On June, 16, 2012, in the framework of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), UNENGO “MAMA-86” with the participation of NGO “Green Liberty” (Latvia), Association “For Sustainable Human Development” (Armenia) and Regional Bureau of UNEP in Europe, held the side event – an expert discussion “Assessing Sustainable Consumption and Production in Eastern Europe Countries”.

The event was attended by the recognized experts in sustainable development from regional and international organizations:

• Jan Dusik, Deputy Director of the Regional Office of UNEP in Europe;
• Janis Brizga, Head of Board of NGO “Green Liberty” (Latvia) and the Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED, Belgium);
• Karine Danielyan, Head of Association “For Sustainable Human Development” and Secretary of the National Sustainable Development Council (Armenia);
• Marta Szigeti Bonifert, Executive Director of the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe (REC, Hungary);
• Jan-Gustav Strandenaes, Senior Policy Advisor at Stakeholder Forum, and Major Groups Advisor of the UN Sustainable Development Commission.

Discussion was moderated by the Executive Director of UNENGO “MAMA-86” Zoriana Mishchuk.

The event aimed at information awareness rising of the international society on the progress of the transition to sustainable development in the region, particularly in developing and implementation of the policy of sustainable production and consumption, as well as comparative analysis of this policy in the Eastern Europe (from the Baltic states to Caucasus), identifying best practices and gaps, and providing recommendations on this basis for stakeholders to promote sustainable consumption and production, in particular, through international cooperation.

Discussion was opened by Zoriana Mishchuk, Executive Director of UNENGO “MAMA-86”, who emphasized in her welcoming speech the low level of interest in the processes of transition to sustainable development taking place in the Eastern Europe, primarily due to passivity of these countries on the international arena (both by governments and civil society organizations, which are, by the way, almost not represented at Rio+20) and the lack of successful initiatives. Discussions on the ways of implementation of sustainable development are mostly taking place in the North-South coordinates, and the region in this context so far can’t find its own place and articulate its specific interests, different from both interests of the developed and developing countries. That’s why it is so important to arise the discussion on regional progress in the context of global socio-economic and political processes within the Rio+20 Conference, as well as problems met by the countries on their way, particularly in implementation of sustainable consumption and production, and initial steps should be taken for accelerating this process.

Jan Dusik, Deputy Director of    UNEP Regional Office for Europe, in his speech underlined the high level of expectances of the negotiations results, which are being held at all levels within Rio+20. He mentioned, that in conditions of increasing resource crisis in the world, European region can be marked with the number of important positive trends in sustainable consumption and production, particularly, energy consumption decreasing and energy efficiency increasing, as well as production processes improvement in different sectors, and introducing of innovative ways for securing resource efficiency. With all of this, one of the most severe problems is still transport, intensity of use of which is constantly growing. Among the others negative trends – the increasing of fertilize use in Eastern Europe and Caucasus, which do provide productiveness increasing of agriculture, but still pollute soil and is harmful for health.

The general trend for Europe is that the EU countries exceed the level of sustainable consumption, and developing countries are catching this level of consumption. So far, resource efficiency improving offsets by the absolute consumption growth.

Jan Dusik also outlined strategic approaches of UNEP Regional Office towards current challenges in the terms of sustainable consumption and production, where the main are resource efficiency increasing, investments in effective, environmental friendly and safe ways of production, and support of consumers’ sustainable choice, as well as consultation to government in developing SCP policy and development of partnership for spreading sustainable consumption and production principles in Europe.

Discussion was continued by Zoriana Mishchuk, who presented the results of sustainable development analysis, including sustainable consumption and production, in 6 Eastern Partnership countries, made by “MAMA-86” in the partnership with independent experts from the region, as continuation of the previous researches “SCP Policy Review of Western and South Caucasus EECCA Countries” (2008) and “Towards Good Environmental Governance in the Eastern Partnership Countries” (2011). Zoriana Mishchuk also told about the common features and peculiarities which identify the SCP policy in the region, and highlighted both greatest achievements of specific countries and weaknesses and obstacles to providing transition to sustainable development, which remain the same for 20 years since The Earth Summit in Rio and 10 years since the Johannesburg Conference: primarily, the lack of complete strategic documents on sustainable development issues (including SCP) almost in all Eastern Partnership countries, and the lack of institutional mechanisms for its ensuring, as well as lack of political will for transition to sustainable development, low information awareness of population, weak understanding of “green economy” pros from stakeholders; deficiency of effective mechanisms of society engagement to decision making process and access to the information etc. In general, the following trends are typical for the EaP countries: progress in the field of environmental reforms is quite uneven and not always progressive. The public right on participation in the decision making progress and access to information according to Aarhus Convention are not always adequately provided. During the administrative reforms or deregulation the mechanism of environmental impact assessment is “lost”, and integration of environmental policy into other fields of activity remains weak.

