To create a tax on international financial transactions to enable the creation of a green fund responsible for the promotion of clean jobs and technologies. This was the proposal elected by around two thousand members of the civil society that participated in the discussion on the financial crisis at the Dialogues for Sustainable Development. The proposal is to be taken to the Heads of States and Governments during the Rio+20’s High Level Segment that starts on June 20.

The session was held on Saturday afternoon, June 16, and focused on the key ways to find solutions to the financial crisis, taking into account sustainable development concepts. The debate was conducted by TV Brasil’s journalist Luis Nassif, with the participation of nine Brazilian and foreign speakers from academia, business community, and NGOs.

The core of the debates was the discussion on education and how it can build a new way of thinking that includes sustainable development, even in periods of crises. Abril’s Executive President, Fabio Barbosa, defended the point that education should raise the awareness of consumers to the importance of sustainable consumption, a position that was shared by the Chinese businessman, Wang Shi, founder and president of China Vanke.

The director of the Argentinean NGO Responde, Marcela Benitez, stressed the importance of investments in this area to improve income distribution and reduce the deficits in rural areas. The Paris Institute of Political Studies’ professor, Laurence Tubiana, on the other hand, stated that there is a need to create a new developing model that includes education to reduce social inequalities.

Oxfam’s researcher, Kate Raworth, added, still, that every human being should have the necessary resources to survive, which includes access to food and education. To her, sustainable development should include these guarantees, especially to the poorest ones. “We need a way of living that respects the limits of our planet, that is, one that includes the concept of sustainability”, she explained.

South Centre’s Chief Economist, Dr. Yilmaz Akyuz, emphasized that crises are a part of the world’s economic history and that it is still not clear how to respond to this one. “If we don’t have sustainable development actions, we will not be able to stop these crises. It is necessary to change the architecture of the financial model”, he stated.

To the Inter-American Development Bank’s former president, Enrique Valentin Iglesias, the crisis is a time of challenges and opportunities. According to him, the best way to face it is to develop a critical stance that commits both the government and society to the building of a sustainable future. “The crisis forces us to reduce our capacity of committing ourselves. However, it is important that we keep the commitments we have already made to guarantee sustainable development”, he defended.

Proposals to deal with the financial crisis

Besides the proposal elected by the civil society, two other were chosen. The suggestion to promote fiscal reforms that encourage environmental protection and benefit the poorest was elected by internet voting that ended on the June 15. The speakers, on the other hand, put forward a proposal based on the evaluation made by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who participated in the session. The economist’s suggestion is that civil society should engage itself and demand from the governments adequate solutions to the implementation of sustainable development.

“We should unite ourselves to build a generation that will be committed to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. These goals inspire us to fight poverty, disease and hunger. Civil society should organize itself so that decisions are not only in the hands of governments”, stated Sachs.

The opinion was shared by Herman Mulder, Global Reporting Initiative’s president, and by Caio Koch-Weser, the Deutsche Bank Group’s vice-president. Mulder emphasized the importance of the partnership between the public and private sectors in the implementation of sustainable development’s concept in periods of crisis. Koch-Weser defended that it is needed, also, to reaffirm the green economy to achieve a new paradigm, the sustainable development one. “For this model to work there is the need of leadership by all of us, not only by the politicians”, he added.

Structure of the Dialogues

The Dialogues for Sustainable Development started on Saturday, June 16 and will go on until June 19 at Pavilion 5 of Riocentro. There will be ten rounds of discussions, with ten participants in each. They will focus on topics that have priority on the international agenda of sustainability. At each round, three proposals will be chosen, one by the speakers, one by the audience and one by the internet users.  Thirty suggestions with the most votes will be taken directly to the Heads of States and Governments attending the Conference.

The Dialogues have ten topics:

• (i) Unemployment, decent work and migration;
  
• (ii) Sustainable Development as an answer to economic and financial crises;
  
• (iii) Sustainable Development to combat hunger;
• (iv) The Economics of Sustainable Development, including sustainable standards for production and consumption;
  
• (v) Forests;
  
• (vi) Food and nutritional security;
  
• (vii) Sustainable energy for all;
• (viii) Water;
  
• (ix) Sustainable cities and innovation;
  
• (x) Oceans.