UNITED NATIONS -- Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs arrived ready to rumble yesterday during a daylong U.N. debate on the troubled Rio+20 talks coming next month. He slammed international environmental treaties and urged delegates to sharpen their goals for the summit in Brazil.

Sachs, the director of Columbia's Earth Institute and often a provocative figure, told diplomats here during a General Assembly gathering that the Rio de Janeiro conference is doomed if it follows the model of past U.N. conferences that produced high-level treaties.

Sachs said "the single most important outcome" in Rio would be adoption of sustainable development goals in the post-2015 period that would form core organizing principles to be implemented in years to come. In the same breath, he argued against trying to define too many of the technical details that would help nations achieve green economies and solve poverty, saying that work would follow.

Sachs specifically took issue with the treaties that emerged from Rio 20 years ago during the first Earth Summit there. He bluntly said those treaties -- including the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity -- have failed to live up to their initial promise.

"They did not mobilize society," he said. "They mobilized lawyers."

He went on to argue for a new approach that would depart from recent climate change talks, so that diplomats might stop bickering about "what's binding, what isn't binding, what's verifiable, what's not verifiable."

"We are not aiming, in my opinion, at binding legal definitions," he said. "This is not a job for lawyers and negotiations and, with all respect, diplomats. It can't be viewed as a narrow negotiation."

Entering 'a very complicated moment'

Sachs added that the Rio conference has entered what he called "a very complicated moment with just four weeks to go" because officials here are still struggling to forge an agreement on the summit's official agenda. Like others present here, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Sachs was critical of a pre-Rio planning process that saw the agenda document leap from 19 pages months ago to more than 200 (Greenwire, May 22).

"We cannot solve the problems of the world economy four weeks from now," he said. "All we can do is make a framework."

Ban took a similar line, telling the General Assembly it was in danger of letting "a microscopic examination of text blind us from the big picture." His response will be to release a "streamlined" agenda document, which was not yet available at press time.

"The current pace of negotiations is sending all the wrong signals," Ban said.

The streamlined document is expected to come directly from Rio+20 Secretary-General Sha Zukang, who has called the current iteration of the outcome document a "far cry from the 'focused political document' called for by the General Assembly." This streamlining appears to mean senior officials will decide themselves what is on the Rio agenda and possibly dismiss many of the proposals in the 200-page version.

Among the ideas on the table are the elimination of fossil-fuel subsidies, elevation of the U.N. Environment Programme to a World Environment Organization, doing away with gross domestic product as the key measure of national economic growth, encouraging a doubling of renewable energy and technology transfer, and a number of sustainable development goals and finance measures.

Defining sustainable development goals

Just what is meant by sustainable development goals is still unclear, but Sachs tried to shed some light on the concept. He compared the idea to the eight Millennium Development Goals, which include halving extreme poverty and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

Sachs said those goals -- called "MDGs" in U.N.-speak -- have become recognizable to schoolchildren in the developing world, serving as a kind of marketing framework to prod development in a certain direction. He thinks sustainable development goals (SDGs) can do the same.

"Each year, they pick up more weight, not less weight," he said of MDGs. "We don't need a compendium in hundreds of pages, nor do we need new international law. ... Let's not make this so hard, ladies and gentlemen."

The reaction to Sachs' push for broad themes over detailed specifics was largely met with support by those present. Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre in Geneva, said at this late stage it would be more effective and media-savvy to set realistic goals for Rio rather than shoot for the moon and fail.

"In Rio, we can launch the program and goals," he said. "We can frame it that we are about to launch and embark on a big program."

He added: "If we do not have time, let us not raise expectations around the world."

What Khor would like to see emerge, however, is a solution for the institutional framework that would implement the SDGs. Many here believe UNEP, for instance, lacks enough teeth to do the work, so Khor wants delegates in Rio to at the least "create a mechanism" so that MDGs and SDGs can be linked.

"Who knows," he said, "sometime in the future, the two trains may meet together in the Grand Central station in New York."

Concern about the media's take on Rio's results

Brice Lalonde, executive coordinator of Rio+20, called Sachs' idea "a fantastic new aim," but he still seemed to bristle at the suggestion that the conference would not produce a major document to be signed June 22 with much fanfare by heads of state.

"I'm concerned what's going to be in the newspaper on the 23rd of June," he said, in reference to the day after the Rio summit ends. "It would probably be even better if we agreed on one or two things."

Steven Bernstein, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, said he would at least like to see an agreement extending the authority of UNEP. Rather than actually turning UNEP into a specialized environmental agency with a global charter, he suggested simply changing the name.

Bernstein said changing UNEP into the U.N. Environment Organization on paper would avoid inflating its authority, which is opposed by many smaller nations, while increasing its regional presence with more money through the U.N. budget or voluntary contributions.

"There is a mountain to be climbed in terms of a sustainable-development follow-up body" after Rio, he added, and suggested the creation of a sustainable development council or other high-level political body. Approving a set of SDGs "only makes sense if there is a clear lead follow-up review body," he said.

For his part, Brazilian Ambassador Luiz Figueiredo Machado previewed much the same narrowing of views in his address, saying each member nation would ultimately "find its path to sustainable development" through its own sovereign priorities.

"Governments can do very little," he said. "Society is the main actor."

Some activists have also been saying that Rio is a chance to depart from the model of recent U.N. climate change conferences to focus on private industry and more than 600 planned side events -- to produce a "cloud of commitments" rather than firm directives.

"Nothing will be achieved if we do not inspire civil society," Figueiredo said.

Sullivan is based in New York.