It's a shame so many western leaders are skipping the Rio earth summit; they have a lot to learn from Latin American nations.
Twenty years after the first UN Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, politicians, academics and NGOs will return for Rio+20, for a major summit on sustainable development.
Yesterday, we learned Barack Obama will not head up the American delegation. He is not alone, David Cameron and Angela Merkel have also decided to skip the event. This in spite of how far western economies currently are from delivering sustainable development.
The New Economics Foundaion's (Nef) Happy Planet Index, published this week, ranks countries by the extent to which they deliver long, happy, sustainable lives for their citizens. The Index uses global data on life expectancy, experienced well-being and ecological footprint to calculate this and gives a clear picture on which nations perform best. Of 151 countries analysed, the US ranks 105th. The UK does best out of EU countries, but still comes out at 41 globally, with France and Germany not far behind. How is it, with their typically high life expectancies and experienced well-being, that western nations have performed so badly?
A quick comparison of Costa Rica and the US tells us why. Costa Ricans live longer on average and report being happier than their North American equivalents, yet the country's ecological footprint is one third the size of the US's. America's growing consumption is costing the planet dearly, and it's not even making people live longer, let alone feel happier.
In fact, of the nine countries closest to achieving sustainable well-being, eight are in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil beats Germany, Colombia outranks the UK and Argentina is more sustainable than Ireland.
This isn't coincidental. The indifference of western leaders to the Rio summit stands in stark contrast to the changing attitudes in those nations that top the Happy Planet Index. Unlike the UK, where Chancellor George Osborne freely claims environmentalism risks "putting our country out of business", Costa Rica has embraced sustainability in its national policies. The developing nation produces 99% of all its energy from renewable sources and has halted deforestation within its borders. In 2008 it pledged to go carbon neutral by 2021, alongside Norway, New Zealand and Iceland.
That is not to say it is mission complete just yet. Costa Rica's ecological footprint is still larger than it would need to be for it to live within its fair share of planetary resources, as well as considerably overshooting its own biocapacity. However, this too holds a lesson for the rest of the world – the ecological footprint measure used here is based on consumption patterns, and the goods consumed by many in Costa Rica will have been produced in other countries at considerable environmental cost. One nation alone cannot achieve sustainability.
Those who focus solely on the size of GDP as a measure of a country's success ignore the fact that the way western nations live is not efficient. Unfortunately, it looks like those with the most to learn from Rio this month have decided to bury their heads in the sand.