REPRESENTATIVES from around the world gather in Rio in June to try to hammer out goals for sustainable development at a United Nations (U.N.) conference designed to avoid being tripped up by the intractable issue of climate change.
But there is concern in the lead-up to the conference, known as Rio+20 or the Earth Summit, that it risks ending up as all talk and little action. In an attempt to avoid too much confrontation, the conference will focus not on climate change but on sustainable development-making sure economies can grow now without endangering resources and the environment for future generations.
The new development is coming, as first round of informal discussions on the proposed outcome document of the United Nations conference on sustainable development that will be held in Brazil in June got under way in New York last week with a senior UN official calling for an ambitious and yet practical conclusion.
The informal round of talks on the outcome document is the first in a series of negotiating sessions to be held in March, April, May and June in the run up to the conference.
"When world leaders gather in Rio in five months, we need to present them with an ambitious and yet practical outcome that equals the magnitude of today's challenges," said Sha Zukang, the secretary-general of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), which will be held in Rio de Janeiro beginning June 20th.
"We need a robust outcome from Rio+20, with reinvigorated political commitments by all countries. We need strong decisions...strong in commitments and strong in actions," he said.
U.N. conferences over the past decade have begun with high hopes for agreements to compel nations to cut climate-warming emissions and help adapt to a hotter world, but they often ended with disappointingly modest results. That was the case last year in the global climate change summit in Durban, South Africa. Participants at that meeting agreed to forge a new deal by 2015 that would go into force by 2020.
The "sustainable" branding for this year's summit, rather than climate, is by design, said Ambassador Andre Correa do Lago, who headed Brazil's delegation to the U.N. climate talks in Durban and will be a chief negotiator for Brazil in Rio.
Sustainable development is an easier sell globally than climate change, even though sustainable development is a way of tackling global warming and other environmental issues, he said.
"Climate change is an (issue) that has very strong resistance from sectors that are going to be substantially altered, like the oil industry," do Lago said. "Sustainable development is something that is as simple as looking at how we would like to be in 10 or 20 years."
The time seems ripe. Natural resources are at a premium. The global human population tops seven billion. Traditional economies are failing and the planet is warming. Leaders may accept the premise that it makes sense to ensure rich and emerging nations can grow without further damaging the environment.
The focus of global meetings has been on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, but the world's biggest emitters, including China and the United States, have balked, arguing it would cripple economic development.
