Why the Rio+20 Earth Summit matters

Melanie Kramers

20 June 2012

I'm eating lunch in an aircraft hangar, alongside people dressed in everything from African prints and orange Buddhist robes, to sober suits, while upbeat samba echoes through a tannoy.

The excited chatter in different languages is how I imagine London will sound during the Olympics, as people from around the globe gather for a shared aim.

Rather than sporting glory, the focus here at the Rio+20 UN conference is on how to get us out of the mess we're in. It's not just the current economic meltdown. Billions of people are going hungry and the planet's straining at its limits.

Hordes of people are in Brazil for this massive event, 20 years after the original Earth Summit. It's fair to say there's been little progress on fixing our world's problems since then.

As we haul laptops with dying batteries between meetings in a hi-tech centre strangely lacking in plug sockets, everyone's talking about the same issues.

We need big solutions to the big problems we're facing. Is the Summit going to do the job?

So far, it's not looking good - my campaigner colleagues tell me the deal currently on the table is pathetic. We're calling for a much more ambitious plan from world leaders arriving today, one that's up to the task.

There's a clear role for the UK Government, represented here by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. An easy first step would be to ditch old-fashioned economic thinking that sees it handing tax breaks to coal, gas and oil companies, and invest in clean British energy from the sun, wind and waves instead. A million people have already asked world leaders to do this - you can join our call to Nick Clegg too.

But as everyone we speak to at the conference agrees, we'll only be able to solve our problems by changing our broken economic system for a model that has the wellbeing of people and planet at its heart.

Will any leaders make it onto the medal podium in Rio by committing to bold action to do this? I hope so. We'll be keeping you posted on the latest from the talks.

Melanie Kramers, Communications & Media Team.