Graham Kennedy: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Graham Kennedy: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3634. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 I rise to address the small matter of the future of the planet. While the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development did not push Tom Cruise’s marital woes off the front pages Rio+20 was none the less of passing significance to the future of humankind. In 1992 the first Earth Summit agreed on the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development Agenda 21 and framework conventions for climate change and biodiversity. But binding obligations that followed have been inadequate to meet the global challenges. In fact since 1992 we see negative progress towards the imperative of global sustainability.  
Five critical facts record a planet in decline. Global population rose from 5.5 billion to 7 billion. Our global ecological overshoot rose from 18 percent to 50 percent. Greenhouse emissions rose from 42 gigatonnes to 50. Of the nine planetary boundaries we already exceed three. Biodiversity loss has intensified to a range of 100 to 1000 times above the natural rate. Despite the action programme from the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development the global population is projected to reach 9.2 billion by 2050. Despite the Kyoto Protocol global emissions are projected to rise further to 56 gigatonnes by 2020. The voluntary pledges total half of that required for the 2-degree threshold. None of this was explicitly addressed at the Rio+20 conference. Instead we got 283 paragraphs of painfully negotiated platitudes. Let us be honest—this document will not adequately meet the global challenge.  
We actually face two crises neither of which is formally acknowledged by the international community. We face a global ecological crisis and we face a global governance crisis—the inability of the international community to properly resolve the interrelated problems. New Zealand by and large keeps its head down. We have no appetite for grim challenge under this Government. We have no readiness to take a lead. We fall back upon national platitudes about our clean green image. An image of course is just that. This Government has discreetly—lest anyone notice—reverted to the phrase “sustainable development” and the word “sustainability” again after a brief and frenzied purge in 2009. So New Zealand trotted it out again at the Rio+20 conference.  
Back in 1992 National’s then Minister for the Environment the Hon Rob Storey was moved to assert at the first Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro: “Sustainable development is the strong thread that will weave … the tapestry of our common future.” New Zealand accepted he said the need for extra financial resources for sustainable development. He said: “We have joined others in pledging our commitment to do this.” On climate change we signed the framework convention and he said: “We look forward to its … entry-into-force. International action is only effective if it is coupled with strong national action. I pledge New Zealand to such action.” And finally he said: “We have to remember that this gathering is but a first step in a journey that will take us together into the 21st century. … We need to look to the future with hope determination and commitment to change values behaviour and actions.”  
The words of National’s Amy Adams last month rang out with less passion and conviction. This is because New Zealand in the intervening time has decisively not delivered. She thought better than to acknowledge our failure to live up to the commitments we made in 1992 and that we have not yet changed our values our behaviour and our actions. She forgot to mention the global ecological overshoot of our own national footprint outpacing the global average and exceeding our share of the planet’s resourcing capacity more than twofold. Ms Adams found time to tweet on Brittany Trilford’s speech. It did not occur to her to acknowledge that with our excessive ecological footprint we are incurring permanent theft from Brittany’s generation. She failed to apologise for the fact that despite our pledge in 1992 to take strong national action our gross emissions have increased by 16 percent from 62 to 72 million tonnes. She failed to acknowledge that despite Mr Storey’s ringing promise our official development assistance percentage remained static at around 0.28 percent. We once were warriors; a proud nation attaching importance to honouring the international commitments we made. The mana of our people has since the beginning of time depended on us doing what we say we will. At Rio we failed.