Affordable And Fair Access To Safe Water And Improved Sanitation
Policy measures aimed to deliver sustainable access to energy for all by 2030, including at least 40% of sustainable renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030, and renewable, reliable and affordable energy to those who live in energy poverty.
Urgent action is needed to protect our planet and deliver a credible vision and plan for a sustainable future. A strong and ambitious agreement must come out of Rio+20 with clear timelines and goals.
“We can build a prosperous future for people and planet, but only if everyone steps up to do their part – community leaders and heads of state, consumers and CEOs,” said Leape. “At Rio+20, we look to world leaders to come together in a shared commitment to set the world on a different path. And we look to leaders of all kinds to come together in coalitions of the committed, finding ways to drive sustainability into their regions, their industries, their cities and all of our lives.”
Valuing Nature
Rio+20 presents leaders with a pivotal opportunity to recognize and better embed the value of natural capital into our global economic development. We need to “measure what we treasure”:
– Rio+20 should deliver a set of clear, transparent and comparable indicators to measure the quality of the environment. Indicators currently exist for two of the three dimensions of sustainable development (social and economic) but not for the environment.
– Leaders in Rio should “green” Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by putting an economic value on natural capital. Companies and governments must be required to report and reflect the environmental costs of their activities into national accounts and corporate balance sheets.
Sustainable Development Goals
WWF welcomes the concept of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a means to address the critical and interlinked challenges facing the development agenda to 2030. The new goals should cover a number of priority areas such as oceans, food, water and energy and apply to all countries. The goals would be the drivers of sustainability and should clarify how the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental – depend on each other.
The SDGs would follow on from the Millennium Development Goals, which are due to end in 2015. They would need to have time-bound targets for implementation to address the challenge of food, water and energy security in the context of a healthy global environment – and have indicators that countries can put into practice according to national circumstances.
Perverse Subsidies
All subsidies that negatively impact the environment should be eliminated; particularly those that drive fossil fuel production and use, and unsustainable agriculture and fisheries. The process of elimination should include transparent annual reporting and review and should result in elimination by 2020 at the latest.
FAQs