Rio plus Ten: Politics, Poverty, and Environment

Rio plus Ten: Politics, Poverty, and Environment, by Neil Middleton and Phil O'Keefe. London: Pluto Press. 2003. Paper, ISBN 0745319548, $22.50; hardback, ISBN 0745319556202, $75.00. 216 pages.

Rio plus Ten: Politics, Poverty, and the Environment by Neil Middleton and Phil O'Keefe is an analysis

of various international commissions, conferences, and summits on sustainable development, particularly in relation to the prioritization of two central and inseparable issues: the environment and poverty. They argue that a purely environmental agenda frequently ignores the needs and rights of the poor. Since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) held in Stockholm in 1972, both the environment and poverty have received a great deal of attention. However, most of the efforts have been devoted to attacking the causes of environmental damage, which are often also the causes of poverty. The two principal summits with which the book concerns itself are the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the original earth summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg in 2002. The chapters examine the effectiveness of the policies as seen in the principal documents emerging from these two summits which are fundamentally designed to address a host of contemporary issues related to the politics and economics of pursuing poverty alleviation through sustainable means. They also examine the role of hegemonic relationships and politics of power play particularly that of the United States and large corporations in the energy sector which shape various agreements reached at these summits.

The authors begin with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which drew national and international attention to environmental degradation. Poverty and its connection to the environment began drawing attention with the UNCHE in 1972. While this vital link was forged, the means to overcome the problems are considered to be the problem. That is, the authors fault the international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) for buying into the notion that economic growth pursued by structurally transforming societies into market-led economies is a necessary precondition to alleviating poverty, which leads to the subsequent condemnation of the WSSD by the INGOs. The book tries to make the case that it is in fact these "demands of finance capital" that are directly responsible for both the creation and maintenance of poverty.

The first two chapters will be discussed distinctly, and the rest of the chapters are treated as a continuum of ideas as they pertain largely to applied policy in the areas of water and energy.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter reviews the origins of UNCED and the WSSD, which has its beginnings in the landmark Brundtland report on sustainable development and the Stockholm conference of 1972. The centrality of the UNCED lies in Agenda 21, the primary framework constructed by the UNCED which provided both basic guidelines to INGOs, governments, and multilateral agencies and a document for local initiatives to address issues of poverty and unequal development. Agenda 21 sought to address issues of poverty and unequal development by focusing on expanding market-based opportunities of small local communities in developing countries. Other influential bodies subsequently came into being to oversee, manage, and implement Agenda 21. The authors make the case that while Rio had the effect of politicizing environmental issues, it primarily helped to redirect our attention to sustainability from the perspective of the interconnectedness between poverty and the environment. The three significant studies-Branch Points, Bending the Curve, and Great Transition by the Global Scenario Group-examine the concept of sustainability from manifold perspectives and offer scenarios of balancing the goals of development and the environment and make proposals for future action to achieve sustainability. The means and processes of addressing and overcoming the gamut of intertwined problems such as political unrest, global violence, malnutrition and famine, and population pressures among others shapes the very notion of sustainability.

The second chapter, which is entitled "What Did They Agree," not only lacks thematic coherence but is also missing a preposition in its title. It moves between various topics to explain why the agreements at the WSSD were compromises, stated in its opening sentence, but fails to carry the theme through in the rest of the chapter. The main topics that the chapter revolves around are (1) the view that the various parties involved in the WSSD tried not to upset U.S. interests in order to avoid risking the loss of much-needed finance capital vital for LDCs, (2) the Iraq war and interplay of interest groups, (3) INGOs' reaction to the outcomes of the summit, and (4) key outcomes of the summit. While the issues raised in this chapter are all fundamental to discussions of sustainability, the chapter lacks cohesiveness and continuity.

Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to the use and availability of two key resources: water and energy. These two resources are often the source of political conflicts both within national and across international borders. The chapter on water draws significant causal linkages between population pressure, health, sanitation, hygiene and larger structural issues such as the capitalist transformation of agriculture and ensuing changes in cropping patterns and also political dimensions of the use and control of water as seen in the Israel-Palestine conflict. These issues are discussed in the context of sustainable development of water resources. The Declaration on Sustainable Development-and the Plan of Implementation's intent to make clean water and sanitation a priority in their agenda to eradicate poverty-hinges on tackling specific regional issues related to water. This can largerly be achieved through partnerships between public and private bodies and INGOs. Such partnerships have been formed to implement the plan as part of the millennium development goals (MDGs) both in the case promoting clean water and development of renewable sources of energy production, as part of the plan to eradicate poverty. The role of special interests, for example, the oil lobby and large agribusinesses in such partnerships, is seen as contributing to the very poverty of international protocols. The authors draw a much-needed and convincingly strong link between the inability of INGOs and policy makers to think outside the paradigm of neoliberal thought in dealing with issues of poverty and sustainable development. The authors argue that such partnerships between public and private bodies in the implementation of MDGs are seen by INGOs and governments as a way to make all parties happy, the largest part of which happens to be international finance capital, in other words, the internationally mobile corporate world. Issues related to agriculture in much of the developing world, for instance, must be discussed in the context of livelihood and food security as opposed to the capitalist transformation of agriculture, especially if poverty eradication is a goal, which it is in the case of the MDGs. However, as is evident from the Implementation Plans of the Declaration on Sustainable Development, the approach taken to eradicate poverty is by creating economic growth with a distinctly export-oriented posturing. Such single-minded neoliberal policies serve as testimony to the poverty of these protocols.

This book makes a crucial contribution to the discussion of sustainability from the perspective of the summits that try to bring together all the players involved and thus reach agreements that will shape various production, consumption, and livelihood activities in the future. However, I think there are some inherent structural and organizational problems that make the book rather taxing to read. The book moves abruptly between discussions of multiple topics and thus makes it unfocused at times. The book assumes that its readers have prior knowledge, especially of the various parties involved in these summits. Excerpts from the book can be used in a variety of courses in development studies and political economy as an applied topic to discuss the role of these summits on the politics and economics of sustainable development.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Tara Natarajan

Saint Michael's College, Vermont