Event that will take place in the city of Rio de Janeiro between the days June 13 and 22, 2012, a Rio + 20 and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. This meeting marks the twentieth anniversary of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development which happened in the capital of Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and became known as Rio-92, and also the ten years of World Summit on Sustainable Development, which took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the year 2002.
During these days, heads of state and government, environmental activists, scientists and representatives from over 150 countries will work on two main themes: “The green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication", and the "Institutional framework for sustainable development”.
At Rio + 20 leaders will take stock of everything that has been done over the past twenty years, renewing the global commitment to sustainable development; assess what gaps still exist in the implementation of international agreements; they will address the new emerging challenges and discuss new ways to recover the damage we have already done to our planet, while continuing to make progress.
One of the major discussions at the conference will be on the role of a global body that is able to unite the goals of preservation of the environment with the continuous needs of economic progress, that is, progress without harming the environment environment. According to ambassador André Aranha Correa do Lago, director of the environment department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and chief negotiator do Brasil at Rio+20, “The institutional issue of the conference will be the revision of the mandate of UNEP (United Nations Environment Program), but not exactly the creation of a world organization for the environment, a proposal by the Europeans that Brazil believes does not solve the dilemmas current. What we insistently ask for is an institution that deals with sustainable development and not just the environment. The initial European proposal distorts the concept of sustainable development, it is a throwback to 1972, the year of the Stockholm Conference, when their concern was the end of natural resources”.
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Also according to the ambassador, “Europeans are returning to the pre-1972 worldview. They now advocate the creation of a World Environment Organization to safeguard the planet's natural resources. But safeguarding for whom? For them? It's as if they were saying: you, the poor, need to plan your population growth and also spend less natural resources, because we, the rich, need them”, summarizes the diplomat.
The alternatives designed to reduce the impact of humanity on Earth are not only the responsibility of our rulers, but ours as well. After all, all our everyday attitudes, such as the means of transport we use, the way we dispose of our garbage, the The time we take in the shower, among so many other attitudes, reflect somehow on the environment and, consequently, on our life.
By Paula Louredo
Graduated in Biology
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
MORAES, Paula Louredo. "Rio+20"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biologia/rio-20.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
