This June in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations (UN) is assembling a huge gathering of heads of state, country delegates, and thousands of people from civil society to address the state of the world. It’s called the “Rio+20 Earth Summit” – or sometimes simply “Rio+20” – a reference to the first UN Earth Summit, held 20 years ago in Rio.

Jon Love, former director of the Awakening the Dreamer program, is representing The Pachamama Alliance as an accredited UN non-governmental organization (NGO), and offers the following update on the official negotiations leading up to the summit.

A Huge Opportunity to Change the Global Economy

The mandate for Rio+20 attendees is to provide a set of agreements and policies that will “transition to a Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”

As they define and shape the “Green Economy,” the nations of the world have an opportunity to change the way the global economy works.

Imagine that in a Green Economy companies would not be allowed to rip down forests for profit, tear up mountains to get to the coal, or dump thousands of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. We wouldn’t let 2 billion people go to bed hungry, or let 1,200 people become billionaires while 3 billion people have less than $10,000.

Articulating the Future We Want

The Pachamama Alliance has been working with other organizations to put forward some key messages to be included in the statement of “The Future We Want” and the worldview and policy changes that will get us there.

The “Zero Draft,” as it is called, has some great intentions and good ideas in it. However, our view is that it is short on real tools for implementation, regulation, and enforcement of these ideas even if all stakeholders do agree to them.

We are asking for specific agreements and ambitious timetables on:

• Sustainable Development Goals
• Rights for Nature
• Right of Consent for Indigenous Peoples
• Poverty Eradication
• and New Economic Indicators (away from GDP)

In addition, we’re calling for a set of values based on the recognition that we share a commons with all of humanity and all of life, which must be protected.

Shaping a New Global Vision of Equity and Sustainability

Since our beginning, a key part of The Pachamama Alliance mission has included contributing to a new global vision of equity and sustainability for all.

It is encouraging to hear many of the organizations engaged in the Rio+20 negotiations putting forth proposals and statements that sound like they could have come straight from our Awakening the Dreamer Symposium.

For example, Switzerland has proposed the following opening paragraph for the “Zero Draft”: “We are committed to accelerate internationally agreed goals with regards to development, environment, gender equality, health, population development, and human protection and prosperity for all, preserving the environment as well as ensuring basic social protection and human rights.”

And Mexico has proposed, “We declare that achieving sustainable development requires urgent and universal changes in production and consumption patterns and the pursuit of specific policies aimed at the integration of the three pillars of sustainable development. Therefore, we recognize the need to transform our development models which so far have over depended in the excessive use of natural resources, particularly fossil fuels, exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet’s ecosystems.”

Learn More and Get Involved

But Rio+20 is not just about what governments do, it is serving as a rallying point for tens of thousands of social, environmental and social activists who will assemble “The People’s Earth Summit” in Rio and around the world at the same time.

Next month we will examine some of the most encouraging grass roots efforts. In the meantime, explore opportunities and resources related to the summit in “Rio+20: The Essential Information,” prepared by Brazilian NGO Vitae Civilis.

Download “Rio+20: The Essential Information”