Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC Though it received very little media attention the failure of the 19th Session of the UN Commission On Sustainable Development (CSD) to reach an agreement on May 14th 2011, on a series of environmental and development issues is a major set-back for global diplomacy.  The CSD emerged in 1992 from the United Nations Conference on Environment and  Development (UNCED), popularly known as the “Rio Earth Summit.” Since 2003 the CSD cycle [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC (May 11, 2011) Yesterday I gave an account of the intervention at the High Level Segment of the Irish Minister for the Environment Local Government and Community. Other interventions were also important. The Argentine minister spoke for the G-77/China. She stressed the importance of improving transport, especially in rural areas. She also called for the poverty eradication. She challenged transnational corporations (TNCs) to apply the same environmental and health standards which [...]

Rev. Seán McDonagh, SSC The high-level Segment of the 19th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) began on May 11, 2011, at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations.  The chairperson Mr. László Borbély, the Minister of Environment and Forests of Romania, opened the meeting by welcoming the ministers from the various countries who have come to conclude negotiations on the themes of the conference. These include transport, chemical, waste management, [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC The discussion on mining continued on Tuesday May 10th 2011, under the leadership of Yvette Banzon Abalos.  She challenged the various delegates to be more focused on the Chair’s text, rather than introducing their own new amendments. There was a long discussion on what is called small scale or artisanal mining (ASM). An agreement was reached that this should “be in accordance with national legislation,” and “subject to national priorities.”  As [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC May 9th 2011. The second week of the 19th Session of the UN Commission on Development began on Monday morning, May 9, 2011 at 10 am. During the Stock-Taking Plenary on Friday May 6th 2011, the chair, László Borbély, Environment Minister in Romania, congratulated the negotiators for their hard work during the first week.  Under the stewardship of the chairs of the various Working Groups most of the texts on the [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC During the first week of May 2011, the Pontifical Academy of Science released a report on the potentially devastating impact of climate change. The Working Group which consisted of glaciologists, climate scientists, meteorologists, hydrologists, physicists, chemists, mountaineers and lawyers was co-chaired by Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Nobel laureate Paul Cruzen. Though initially their focus was on glaciers, the study was expanded to include the impact on climate change of anthropogenic emissions of [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC In the past, the ascetic tradition of various religions sometimes seemed to be motivated by a denial of the value of the world.  Often salvation was presented as removing humans from the natural world, as if somehow matter itself was tainted, and could not in any way be associated with the world of the spirit. Manichaeism depicted the world as radically deficient and that even the human body is somehow evil.  [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC We have reached the end of the first week of the 19th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).  The texts for the four themes of the this cycle  – mining, transport, management of chemicals and waste and the need to change unsustainable patterns of consumption and production – have been discussed and changed as a result of interventions from the U.S. EU, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Israel, the Group [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC The World Summit one Sustainable Development (WSSD) which met in Johannesburg in 2002 called for A 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production. The 19th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainably Development in May 2011, is also addressing this issue. The scale of the crisis in this area was highlighted by a Report from the WorldWatch Institute called, The State of the World Report 2010. The Report was [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) claims that it offers the world one of the most open and participatory intergovernmental processes on sustainable issues.  It believes that the original mandate given at the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio in the Agenda 21 text was re-affirmed at the UN Summit on Sustainability in Johannesburg in 2002. The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) and the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development called for CSD [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh In my article yesterday, I outlined some of the factors which led to the setting up of The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Even before that global event, a small group of thinkers were beginning to ask the question, whether there are upper limits to the Earth’s capacity to cope with human activity?  One of the first books to systematically address the [...]

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC The 19th session of the UN Commission on SustainableDevelopment opened on May 2, 2011 and will continue until May 13th 2011. The word “sustainability” became part of the vocabulary of many missionaries and development workers in the wake of the publication of deliberations of the UN Commission on Environment and Development in a book called “Our Common Future.”  The book is often called the Brundtland Report after the name of the [...]