April 2012: To help initiate online discussion ahead of the “Sustainable Development Dialogues” for civil society at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20), experts from the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Network of Global Agenda Councils have provided first responses on nine of the dialogue themes.

The compilation of their responses was released on 17 April 2012 by WEF, in an informal discussion paper, titled “The Rio+20 Multistakeholder Dialogues: First Reactions from World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council Experts.”

The paper includes responses on: sustainable development as an answer to the economic and financial crises by Gerard Lyons, Standard Chartered Bank; sustainable development for fighting poverty by John McArthur, United Nations Foundation, with support from Mark Malloch-Brown, FTI Consulting; food and nutritional security by Fan Shenggen, International Food Policy Research Institute; energy by Mark Halle, IISD, with support from Bob G. Elton, University of British Columbia; water by Stuart Orr, WWF, with support from J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue, and Jeff Seabright, The Coca Cola Company; sanitation by Sanjay Bhatnagar, WaterHealth International; the economics of sustainable development: sustainable patterns of production and consumption by Helio Mattar, Akatu Institute for Conscious Consumption; sustainable cities and innovation by Chris Luebkeman, Arup Group; unemployment, decent work and migration by Sharan Burrow, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); and oceans by Tony Haymet, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with support from Greg Stone, Conservation International.

Overall, all nine commentaries contain a focus on equity and poverty reduction. At the macro level, they include suggestions about the structural changes needed to be made to global policy institutions to reflect the shift in balance of economic and financial power. On poverty eradication, they reflect on the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and suggest a next-stage MDG programme to “get extreme poverty to zero,” which includes launching a new generation of regionally-scaled, public-private funds to support farmers. Among the experts’ suggestions is that governments and corporations invest the equivalent of 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the green economy of 12 target countries across seven industries, which they predict will create 48 million decent jobs over five years. Regarding food and water security, they recommend replicating successful initiatives, such as Brazil’s Zero Hunger Program and the Scaling Up Nutrition initiative, and increasing the role of multistakeholder partnerships such as the New Vision for Agriculture, the Water Resources Group and the Alliance for Water Stewardship.

The “Sustainable Development Dialogues” will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 16-18 June 2012, immediately preceding Rio+20. [Publication: The Rio+20 Multistakeholder Dialogues: First Reactions from World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council Experts: An Informal Discussion Paper]