A louder voice for civil society at Rio+20?

This article was also published at Riomatters.org, a UN sponsored blog discussing the upcoming Rio+20 summit.

Since the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in 1992, nine major groups of civil society have been given important roles to play as partners in sustainable development. I got to speak with Kiara Worth, the Organizing Partner for the UN Commission for Sustainable Development Major Group for Children and Youth, ahead of the Rio+20 summit to discuss her thoughts on the main goals for Rio+20, participation from youth on key issues and a greater role for civil society through the arts.

RD: What do you see as the main goals for Rio+20?
KW: To advance participation of young people at local, national and global levels to influence sustainable development according to a youth specific policy; and to inspire local action for the implementation of sustainable development.
Rio+20 is an opportunity for youth around the world to be involved in ways they haven’t been before. We can create a world in which human potential is explored, and celebrate our differences via performance arts – bigger notions of sustainable development.
In fact, Rio+20 is the most important conference because it lays the framework for everything else – so not as ‘sexy’ as climate change or other self-contained issues, which reflects the broader challenge of sustainable development as a whole: a massive integrated array of things that is harder to manage. It is difficult to support, there will be lots of challenges, because it requires people to change the way things work. There are a lot of governments that are quite comfortable with their economic and social positioning at the moment, why would they change things?
Ultimately it’s about building that energy, its about giving people the idea that things can be different, its just about how you can make it different. And that’s social transformation, that’s whats so exciting that can come about from these conferences hosted by the UN that are independent of the policy outcomes.

RD: What kind of tangible outcomes do you see emerging from Rio+20?
KW: In terms of concrete outcomes, we are aiming for a stronger policy document that will hold governments accountable. We want to focus on a new concept of sustainable development, to redesign the way the world works – focusing on equity, justice, youth. The outcome document should also include a continued focus on human rights – there needs to be a discussion on how governments are weakening references to human rights obligations from the outcome document.
Additionally, we hope to inspire a youth movement: There have been discussions around whether the negotiations are going to be successful, and whether there is going to be a legally binding document. Will people come to action? Largely the expectation is no, but there is still an opportunity to empower young people across the world to engage in policy negotiations at the local level.
Rio+20 is about building the process of how people engage in the process, rather than just about the outcome document. We have had a focus on policy through our contributions to the Zero draft. Along with formal negotiations, networks have been set up with thousands of youth around the world contributing to policy. Various task forces have aligned to different topics that have contributed to drafting the texts.

RD: How are you planning to get participation from a variety of youth at and beyond Rio+20?

KW: At Rio+20, we have targeted a Youth Blast – a conference of the youth, and the official young people side event at Rio+20. Beyond the Rio+20 summit, we have an e-participation plan. It’s not just about attending Rio+20, its about the youth involving themselves in the process and implementing at the local level.
Youth Blast: About 3000 people registered to attend, and it was divided into 2 segments from 7-12th June.
Objectives of Youth Blast:
a) build capacity: provide young people with the tools to effectively engage in the process at Rio+20
b) strategize for Major Group’s participation at Rio+20
c) develop a post rio+20 agenda that incorporates the outcomes at Rio
7-8 June: Brazilian days – To support the local movement, these sessions were oriented for Brazilian youth in Rio
10-12: International days – The Brazilian youth movement was introduced to the international youth movement in preparation for the main Rio+20 summit.
How: Plenary sessions in the mornings were followed by 2 ‘streams of engagement’ breakout sessions: The first was a policy overview, while the second was an elective stream, consisting of over workshops organized by youth around the world running 45-90 min sessions – over 300 applications to host workshops were received, including youth activism, stories, art workshops, policy workshops.
While only 500 people turned up, likely due to the high cost of international travel and accommodation costs in Rio, that too over a week before the final Rio+20 negotiations, those who had a chance to attend had diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Youth Blast participants at work. Photo courtesy of Sébastian Duyck

Sébastien Duyck, from the Adopt a Negotiator Project, for instance, provided his thoughts: “Walking around the Youth Blast is indeed a unique experience, inspired youth painting banners, while high-level UN officials share their expectations and accept to be challenged by uncompromising activists in relation to the activities of the bodies under their supervision… While discussions on banning (fossil fuel subsidies) were in full swing, another group engaged in discussions with Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director.”

E-participation plan: We will have thousands of people updating social media, not just on Facebook but also through livestreaming, and tweeting, to build the youth movement across the globe. We’ve hosted several #mycity+20 conferences (like #NY+20, in partnership with the Ford Foundation and others) which has got the youth excited about contributing to Rio+20. Our twitter account, @MGCY_UNCSD continues to post live from Rio, and we encourage people to use the hashtag #beyondrio to input ideas on how young people can build a movement after Rio+20.

