The real challenge for Rio+20

• by Don de Silva
• Tuesday, May 15, 2012
• Inter Press Service

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, will be held in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22 to assess the implementation of the resolutions of the Earth Summit of 1992, writes Don de Silva, a journalist, environmentalist, and communications specialist.

In this article, the author writes that the Cinderella treatment most governments and the media have given the Rio+20 preparations is a cause for real concern. The banking and economic crisis has sapped the will to act on environmental issues. Governments have by and large failed to deliver on the commitments made at the 1992 Earth Summit.

Throughout the world, conflict over scarce resources is escalating rapidly. Rio+20 is a unique opportunity to make the fundamental transformational change in the way we think and live. This will require a degree of common action, beyond anything we have yet experienced or imagined. The environmental movement needs a seismic mind-shift. The usual approach of strategies, actions plans, projects and programmes has not been effective. The movement is bogged down in a mire of bureaucracy. It has to rekindle the sparks of commitment that led to the globalisation of the environmental movement.

* Don de Silva is a journalist, environmentalist, and communications specialist and the coordinator of Regional Information Programmes for the United Nations Environment Programme (dondes@changeways.net).

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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