Towards the Rio+20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, UNCSD has communicated the idea of drafting a document as a basis for negotiation on sustainable development issues on the coming June 2012. The document is called as Zero Draft Document, which contains all inputs from respective stakeholders in regards to green economy in the context of sustainable development to eradicate poverty and on the institutional framework on sustainable development.

In respect to that, UNCSD (United Nation Conference on Sustainable Development), along with other UN agencies, gave the opportunity to all respective stakeholders to contribute by submitting their inputs on both issues. All inputs will then be compiled to develop the Zero Draft Document that will be done in December 2011. The respective stakeholders are member states, major groups (there are 9 categories for major groups; one of it is NGOs), United Nations agencies and others.

In such context, IESR as one of the major groups has given its inputs to the UNCSD secretariat in regards to the Rio+20 issues. IESR sees the urge for Rio+20 to come up with concrete decision and also doable implementation steps which are highly supported by the political commitment from each member states to implement it.

IESR also thinks that the most crucial aspect to be solved deals with energy poverty. Whereas energy poverty is not merely because of economy condition, but also because of lack of (or even none of) access to descent energy services facilities. IESR also sees that the energy issues must be solved by fully adopting clean energy technologies, emphasizing non-coal and non-nuclear technologies. IESR thinks that optimum renewable energy utilization must be enforced. This can be done by phasing the fossil fuel subsidies out and/or to reform the existing fossil fuel subsidies. The fossil fuel subsidies are basically affected the development of renewable energy in every country. Because surely, the price of energy services generated from fossil fuel are much lower than those generated by renewable energy. As the result, the world will be more highly depending on fossil fuel, which is of course would lead to excessive greenhouse gases emissions that will worsen the impact of climate change.

In order to establish the renewable energy facilities, alternative financing scheme should be developed. The scheme should adopt the principle of transparancy, accountability, and practicability, and should be accessible to all. Aside from that a global technology transfer program that can be accessed equally, should also be established.

IESR’s submission can be viewed from UNCSD website.