2012 Rio de Janeiro – UN declaration “The future we want”. Poverty as the biggest global challenge

In June 2012 representatives of over 100 countries met at another Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro called “Rio+20”. Within the period of 20 years, i.e. since the previous meeting – the global population has risen from 5.5 bn to nearly 7 bn. Along with the growth, the number of global challenges has increased too, e.g. extreme poverty, existence of 2.5 bn people in primitive conditions with no access to basic sanitary facilities or rising emmission of greenhouse gases which threatens one third of living species with extinction.

The top issues addressed at the summit were as following:

– transition towards green economy models with an aim to eradicate poverty areas in the world

– protection of oceans from exessive exploitation,from destroying underwater ecosystems and from the effects of climate changes

– creating more friendly and more effective urban organisms

– large-scale use of renewable energy sources which trigger economic growth and at the same time limit CO2 and the emmission of other pollutants

RIO +20 Summit ended with a declaration called The Future We Want which recognizes poverty as the biggest global challenge of today and the most important impediment to sustainable development (info: www.unesco.pl)

This material has been published thanks to the financial support of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management. The sole responsibility for its contents lies with Collegium Mazovia.