Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

President Sarkozy's visit to Lula on 6 and 7 September, saw him expresing the French support to the Rio +20 Earth summit. "La France soutient pleinement le souhait du Brésil d’organiser en 2012 un nouveau sommet de la Terre, 20 ans après le premier Sommet qui s’était déjà tenu à Rio de Janeiro. Ce nouveau sommet pourra constituer une occasion privilégiée pour réaliser des progrès décisifs et nécessaires en matière de gouvernance internationale de l’environnement". "France fully supports the desire of Brazil to organize in 2012 a new Earth Summit, 20 years after the first Summit had been held in Rio de Janeiro. This new peak may be an ideal opportunity to make decisive and necessary progress for international governance of the environment. " A copy of the full text is downloadable at the www.earthsummit2012.org

As it becomes clearer that a new Summit will focus on the Green Economy International Sustainable Development Governance and Environment and Human Insecurity issues Brussels holds the first conference to explore the agenda. Full conference details can be downloadable from www.earthsummit2012.org organised by the European Economic and Social Committee and Stakeholder Forum the event an impressive list of speakers. The event being held proir to the UN General Assembly debate on Rio+20 offers a great chance for governemnts to listen to views before the debate. One of the key elephants in the room is what role will the Summit have for climate change. After all the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is a daughter of Rio. Until everyone recovers from Copenhagen and looks at the landscape it will be difficult to say. My hunch though is that it will play a significant role.

Euopean Economic and Social Committee and Stakeholder Forum are organising a Rio+20 Conference for the afternoon of the 1st of October and the morning of the 2nd of October in Brussels. Details to follow.

In Washington on the 6th and 7th of July stakeholders met in two complementary meetings one hosted by Justice and Sustainability and the other by NRDC to discuss preparations for Rio+20. Over 50 organsiations attended the two meetings as US groups start to prepare their views on the issues for the Summit.

The UN Commission on Sustainable Development saw a number of people and organisatiosn write articles for Outreach Issues endorsing Rio+20. This included the tarde unions, local government, canadian youth and the business community. The Brazilian Governemnt side event in the second week had over 180 people from governments and stakeholders and UN bodies eager to hear what the Brazilian Government thought shoudl be the issues. Their presentation suggested reform of sustainable development governance, greening the economy, reviewing progress on Agenda 21 and the JPoI and looking at emerging issues such as water and energy. The joint radio project for the CSD by Stakeholder Forum and the BBC World Serice Trust covered Rio+20 a number of times. This included the green table - listen to his provocative discussion with Juan Hoffmaister (Third World Network), Bedrich Moldan of the Czech Republic, and André Odenbreit of Brazil. In the last issue of Today at the CSD delegates are asked what t...

This week saw the publication of two related 2012 documents. The first was the ‘non paper’ from the dinner Stakeholder Forum held in New York on the 24th of February. The paper was a little longer in arriving as governments were given a week to review and make comments on the paper. The second document was the Presidents summary from the UNEP Ministerial Round Tables on International Environmental Governance and the Global Green New Deal. What is fascinating is that in the IEG summary there is huge section on 2012 under the title: “The proposed Rio+20 summit provides an opportunity to put a full package on international environmental governance reform on the table for finalization by 2012.” Ministers are clearly engaged already in thinking about what a summit might achive The papers arrived in government mailboxes within hours of each other. They start to fill in the blanks about: Why have a summit? What could a summit address? What could be the logistics for such an event? There are...

Sitting at the airport after the Commission on Sustainable Development IPM seemed a good time to reflect on Earth Summit 2012 reflections. The week saw Stakeholder Forum host a dinner on Tuesday the 24th of February 2009. It certainly gave food for thought for those attending. Around 17 governments had people attending all in their personal capacity The dinner looked at if the Summit was a good idea or not and report of it will appear on the Stakeholder Forum Earth Summit 2012 web site in about a week’s time. What I found interesting is the realisation by many that we are going to be facing multi crisis in the coming years and the present set up isn’t working. A summit is one way of addressing it but it may not be the only one. This week also saw the BBC start to initiate a debate on the Summit through Richard Black's blog under the title 'Slow road to green reform'. In the final speech by the Swiss Government to the CSD IPM they said: "Lastly, Mada...