Council for Economic and Social Development /
European Economic and Social Committee

EESC-2014-05396-00-00-TCD-TRA (PT) 1/7

EIGHTH MEETING OF THE EUROPEAN UNION-BRAZIL

CIVIL SOCIETY ROUND TABLE

Brasilia, 15 and 16 September 2014

Final Declaration

The EU-Brazil Civil Society Round Table is a permanent body for dialogue and cooperation between the civil societies of Brazil and the EU, as represented by the Brazilian Council for Economic and Social Development (CDES) and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). It contributes to the consolidation of relations between Brazil and the European Union within the EU-Brazil Strategic Partnership established in 2007.
The Round Table held its eighth meeting in Brasilia on 15 and 16 September 2014. At this meeting, a working session took place where both parties presented documents on Knowledge Mobility. Following this, a preliminary debate took place around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). An initial session debated the SDGs as a whole while the last two sessions provided an in-depth focus on specific elements of the SDGs: indicators beyond GDP and urban mobility.

On knowledge mobility

The Round Table

1.considers that the question of mobility is growing in importance in line with the advance of globalisation, which has brought about greater exchange between nations as capital, goods, services and people move;

2.highlights the importance of distinguishing between the concepts of information and knowledge. Information entails contact with concrete realities, without necessarily gaining an awareness of their creation, processes or purposes. The importance of knowledge about facts should be neither under- nor over-estimated. Knowledge is in itself a dynamic process, linked to action, which has at every stage of human history spread from land to land, passing between men and women of different cultures and know-how. Ultimately, only sharing allows an individual's knowledge to become human knowledge. This distinction is important at a time when technologies and access to information are assuming such importance;

3.recognises that knowledge generates innovation and can be an engine for the improvement of well-being in society. To this end, the international mobility of technical knowledge, know-how, products, brands and cultural and aesthetic values must be put at the service of solidarity, justice, social well-being and social cohesion around the world. Diversity, and the commitment to promoting fairness between individuals and regions, must be given their proper value. Knowledge mobility has to be an instrument to serve humankind in stepping up the fight against all forms of social exclusion;

4.considers that the connectivity produced by globalisation provides as much potential as risks, but that it is possible to harness it in such a way as to maximise social well-being. To this end, artistic and cultural variety must be disseminated everywhere, so that globalisation can serve as a factor for enrichment rather than imposing uniformity. Institutions will have to be capable of simultaneously taking on board globalisation and specific regional characteristics, producing context-appropriate knowledge and training individuals capable of grasping the tasks at hand and acting within this complex and changing reality;

5.considers that education for all and a high quality of teaching, research and innovation are crucial stages in knowledge mobility and recommends improvements to the legislation governing curriculum content and systems for accreditation and recognition of qualifications awarded in other countries;

6.believes that international cooperation in the fields of science, technology and innovation is a recent development and that collective work at national, regional and international level must be supported, particularly in the areas of energy, health and agriculture. Knowledge mobility needs to be implemented not only in the academic and educational sphere, but also by means of research in companies, other social organisations and international technological/industrial cooperation networks. International cooperation should also include cultural and artistic exchanges;

7.supports academic freedom, without implying a breach between academia and the economic and social sectors. Closer links and coordination between higher education institutions and the private sector regarding R+D+I matters should be stimulated and encouraged by governments, taking account of the definition of a development strategy;

8.underlines that the internet is crucial to knowledge mobility and that promoting open educational resources, through the provision of virtual courses provided free of charge by reputed universities and international institutions, is an outstanding initiative that must be encouraged;

9.considers that we must build on the current stage of relations between Brazil and the European Union, and that the challenges to knowledge mobility such as communication barriers, the differences in education systems, the regulatory framework governing intellectual property, and infrastructure reciprocity for student and research mobility must be faced if a lasting partnership is to be built between the EU countries and Brazil;

10.considers that respect for intellectual property is in itself legitimate, but must not block access to essential goods for a large part of humankind and must therefore be subject to wide-ranging and in-depth debate in the appropriate forums;

11.highlights the importance of international policies being coordinated to guarantee appropriate working conditions and social protection for teachers, researchers, students and other knowledge workers joining mobility programmes;

12.acknowledges that migration policy must be reviewed and visas for students, researchers and teachers facilitated, cutting through the red tape that hampers the mobility of these actors and, consequently, knowledge mobility; and

13.points to the crucial importance of tackling the brain drain by means of policies encouraging teachers, students and researchers to return to their countries of origin. Under no circumstances must knowledge mobility become a means of maintaining or widening the current asymmetries in the ability to make use of knowledge.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The Round Table

