Last month world leaders convened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the United Nations’ Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20. Joining the 190 official delegates from countries around the world (including Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin, and Wen Jiabao) were more than 40,000 “civil society†participants. Many of these “civil society†participants were students exasperated with the lack of progress made at the previous Conference on Environment and Development held in 1992 and often called the “Earth Summit.â€Â
The events that unfolded during the Rio+20 Conference are interesting and even, at times, dramatic. Though the United States and Venezuela have had strained relations in the last several years, the two delegations from these countries put those differences aside to form an alliance to block the Oceans Rescue Plan and argue vehemently against a deadline to end fossil fuel subsidies. Even though Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change, said at a State Department meeting that “…we [US officials] see Rio as intended to catalyze renewed high-level focus on sustainable development by all the world’s countries,†many have criticized the US for what critics see as a lack of leadership from the world’s most developed nation.Â
While many focus on criticizing specific nations including the United States and China, the world’s two largest polluters, for a perceived lack of leadership on the pressing issues related to sustainability and climate change, others have criticized the lack of concrete action coming from the most recent world summits discussing climate change. Students have often been the driving forces behind social change and so their participation and attendance at Rio+20 is not unprecedented. At Rio+20, however, students took their activism to a new level.Â
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