Kelly Rigg: At Rio +20 the future we want means action NOW
Courtesy: Kelly Rigg
Once every 10 or 20 years, something remarkable happens. World leaders take note of the perilous state of our planet and its poorest inhabitants and think, “Good heavens, someone ought to do something about this.”
And looking around they realize, “Oh… that would be us.” So they have a Summit. Come to think of it, that’s a nice word for a conference of global leaders, with all its connotations of lofty heights and glorious achievement.
And here we go again. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, generally referred to as Rio +20, will take place in five short months. “Informal informals,” UN-speak for pre-negotiations, were held last week to debate what it is our leaders in Rio will actually decide.
Rio +20 is actually somewhat of a misnomer. It could better have been named Stockholm +40 given that the first Earth Summit — the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment — took place in Stockholm in June 1972.
I was in high school then. Astronauts had recently landed on the moon, and the image of the Earth as seen from space had become the icon of the burgeoning environmental movement. Even back then, however, governments recognized that “the environment” isn’t a single issue — it’s all tangled up with economic and social issues. To quote the Stockholm Declaration, ”the protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue which affects the well-being of peoples and economic development throughout the world.”
Read more: Huffington Post >>
About the Author
TckTckTck is the public campaign of the Global Campaign for Climate Action. The GCCA is an unprecedented alliance of more than 300 non-profit organisations from around the world. Our shared mission is to mobilize civil society and galvanize public support to ensure a safe climate future for people and nature, to promote the low-carbon transition of our economies, and to accelerate the adaptation efforts in communities already affected by climate change.View Author Profile
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