cross-posted from climateconnections.org

Press statement by the Civil Society Facilitating Committee of the Rio+20 Peoples’ Summit, June 16, 2012:

It’s no coincidence that the G20 summit is taking place in Mexico on June 18-19, two days before the Rio+20 summit. Both summits are certainly very different events, above all in terms of legitimacy, transparency and multilateralism.



When the G20 announced that one of the five priorities for the summit agenda this year would…

News from Rio +20

They are taking away our right to speak out!

In the first proposal of a text, there was a paragraph about an ombudsman/high commissionaire for future generations. In the new text proposed by Brazil this has been taken out and we as youth have lost our voice in the negotiations.

Old men in suits are now taking decisions on our behalf, controlling our future and it seems both stupid and unfair.

Please take action all, who…

Powerful stories by Powerful Women who decry lack of real progress since 1992

We are now into part two of the Rio+20 conference process - yesterday the Brazilian government took the text under negotiation and consolidated it. Lots of great things stayed in - like the paragraph on non-formal education that WAGGGS and the major group of children and youth campaigned for - but there were noticeable omissions.

These omissions include language around establishing a high commissioner for future generations and around…

Mayak Russia, Cumbria Scotland, Pennsylvania USA, Ukraine and Belarus, Fukushima and tragically, many more places on EARTH, radioactivity from splitting atoms has escaped containment contaminating air, soil, water, food, people.

These catastrophic sacrifice zones may seem few and far away -- but every single nuclear reactor in operation (more than 450 worldwide) releases radioactivity to air and to water and generates types of…

Today has been a day for getting our voices heard and promoting the WAGGGS key messages.

Whilst many members of the delegation were out around the Rio+20 conference interacting in side events and being a visible, active group; somewhere, deep in Riocentro (the conference centre), a crack team of super delegates were working on policy with many of the major groups. 

A couple of sentences

One key issue for today has been surrounding the weakening of…

Back-tracking and regression is the theme of these latest days of negotiations and we're working hard to ensure that rights based language - particularly that from previous UN agreements - remains throughout the text.

What we really want to see is mentions of the importance of non-formal education and the need to address violence against women in the text. To raise awareness I am supporting two hashtags on Twitter and I urge you to do the same - #EducationEverywhere along with a…

Maureen Penjueli, Coordinator of Pacific Network on Globalization (PNG) from Fiji, talked at Major Groups press briefing on 13 June at Rio+20.

"As a Pacific islander the Ocean plays an very important part of who we are.  The Ocean is part of our identity and culture and defines who we are as Pacific islanders.

We are extremely concerned at how slow negotiations have progressed with many parts of the text still bracketed.

We urge officials to approach negotiations with a…

http://populationgrowth.org/women-are-bringing-hopes-to-rio20/

As the final negotiations for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 conference get underway in Rio de Janeiro, almost 50 civil society groups have published an Open letter denouncing the UN Secretary General’s new “Sustainable Energy For All Initiative” (SEFA). The letter states: “The SEFA process and Action Agenda are deeply flawed and threaten to further entrench destructive, polluting and unjust energy policies for corporate profit under the guise of alleviating energy…

Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development

Press release

14 June 2012 

Asia Pacific women demand States’ commitment to gender equality and women’s rights - The future women want!

Women from Asia Pacific region call for all stakeholders’ commitment to gender equality and women’s rights in four key areas as basis for sustainable development. The purple scarves are the sign of…

First day at Rio +20

Our first day at the Conference began very well.  Our delegation did a great job giving our Girl Guide cookies for the people taste. So we could have a bigger audience to talk about our association and our Side Event “Youth led solutions to sustainable development”.

Sharing Guiding projects

In the Side Event we had excellent representatives, they spoke about their Country projects:

Jane (Australian):…

A month before Rio+20, more than 120 activists, advocates and NGO representatives from 27 countries in the Asia and the Pacific gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to demand for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as a critical part of sustainable development.

Coming from diverse movements and across generations, the participants developed and supported the Kuala Call to Action, a 12-point call for SRHR for sustainable development to governments, international…

The day started bright and early, as we left our hostel and adventured out into the Brazilian metro system. Not to worry: We are in safe hands with the Brazilian girl guides, who translate, show the way and answer all the possible (and impossible) questions that we have.

Youth Blast

The first point on today’s schedule was the Youth Blast, which is a gathering of youth from all over the world discussing sustainable development.

It was…

The title of this entry is the response I received from a water engineer when I spoke on an expert panel at #Yorio on Thursday. This event was a youth pre-event where participants aged 12-21 engaged in discussions around how we can create sustainable water usage before putting these ideas to Caroline Spelman, the environment minister (part of the UK government delegation to Rio).

This response was further reiterated by some of the comments on…

Rio+20: Down to the Wire…

Pippa, spoke as an expert at a Rio+20 discussion attended by UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman and organised by the UK government, UNICEF UK and the British Youth Council. Maggie also attended and led a group discussion, and fellow Rio+20 delegate Miriam Otieno from Kenya gave a speech via Skype.

Pippa talks to Environment Secretary…

The Rio+20 summit has already started. Women have been adding thier voices on various issues of discourse in the…

http://populationgrowth.org/rio20-here-we-come-but-will-population-issues-be-heard/

In less than a month the world, or at least the environmentally-inclined members of the world,…

Resources on earth should be more than all living organisms on earth actually need if there were wise integrated management of such resources towards sustainability and social justice.

Therefore the Sustainable development is an issue of leadership and a vision. It's a domestic concern that becomes global as it influences the world.

 Science Across Egypt Initiative is meant to create the model for such notion that the…