Rio+20, the unhappy environmental summit

Government negotiators from 188 nations have failed in their attempt to find a breakthrough at the United Nations conference on sustainable development.

The Secretary-General of the Rio+20 environmental summit, Sha Zukang summed up the three-day summit as an outcome that makes nobody happy.

Negotiators who struggled for months to hammer out a more ambitious final document ended up agreeing on a proposal that makes virtually no progress beyond what was signed at the original 1992 Earth Summit.

The Executive Director of the Geneva-based South Centre and a member of the UN Committee on Development Policy, Martin Khor, says the group has sunk so low in its expectations that reaffirming what was done 20 years ago is now considered a success.

Activists were hoping the leaders would produce a final agreement that would include a call to ending subsidies for fossil fuels, language underscoring the reproductive rights of women, and some words on how nations might mutually agree to protect waters outside national jurisdictions.

However, US has agreed to partner with more than 400 companies, including Wal-Mart, Coca- Cola and Unilever, to support their efforts to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by 2020 – and Australia, Indonesia and Colombia have all made strong commitments to protecting oceans within their national waters.