youth Leaders Promoting Participation and Equality", Romania

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Catharina Covolo is the chair of EYCE’s

Executive Committee

ImprintEditing: Alina Marinescu, Alicia HametProofreading: Tina BarnettLayout: Alicia Hamet

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Reverend Henrik Grape, Officer on Sustain-able Development at the Church of Sweden’s central office, attended the Doha conference and is sharing his personal insight with us.

"Since Copenhagen and COP 15 2009 the cli-mate negotiations lost much of speed and nearly all trust.Trust between different part-ners is fundamental to any kind of interaction. Especially if you deal with questions about how to overcome a very serious global situation.

The most serious part of it is that we at the same time getting more and more reports that the climate change is more or less already here and that the target to keep the global tempera-ture under 2 degree Celsius seems very hard to keep.Under these circumstances COP 18 was held. Sorry to say but very little was done to stand up to the very serious climate challenge.

Developed countries are mostly interested to discuss mitigation with a focus on China and other emerging economies. EU for example, are not willing to increase the target from 20% to 30 % less emissions of Green House Gases to 2020. Even if this seems to be reached anyway.

Developing countries are interested in discuss-ing finance that should go in the different funds that is needed to adaptation, technology trans-fer and to pay for loss and damages that is re-lated to climate change. It is no understatement to say that the willingness to contribute from de-veloped countries is low. All this, together with other tracks under den UNFCCC negotiations, re-sults in deadlocks and different strategies and tac-tics among the negotiators. Sometimes it seems like they are totally forgetting what is at stake.

There were also several meetings to produce an interfaith manifesto/statement to next COP that will be in Warszawa in November 2013. A small working group will work on this during the year. A strong call was to have a larger youth participation from the ecumenical movement at the next COP."

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