14.recalls that the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - Rio+20 ratified the need to promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), embodied in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, in the wake of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);

15.is aware that, in spite of the progress brought about by the SDGs, extreme poverty continues to affect almost a billion people around the world. Because of its links with other priority areas of sustainable development (decent work, high-quality health and education, energy, cities and sustainable agriculture, food and nutritional security, water, access to financial services and production inputs, access to land, etc.), abolishing poverty demands advances across many fronts: economic, social, environmental, etc.;

16.emphasises that poverty is always accompanied by obstacles in the way of access to social rights and fulfilment of citizenship. Ending poverty must be approached from the point of view of equality, which means that active policies, including social protection policy, are essential and act as guarantors of citizenship;

17.highlights the importance of the negotiation process on SDGs, which it considers one of the most ambitious international negotiations ever and a paradigm shift in the way we view development. It supports the work done by the Open Working Group, particularly the Outcome Document and the definition of seventeen goals;

18.endorses the universal dimension of SDGs and the participation of all countries that this represents, which will contribute to the establishment of a truly global partnership for this transformational project. The targets must be transparent, with agreed deadlines, and must be adjusted in line with the conditions of each country;

19.calls for the continued involvement of civil society in the deliberations that will continue to take place around SDGs in the coming year, and calls for civil society to be awarded a central role in the monitoring and evaluation of these goals in the future;

20.supports the continuous commitment to end hunger and the provisions on food and nutritional security as well as the right to food and water, without which no poverty reduction will be possible;

21.recognises the importance of including targets concerning social rights, particularly goals one, eight and ten on poverty reduction, full and productive employment and decent work, together with inequality reduction, as they represent a key element in building inclusion and social justice;

22.considers the inclusion of goal five on gender equality to be essential, as it should be central to the equal rights agenda. It also welcomes the renewed emphasis on health and well-being and inclusive and equitable education as they are the pillars on which sustainable development will be built;

23.is convinced that the SDGs must serve as a tool to assist countries in approaching the challenges of climate change;

24.supports the inclusion of SDG seven as a major improvement with respect to the MDGs as it holds that sustainable energy must be available to all;

25.argues that there must be a fair process of transition towards a new, more inclusive and sustainable development model that safeguards jobs and workers' rights;

26.points to the importance of promoting and developing sustainable patterns of production and consumption by means of value chains that are inclusive (from the point of view of technology, logistics and access to information) both between small and large companies and between countries with differing levels of development;

27.calls for democracy and human rights to be given prominence in the Post-2015 Agenda, as it considers them key elements in establishing open and inclusive societies that promote public accountability and combat corruption;

28.reaffirms the strategic role of states and of public resources in guaranteeing the SDGs, underlining the importance of the private sector in leveraging funds and creating jobs and its role in instruments for financing such as certain public-private partnerships;

29.sees the definition of implementing measures for the SDGs to be an important question for discussion, since without a global partnership the poorest nations will be unable to achieve the goals. It recognises that a wide variety of means for implementing the SDGs must be mobilised including domestic and international resources, international trade, the private sector, capacity building and technological cooperation. A concerted effort will be necessary in all these areas for the SDGs to be a success. In addition, Official Development Assistance (ODA) must continue to play an important role with regard to the goals and, without detriment to the other complementary measures, the Round Table calls on developed nations to uphold their commitment to earmarking 0.7% of Gross National Income (GDI) for ODA;

30.recognises the need for reform of the international financial institutions, so that their members are better represented and their work as actors for cooperation and development is enhanced. Macroeconomic coordination mechanisms ensuring world financial stability are also worthwhile aims that should be discussed in connection with the SDGs;

31.calls on our respective political authorities to work together and play a leadership role in the final negotiations on SDGs over the next year; and

32.undertakes to step up cooperation between the CDES and the EESC in monitoring the SDG negotiation process by promoting information sharing and issuing joint declarations, and undertakes to set up monitoring mechanisms with the participation of civil society within the European Union and Brazil, and to share their experiences with other countries.

