UN Photo/Milton Grant

Keywords: Growth (1 hits),

November 1, 2011

Re: Input for Compilation Document for Rio+20 Zero Draft .

To the Secretariat of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development:

We call for Rio+20 to be unprecedented in terms of participation, cooperation, and leadership. Leadership must include representatives of government, business, and civil society. Participants must be included from across the globe and from all walks of life. The Rio+20 process must encourage communication and cooperation within these groups. Any renewal of political commitment to sustainable development cannot take place but within such a conference. Further, such principles will enhance progress in the institutional framework for sustainable development.

We ask that the conference implement new web-based and social media facilities, which carry the potential to reinvigorate the UN and its work in the eyes of a new and crucial generation of global citizens. The conference must result in a document simplified in its language, and incorporate processes that are transparent and accessible.

We demand that Rio+20 abide by its stated objectives, and thus result in new and ambitious agreements, goals, and pathways toward realizing them. The conference must honestly review and respond to the successes and failures of the current paradigm of global sustainable development work.

We request that conference outcomes also address the full scope of sustainable development, including its ecological, social, and cultural aspects, finance, the law, science and technology, economics, and natural resources. It can only be within such a comprehensive view that our goals can be achieved.

We recognize that the green economy can be a means to achieving sustainability, progress, and environmental, economic, social well-being. Any development of such an economy must, however, keep those ends in mind, and not replace them with Growth or development for its own sake.

We suggest the development of global, open-source, accessible registry of sustainable actions. With such a tool, businesses, individuals, communities, and governments around the world can learn from each other and from the past, examine obstacles, and craft solutions to the pressing challenges of developing a sustainable human civilization.

Rio+20 can refresh our outlook and our energy for working toward a sustainable global future, and rise to face the critical challenges of our time. We hope it realizes this potential, as it surely will by meeting these above expectations.

Signed,

MobilizeUS!

The Human Impacts Institute