What Now?

The next six months will be critical is setting the bar high for the Earth Summit in Rio.

The process of developing a negotiating text is that governments and stakeholders alike have been asked to input their views to what is being called a zero draft of text by the 1st of November.

Already there are a set of core green economy themes on many peoples lists. These are: the blue economy, agriculture, energy, water, urbanisation -- then others that are on many but not all lists: SCP, CESR, biodiversity.

In light of the failure of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to agree any text that leaves in particular sustainable consumption and production requiring to have it discussed in Rio so expect a big push here.

We have now moved in to a period of informal workshops on aspects of the green economy organised by the UN, governments or stakeholders they are an attempt to bring the negotiators up to speed in areas that haven't traditionally been ones they have covered - economy.

One of the big questions that has been asked by stakeholders and governments is where is UNEP and the Bank? Neither so far have been evident at the highest level. If this Summit is to really have the impact it needs then it needs to move from the environment departments in governments to their economic and development ministries supported by their environment ministries.