Tag: Rio+20

Bottoms up

COA Admin March 22, 2012 0 Comments
by Ana Puhac After witnessing the process of negotiations on the Zero Order draft compilation document for only three days, disappointment in the spaces of the UN Headquarters is laughably apparent. Disappointment is not an unforeseen ingredient when dealing with the global political scene and UN. However, when it is implied in mordant remarks of Staffan Tillander, Ambassador for Rio+20 while...

Education for Sustainable Development and Shifting the Paradigms

aodell March 22, 2012 0 Comments
by Anna Odell One of the issues when dealing with “sustainable development” is the lack of clarity around the term itself. We have spent an entire term working, studying, and understanding text such as the “The Future We Really Want” in depth and grasping the general issues that are relevant for Rio+20. But at times, I feel as though we need to take a step back and look at what we expect...

The Complexities of a Human Rights-Based Approach

Lara Shirley March 22, 2012 0 Comments
by Lara Shirley 1. The demand for a human rights-based approach In various side-events and negotiations, the concept of a human rights-based approach has come up several times, especially with regard to indigenous peoples, food security, and water. This is essentially to ensure justice and effectiveness in the agreements that come out of these negotiations, and is particularly relevant within the...

Jean-Pierre Thebault and France/EU at Side Events

Bohdan Zymka March 21, 2012 0 Comments
  By Bogdan Zymka (Drawing by Ana Puhac) Side events at the Informal-Informals in New York provide insight into what civil society is up to while the formal informal negotiations go on inside the ECOSOC conference room. Major Groups and NGOs are hosting discussions outside of the negotiations in order to open dialogue with civil society for input into the importance of their messages...

Photo coverage of Earth in Brackets at a Informal Informal side event

COA Admin March 21, 2012 0 Comments
Julian Velez got a seat as an impromptu interpreter for Jadder Mendoza, Centro para la Autonomía y Desarrollo para los Pueblos Indígenas (CADPI) at Key Messages of Indigenous Peoples side event. There was no employed interpreter at the side event who would translate the discussion from english into spanish, which gave less chance for the key speakers who were not fluent in english to actively...