UN Photo/Milton Grant

Keywords: Agenda 21 (1 hits),

Sustainable Development Based On Ecological, Social And Gender Justice

A proposal to the Zero Draft of the Rio Summit in 2012

Submitted by Solidaritas Perempuan (Women?s Solidarity for Human Rights)

Indonesia

Though the Rio Declaration will soon celebrate its 20th Anniversary but the world right now doesn?t reflect its success in achieving sustainable development goals. The existing development model continuously ignores the pillars of social justice and of ecological justice. Hence, it strengthened the exploitation of natural resources and people; and on the other hand it strengthened the impoverishment and injustices to environment, social lives and women.

The Rio Summit, therefore, has to reaffirm the principles of Rio Declaration of 1992, to foster consistent implementation based on principles of ecological, social and gender justice.

Social And Gender Justice Based Green Economy

Sustainable development based Green Economy will only achieve welfare for people ?women and men- whilst nurturing the environment and its natural resources if the principles of ecological, social and gender justice are integrated. The Green Economy concept should be provided in manner and languages accessible for local and indigenous peoples including the women. Those principles are as follows:

1. Principles of Ecological Justice:

· Acknowledgement that natural resources are not trade or conservation commodities but an integral aspect of human?s lives.

· Integration of local wisdom including local and indigenous women?s wisdom into the development of Green Economy

· The utilization of natural resources have to take into account the sustaining relation between human kind and environment and impacts of the utilization to lives of women and men.

2. Principles of Social Justice:

· Acknowledge and ensure the integration of principles of ecological and gender justice; democracy; accountability; transparency; welfare of peoples; respect and protect human rights including women?s human rights and rights of indigenous peoples.

· Any utilization of natural resources has to go through processes of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) particularly from peoples ?women and men- whose lives directly depending from those natural resources.

3. Principles of Gender Justice:

· Protect women?s human rights and particularly develop measures to involve women in decision makings in any development in their places

· Set-up objectives and measures to eradicate gender injustices such as discrimination, double burden, stereotype, violence, sub-ordination and marginalization against women

· Technology development for improvement of environment and fostering sustainable development should be people?s driven and accessible to people, including the women.

Governance of Sustainable Development

The good governance of sustainable development can only be carried out by implementing principles and measures as follows:

· Consistent implementation of Agenda 21 based on principles of Rio Declaration, acknowledgement of the rights of indigenous peoples, precautionary principles, common but differentiated responsibility, polluter-pays principle and to include objectives of gender justice, and furthermore, strengthen access of people to information and for public participation.

· Involvement of peoples, including women, at all levels of decision-makings at local, national, regional and international level to implement sustainable development. Military is not allowed to intervene in the implementation of sustainable development and not allowed to be executor of sustainable development.

· Development of instruments and mechanism to protect rights of peoples including rights of indigenous peoples and women?s human rights. These will include accountability mechanism for any policy, program and project of Green Economy that affect lives of peoples, their livelihood and living environment.

· Ensure that financing from International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and the regional banks (ADB, AfDB et al) is excluded from the financing of sustainable development, nor the private sector financing.

· Ensure that organizations like World Trade Organization and the kind are not involved in the development of sustainable development of the countries.