Still, a strong desire of EaP countries to integrate into the EU leaves hope that under Brussels impact, when not by international commitments or society will to change, they will finally launch the SCP policy development process, as far as, for example, National Environmental Policy of Ukraine till 2020 was developed under the European pressure, and it already provides development of main strategic-programme documents in SCP.

Talking about Ukraine’s success towards SCP, Zoriana Mishchuk also mentioned progressive “green tariff” for renewable sources of energy, which had already caused a solar and wind power stations construction boom. Meanwhile, Ukraine still hadn’t adopted sustainable development strategy or established adequate coordinating and consultative bodies, and current administrative reform of the Ministry of Environment threatens further successful realization of environmental policy. Saving energy consumption subsidizing also puts back sustainable production development, while some increase in population income in the time of weak public awareness on alternative environmental lifestyles, and domination of consumerism culture leads to strengthening unsustainable consumption trends.

Finalizing the speech, Executive Director of “MAMA-86” told about the hopes put forward by the regional NGOs on Rio+20, in particular, the wish to see commitments, not the declarations of intentions, in the Outcome Document (as the previous experience claims, that the principle of voluntary commitments does not work in the region), implementation of Sustainable Development Goals, strengthening institutional frames for sustainable development (with the integration of national institutions to international institutional mechanisms), renewing commitments to develop strategic and political SCP documents at national and local levels and adopting 10-years SCP frames; readiness to a gradual refusal of unsustainable energy consumption subsidizing; strengthening commitments to compliance with the X Principle of Rio etc. UNENGO “MAMA-86” also expects the qualitative breakthrough towards sustainable development and SCP at the national level, with adoption of relevant strategic regulating documents and establishing effective coordinating mechanisms with wide public participation. Organization itself takes a responsibility to inform Ukrainian society about the Rio+20 results, lobby relevant policy reforms and provide monitoring of implementation of government commitments, be open to the dialogue with authorities and all stakeholders, and increase Ukrainian society awareness on SCP [principles.

The following speaker – Janis Brizga, Head of the Board of Latvian NGO “Zala Briviba” (“Green Liberty”) and Head of the Board of network organization “The Northern Alliance for Sustainability” (ANPED), which unites a number of East European NGOs, told about the progress in implementation of sustainable development principles in Baltic countries. Expert mentioned that when talking about sustainable development, Baltic region is primarily going to reach the GDP level of EU countries till 2015. Thus economic development is a priority, and environmental policy issues are secondary. Though these countries had not adopted national SCP plans and strategies, due to EU requirements, sustainable development strategies are already adopted (and already of second generation), and SCP principles are integrated to sectoral policies. In general, Baltic countries managed to achieve quite substantial improvement of the environment, and Latvia was even published among the world leaders at the pilot environment protection index by the Yale University.

Karine Danielyan, Head of Association “For Sustainable Human Development” (Armenia), continued the discussion, drawing attention to the fact that today EaP countries became the source base for more developed countries. She highlighted, - “We are trying to get out of this situation. Developed countries give us a positive example of sustainable production, and negative – regarding unsustainable consumption. Among the typical trends of the country is a weak implementation of decisions in the field of sustainable development, besides the presence of Sustainable Development Strategy of Armenia. However, the part of sustainability-striving society is increasing, and civil society plays an important role in it. From this point of view, Armenia demonstrates a positive example of National Sustainable Development Council activity, which is used as a platform for NGOs and Government cooperation (for example, Prime Minister is the Head of Council, and Miss Danielyan is the Secretary).

For today, in the expert’s opinion, the main question remains an objective assessment of countries’ progress towards sustainable development, particularly, development and implementation of effective system of sustainable development indexes.

Marta Szigeti Bonifert, Executive Director of Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe (REC, Hungary) shared organization’s experience in the field of sustainable development principles dissemination, particularly SCP policy development, in the region, and shortly summed up key challenges and tasks if front of Eastern Partnership countries, and expressed her expectations for opportunity of using REC experience for further reform implementation in the region.

Summing up the discussion, Jan-Gustav Strandenaes, Senior Advisor at Stakeholder Forum and Major Groups Advisor of UN Sustainable Development Commission underlined the need to understand the challenges met by humans in XXI century, to make the decisions which help to promote sustainable development. On this way, the importance of information for adequate understanding of situation in region is rising. Mr. Strandenaes also touched upon the questions of institutional frames for ensuring voluntary commitments taken by governments, NGOs and international institutions within Rio+20. In his concluding speech he remarked that much will depend from how world society manage to join efforts to implement solutions of Rio+20 after the Conference.

According to the organizers’ expectations, the discussion will promote further interest to challenges and tasks of the region in transition to sustainable development, and give an impulse for the development of new initiatives and partnerships, aimed at implementation of sustainable consumption and production principles in the societies of Eastern Europe.