CIAO DATE: 05/2012
June 2011
Center on International Cooperation
The Rio 2012 summit on sustainable development is now one year away. Over two decades since the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’, sustainable development has not materialized: as global GDP has risen, so have greenhouse gas emissions, species loss and environmental degradation. This failure is due to political reasons. Publics around the world remain focused on material standards of living; leaders are reluctant to expend political capital on longterm, global risk issues; multilateral ‘bandwidth’ remains low; in many cases it is unclear what solutions would look like. With these blockages still in place, there is a real risk that Rio 2012 could be a damp squib. To avoid this fate, it needs to place unsustainability squarely at the center of larger debates about globalization and the global economy – in particular by focusing on three key areas.
Resource link: Making Rio 2012 work: Setting the stage for global economic, social and ecological renewal [PDF] - 674K