RD: Can you elaborate on how you foresee a greater role for civil society through the arts?
KW: The arts can help revive the spirit of Rio: both by instilling greater participation of civil society, and by helping people shift paradigms through motivation and inspiration. Ultimately, the only way we can rethink our perception of wealth is by changing behaviors.
The arts are a mechanism to build relationships, find points of interest and
commonality. The role of art in sustainable development is huge: we can ‘Inspire the future’, reviving the spirit of Rio from ‘92 – Through the arts, video, and social media, we can mobilize a space where people can share ideas, stories, and have a platform to engage with each other.
We’ve had various people around the world have competitions, drawing symbols for Rio+20. At the Youth Blast, there were creative workshops, creative spaces for banners, paint, story cabinets and an exchange of cultures. Our website is and will continue to be a platform where people can engage, network and sustain contact post Rio+20.

Will Rio+20 set us on a path to sustainable development?

This post was also published on riomatters.org, a UN sponsored blog discussing the upcoming Rio+20 summit.

20 years after the original Rio summit began, how far along are we on a path towards sustainable development? While there has been some movement to back up rhetoric, much more still needs to be done – especially in the areas of concrete agreements, implementation and defining further knowledge required going forward. Is Rio+20 the place where substantial progress takes place? Let us take a closer look at the history of the summit to find out.

Prof William Clark

We have come some way from 1992: Two decades ago, it was a struggle to get sustainability on the global agenda. Now, there is no doubt that it is a key concern. The types of issues, governance discussion and our knowledge needs have all evolved over the last 20 years. Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, William Clark, elaborated on these differences in a talk celebrating Earth Day last month:

• Issues: Rather than just focusing on environmental agreements (about the ozone, climate, biodiversity and forests), we are now focusing on development agreements. Prof Clark elaborated, “The current hot topics: jobs, energy food, water, cities and disasters are indications of how humans are now at the center of discussions”.

• Governance: Rather than a top down spirit of governance in the past, where the inclusion of civil society often came belatedly, we now have to focus on polycentric governance, and entrepreneurial green growth through public private partnerships. “Most of the action happens at the regional level, but we what we need to figure out is the global level tasks vs what tasks can be sorted out at the regional and national levels,” Prof Clark explained.

• Knowledge: In the past, we focused on understanding more about the science of how things worked, and the impacts changes in the environment might have on us, through Earth system sciences, and global monitoring technologies. Now, we need to build on this baseline by pushing the edge on sustainability science, and develop decision support systems, especially for policymakers. “This will help states to compute the different ways they can achieve our sustainability goals,” Prof Clark reinforced.

Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon (right confers with Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway. UN Photo/Mark Garten

While our views on these dimensions have evolved due to our experience, we should also be mindful of the different levels of scale that we can operate on. In this field, global and even regional agreements have been very difficult to come by of late. But smaller partnerships, for example the bilateral $1 billion partnership on forests between Norway and Indonesia signed in 2010, can lead the way. Individual organizations can pave the way forward as well. Walmart has been recognized with numerous awards for its sustainability efforts, including publishing an annual Global Responsibility Report which highlights how its Sustainable Value Networks (SVNs) have helped integrate sustainable practices into all parts of their business.
Another debate that is often had is whether we should consider having fewer senior people from key institutions at Rio+20 a failure. While it is sometimes helpful to have high profile politicians around, an increased spotlight is not necessarily helpful.  I spoke with Professor Clark after his Earth Day talk, and he agreed with this sentiment: “We only have to look as far back as the climate change-centered Conference of Parties 15 in Copenhagen in 2010, which was widely expected to conclude with a follow up to the Kyoto Protocol but did not even come close. Especially in the case of Rio+20, where there are multiple fronts to push forward on rather than being restricted to one particular issue, the lower profile can be helpful. Some realistic targets and commitments can be agreed upon, and collaboration at the working level is more likely since less political positioning and maneuvering is necessary.”

Glaciers melting as a result of climate change. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Overall, in order to have a fruitful Rio+20 summit, we must create an environment where organizations are comfortable sharing their successes and failures, so that others may learn and develop more informed plans going forward. Let us also keep in mind that no initiative is too small to appreciate – after all, much of our world has been shaped by persistent individuals who were unafraid to pursue seemingly unrealistic goals. 


Rahul Daswani is a class of 2013 Master in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. He spent the last 2 years working in climate change as a consultant for the governments of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. This summer he is working in Ethiopia, on a project focused on scaling up farmer cooperatives.