Other critics have re-named the summit "Rio–20", since no progress at all has been made since the Earth Summit in the same city in 1992, when three important conventions were adopted on climate change, biodiversity and desertification. Yet, despite their noble ambitions, these conventions have failed miserably in reversing the negative global environmental trends: since 1990, yearly emissions of carbon dioxide have increased 45 % and soon the atmospheric concentration will pass 400 ppm, to be compared with the 280 ppm pre-industrial rate. The extinction rate of species today is alarmingly high with some 30 % of amphibians, 21 % of birds and 25 % of mammal species at risk. The fight against desertification is also being lost, with the percentage of degraded land area rising from 15 % in 1991 to 24 % in 2008.
Stated goals to reduce the ecological and carbon footprint and at the same time improve life for the billions who still lack basic resources cannot be achieved while simultaneously maintaining growth for those who already live in prosperity.
But if the 1992 Rio Summit convention was too little too late, at least it still remotely mustered some global political ambition for dealing with the ecological crises. The same cannot be said of any global environmental agreements since. The 2012 Rio declaration, ironically called "The future we want", is nothing but a political surrender to the forces of ecological destruction that now put human civilization as we know it at stake.
From a geopolitical perspective the negotiation stalemate is doubtlessly caused by the inaction of the developed countries in the North. Even though their population is only one fifth of the worlds’, their accumulated carbon emissions amount to 75 % of the total. Similar figures for ecological footprints inexorably reveals who has caused – and benefited from – environmental degradation, and who therefore should be obliged to take the lead – and pay the costs – towards a global green transition. Twenty years ago, this obligation was acknowledged through the adoption of the "common but differentiated responsibilities" principle 7 in Rio 1992. But since the North has never fulfilled its assignment – definitely not the US, with the EU being only slightly better – it is completely unrealistic that countries such as China, India, Brazil or South Africa would put their partly successful catch-up development at risk for cleaning up the mess caused by others.
Seen from an economic system perspective, the ecological crises reveal a crisis for the development model of both North and South. Inherent in the notion of "sustainable development" – launched in the 1987 Brundtland Report and the foundation for all mainstream environment policy since then – lies the promise of green growth, of constant win-win solutions between ecology and economy, that simply has not been met in reality. Not in the classic industrialization development formula, not in the private profit-maximizing structural adjustment neoliberalism, and not in the financial market approach of the so-called "green economy" that was the flavor of the month in Rio 2012. While never clearly defined, green economy usually refers to attempts at "internalizing the environmental externalities" through the objectification and commodification of ecosystems (reduced to their "environmental services"). These newly minted services can then be bought, traded or securitized as any other financial commodities.