On indicators beyond GDP under the SDG framework

The Round Table

33.considers the current attention given to GDP to be an obstacle rendering slower our transition towards a more inclusive and sustainable development model;

34.underlines the need to define other ways of measuring countries' progress in order to assess sustainable development, combining economic performance, social well-being and the quality of the environment. In addition to GDP, the environmental assets and services involved in producing goods and services, physical and cultural heritage, the degree of distribution of national income, capital depreciation, and people's access to public services (including health, education and urban mobility) must be taken into consideration;

35.considers defining indicators for their targets to be one of the main challenges facing the SDGs, with greater attention needing to focus on the availability of data and the production of robust, reliable and high-quality information. It calls for the international community to focus efforts on building up international, regional and national statistics;

36.acknowledges the linkages between the 'Beyond GDP' debate and the definition of SDGs, and considers that much of what has been attained already by the respective societies will support the implementation of the SDGs in the future;

37.calls on the Brazilian and EU political authorities to fully integrate the upcoming SDGs into their policies, implementing national strategies in order to achieve them. Where the EU is concerned, the EU 2020 Strategy should take the SDGs fully into account so that it becomes truly sustainable, strengthening its holistic approach by combining economic targets with social and environmental ones, without neglecting future generations, as Article3 of the Treaty on European Union emphasises;

38.notes that in spite of the success achieved in defining indicators that go beyond GDP, they currently receive limited attention and have fallen short in the goal of contesting GDP's hegemony. They must be promoted with the full support of society, which will encourage governments to pursue policies that maximise well-being; and

39.calls on the respective political authorities to intensify efforts to draw up new social and sustainability indicators, particularly in the context of the upcoming SDGs, to identify and promote instances of best practice around the world, and to involve civil society organisations.

On urban mobility as an SDG

The Round Table

40.underlines the crucial importance of sustainable urban mobility in the future of development. In 1960, 34% of the population lived in cities, a figure which now stands at 54% and is projected to rise to 70% by 2050. This, coupled with the fact that transportation is, after energy production, the sector responsible for the most CO2 emissions, means urban mobility challenges are going to represent an increasingly important issue in the years to come;

41.notes that both our respective societies face significant urban mobility challenges such as air and noise pollution, economic bottle-necks and road fatalities;

42.would return to the guideline laid down at its Seventh Meeting concerning the establishment of urban and rural mobility programmes, guaranteeing investment in public transport, accessibility and non-motorised transport. Funding must be mobilised to promote research and innovation as well as pilot projects that can provide solutions to urban mobility challenges through ICT, transport and energy management;

43.supports the inclusion of goal eleven on cities in the final document of the Open Working Group on SDGs, as well as specific targets on safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable urban transport;

44.underlines the importance of sustainable urban mobility plans, based on local community-led urban development, as a blueprint for transport in inland cities, moving beyond sectoral approaches to a broader approach that takes account of the specific structural characteristics of each city and new demographic movements, together with other aspects of city planning such as health and environmental planning. Such plans must promote mass public transport, safe cycling, walking and intermodal transport mixes;

45.underlines the importance of thinking about land-use policy in the context of urban planning, taking account of the distribution of economic activities and residential areas, in order to bring job opportunities, access to public services and leisure activities closer to where people live;

46.stresses that it is important for the direct and indirect costs of individual car use to be quantified, measured and disseminated in comparison with public transport and non-motorised mode solutions. A transparent system of information and a set of urban mobility indicators are key to better understanding and involvement on the part of civil society and managers in decision-making on public policies;

47.calls on the EU and Brazil to promote the reduction of CO2 emissions from transport in our cities and work towards achieving the aim of carbon-free cities. In this respect, it urges the promotion of renewable-fuel, low carbon or carbon-free vehicles, green procurement for city logistics, regulation of urban access if necessary, and Intelligent Transport Systems;

48.recognises that urban mobility difficulties are also a reflection of social inequalities, as they disproportionately restrict the employment, study and leisure opportunities of lower-income groups. It therefore urges the EU and Brazil to ensure that all progress in mobility is inclusive and egalitarian and asks that particular attention be paid to access for people with reduced mobility and people with less economic means;

49.calls on the EU and Brazil to explore options for cooperation as part of their strategic partnership, particularly in research and innovation, and on environmental and sustainable development issues; and

50.undertakes to strengthen our cooperation and information-sharing in order to learn from initiatives in our respective societies and build on those that are successful and replicable.

The present final declaration will be presented to the Brazilian and EU political authorities and forwarded to the next meeting of the Summit of EU-Brazil Heads of State and Government.

The Round Table has decided to hold its ninth meeting in Europe in the second half of 2015. The main items on the agenda will be the contribution of small and medium-sized enterprises to the SDGs, the monitoring mechanisms of the SDGs, and sustainable urbanisation.

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EESC-2014-05396-00-00-TCD-TRA (PT) 1/7