Rio +20: Live Part 2
We just finished with the latest round of negotiations on the health and gender sections of the Rio +20 draft document. Here is an update: As previously mentioned, delegations like the Holy See are concerned with the language found in both paragraph 8 and 9 of the health section. Both paragraphs mention sexual and reproductive [...]
Rio +20 the Tahrir Square of the Environmentalist Revolution?
Hardly. But according to well known Brazilian activist, politician, and former presidential candidate Marina Silva (above), it could be… “I hope that Rio+20 will become the Tahrir Square of the global environmental crisis and that international public opinion will be able to tell leaders that they cannot brush off the science,” Silva told AFP, referring [...]
Report Posits Population Control as Solution to Poverty in World’s Least Developed Countries
In the last months leading up to the Rio +20 summit, yet another report was released promoting population control as essential in the fight to eradicate world poverty. The report, published by the Royal Society of London, titled “People and the Planet” acknowledges that the world’s population has declined while pointing out that in the [...]
“Elders” come out in support of the Sustainable Development Goals”
Henrique Cardoso, the former president of Brazil responsible for the country’s miraculous economic recovery in the 1990s, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, the chairman of the UN’s famous Bruntdland commission, have come out in support of the SDG’s this week. We believe setting “sustainable development goals” that address the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of development [...]
Extra Negotiations lead to limited Success for UN Environmental Conference
After more than a week of extra negotiations on the final outcome document for the UN’s upcoming environmental conference in Rio de Janiero, little progress has been made. The UN commission charged with providing a negotiated document countries can agree upon during the Rio +20 conference at the end of this month was still a [...]
Rio +20 and the illusive search for accountability in Sustainable Development
One of the biggest concerns surround the Rio+20 process is how to hold the “world” accountable to the many commitments made during past and previous negotiations. Various proposals have been floated over the years and some, like the “SDGs“, are quite controversial. Most have stirred up more confusion than concrete dialogue. Recently a new proposal [...]
Rio +20: States cry foul over bureaucratic challenge to sovereignty
Member states are expressing concern this week that the Secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) is overstepping its boundaries in the Rio negotiation process by championing its own bureaucratic goals over those of member states in the Rio +20 process. Over the past three days, the UNCSD has held a series [...]