From Rio+20 to a New Development Agenda ― Building a Bridge to a Sustainable Future

"Twenty years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, "The Earth Summit," in Rio, the Rio+20 conference in 2012 made major progress in refocusing the goals of sustainable development and an agenda for the future. Written by practitioners and participants involved in the multilateral process of negotiations, this book presents a unique insider analysis of not only what happened and why, but also where the outcomes might impact in the future, particularly around the development of a new set of development goals. It is shown that Rio+20 brought life back to sustainable development by putting it at the centre of a future United Nations development framework beyond 2015. It broke new ground on seminal concepts and ideas including the Green Economy, zero tolerance on land degradation, the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals, the creation of national measurements of consumption, production and well-being that are intended to go beyond GDP, the introduction of national green accounting and the commitment of billions of dollars for sustainable development activities, including Sustainable Energy for All. The achievements of Rio+20 are shown to be all the more remarkable because weeks away from the date of the conference no political grouping had any firm agreement on any of the themes or major ideas which were being negotiated. The authors conclude by setting out a new agenda for development, incorporating the challenge in 2015 when the current Millennium Development Goals framework is due to expire"--

Felix Dodds is Former Executive Director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute, and on the board of Advisors for the Collaborative Institute for Oceans, Climate and Security, Asia European Foundation ENVforum Steering Committee and the Great Transition.

Jorge Laguna-Celis is the Senior Advisor on sustainable development to the President of the UN General Assembly; prior to that he was a negotiator and expert on international environmental governance and sustainable development. He is member, since 2006, of the Mexican Foreign Service and is based in New York, USA.

Liz Thompson is a former Minister of Energy and Environment of Barbados. She was honoured by UNEP in 2008 with the prestigious "Champion of the Earth" award for her work in climate change and environment. She was one of two executive coordinators appointed by the UN at the level of Assistant Secretary General to support the Rio+20 process and negotiations.