Earth Summit

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June 27, 2012 | 11:21 AM | By  | 

Post Mortem: Grist’s angry-humor review of the Rio+20 Earth Summit | 

Flickr, Michael Free Jazz Faster

It was billed as one of the world’s most important — and biggest– meetings, the UN Earth Summit aka Rio+20.

There was plenty of international media attention leading up to and during this three-day meeting of some 45,000 people in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The confab was devoted to finding consensus solutions to problems like climate change, increasing population pressure on natural resources, economic inequity and other issues subsumed under the kitchen-sink categorization of ‘sustainable development.

As you may have heard, which NPR and others reported last week, the meeting was pretty much a dud.

In short, Rio+20 adhered to a new axiom I believe I have invented (and so trademark) which I dub the Law of Confabs: A meeting’s chance of accomplishing anything is inversely proportional to its importance. 

Arguably, the point of Rio+20 was to deal with the biggest threats we face on the planet. You’ve probably either read all about Rio or successfully ignored it (with help from the lackluster coverage by most American media). But if you remain interested, I think this story today from the Grist provides the best and most hilarious overview. Author Greg Hanscom asks Did Rio do any good?

The Earth Summit is mercifully over, leaving us all to wonder: What the hell happened last week? Did the end result justify the 3,600 tons of CO2 generated by the UN delegation alone? And has anyone seen my pants?

For a rosier view of the meeting, read The Guardian’s John Vidal’s post Reasons to be Cheerful.

FILED UNDER: Basics, climate change, Earth Summit, economic development, Rio+20, sustainable development
June 18, 2012 | 12:58 PM | By  | 

Rio+20: Will it save the planet or just be another useless meeting? | 

Flickr, Michael Free Jazz Faster

Two decades ago, the international community gathered for the 1992 Earth Summit conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Thousands of people attended from nearly every nation on the planet, to address a number of environmental and economic trends that had everyone worried such as increased industrial pollution, rising demand for clean water, rampant poverty, hunger and climate change. Out of that 1992 meeting came the Kyoto Protocol, the climate change treaty, but not much of anything else.

This week, we try again at Rio+20, with an expanded agenda that includes the need to REALLY do something to curb climate change and address many other looming threats to our future as a species — aka, if I do say so, the humanosphere.

These threats to our well-being (well beyond climate change now) are quite real. The goals of this meeting – to arrive at consensus on what’s needed to avoid continuing this massive fouling of our nest – are perhaps more important to our future than any other meeting we could hope to hold. So you’d think there would be some urgency to achieve something.

Don’t hold your breath.

I’m going to make up a rule of meetings. Let’s call it Tom’s Law of Conferencing: The chance of a meeting producing something worthwhile is inversely proportional to its importance. Rio+20 is so important it seems almost certain to fail. To wit:

Christian Science Monitor At Rio+20 meeting, is catastrophic failure inevitable?

Reuters: Expectations low for Rio+20 development summit

NY Times What Rio+20 can do

AFP UN environment summit descends into haggling before it starts

However, some of the news reports or posts in the blogosphere are more hopeful — or at least just reporting what can be accomplished at Rio+20 if something does happen to get accomplished:

Inter Press Concrete goals needed for success at Rio+20

ONE campaign How to (virtually) participate in Rio+20

Gates Foundation’s Impatient Optimists blog How to feed everyone without wrecking the planet

Finally, here’s a pitch from the Prince of Wales. I’d like to poke fun at it, but it’s actually a good overview of why this meeting is so important — and why it’s so disappointing that so many of the world’s leaders (like President Barack Obama or the UK’s David Cameron) “continue to ignore” these many crises:

 

FILED UNDER: Politics, Earth Summit, Rio+20
June 11, 2012 | 10:58 AM | By  | 

Where are we headed now, 20 years after the Earth Summit? | 

Flickr, Michael Free Jazz Faster

A big international meeting is coming up that, arguably, could determine our fate as a planet. Yes, I know that’s ridiculous — the idea that one meeting could determine the fate of much of anything.

But the Rio+20 Earth Summit (not a good name, I would argue, since the fact that the meeting in Brazil is actually not that important) could be a good yardstick for measuring the world’s commitment to making some needed course corrections.

Most of us recognize the need for fundamental changes going forward. Just as humanity didn’t decide to remain in the hunter-gatherer phase, we appear to be at a critical juncture where we can evolve or, well, maybe not do so well. Some of the challenges we face now are the threat of climate change, the demands of population growth and finding less exploitative to grow the global economy.

Yeah, sustainable development. Boring lingo, but that’s what we’re talking about here.

The first Earth Summit was 20 years ago, also in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. That’s why they have called this meeting Rio+20, which to me makes as much branding sense as categorizing all 1980s pop music as Haircut 100 music. But what do I know about branding?

Two articles advance this next Earth Summit (I prefer to just call it that) by asking how far we’ve come in achieving the goals set forth decades ago at the original meeting. Not too good. And the fact that President Obama and the UK’s David Cameron are expected to give this meeting a pass — along with reports of already fractious squabbling among nations — is also not a good sign.

Nature issues an Earth Summit Report Card noting:

Although nations have made some marginal advances, the three conventions have failed to achieve even a fraction of the promises that world leaders trumpeted two decades ago.

Inter Press asks How do we measure success at Rio+20? and basically answers this question by saying a good starting place would be to follow through on the strategies suggested two decades ago aimed at striking a better and more equitable — and more environmentally sound — approach to stimulating economic and improving livelihoods.

FILED UNDER: Politics, Earth Summit, Rio+20