It is 1145am on 1st July 2012.
And I am delighted to know that there are many persons who can articulate soundly the arguments for sustainable development, even when there are “file-pushing” bureaucrats and “self-serving” politicians who adeptly confuse the rest of us with platitudes. One such articulate , and perhaps an argumentative Indian is Dr Sunita Narain, Director-General of the Centre for Science and Environment, who has captured the dilemma of the conclusions of the Rio+20 Summit neatly, when she says – “ why the fight against the Right for Status Quo or Business As Usual of both developed and developing nations” is an important and necessary first-principle even as we agree to the other first-principle of a common but differentiated responsibility to tackle environmental challenges caused by development.
But I would like to ask Sunita and others of her ilk a question? Are we asking ourselves the right questions at Summits such as Rio+20? Perhaps, the assumptions about development and acceptance of current economic indices as representative of development, and the resulting hypothesis about environmental impact indices, themselves preclude any normative solutions; and therefore there is an immediate need that an entirely new set of economic development indices and resulting environmental impact indices need to be postulated at such conferences and experimental economies that are governed by such models be piloted under multilateral charters. Can India and China take a lead on such innovative efforts? Can organisations such as CESE become bold enough to postulate such new economic and environmental models?
Wishing you a great weekend.
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