Sustainable Development And The Political Treadmill Of No Will

By Julian Velez Rio+20 was supposed to renew political commitment to Sustainable Development (SD) and poverty eradication by integrating the social, economic and environmental “pillars,” or dimensions. It was a conference that was supposed to build on previous agreements to bring the Sustainable Development agenda to the next step. But the spotlight of the conference was taken by the...

The Game of the G77

By Lara Shirley The negotiating strategies employed by the G77+China are very interesting. They are a political entity, and thus have to be highly conscious of the image they project not only to their fellow negotiators but to the wider global community of civil society and media. The G77 negotiators tend to use precise and sophisticated language, often being the only ones to explicitly...

The Point of It All

Point of No Return By Mariana Calderon Sitting back in a bed in a hostel in Rio de Janeiro, trying to regain some sense of normalcy through regular sleep and regular meals, I hardly dare to think back on the last two weeks - or the last 20 years - just yet. Some time to recover, please. Unfortunately, time is something we don’t have much of anymore. In the halls of the Rio Centro convention...

Brazilian fractals

by Maria Alejandra Escalante “I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one. Gottfried Leibniz    Listening to political conversations about the past, the present and the future of Rio+20 has been a daily ingredient of my life since I first jumped into the...

An ambiguous path

Discussing the concept of sustainability By Nimisha Bastedo Sustainability. It’s a word that can mean so much and so little at the same time. Throughout the entire Rio+20 roller-coaster, everyone from the most conservative State representatives to the most radical activists were either advocating for it, or at least pretending to be. If we all agree that we need to move towards a more...