By Richard Ingham <\/p>\n
Rio de Janeiro, June 23, 2012 (AFP) -- The outcome of the Rio+20 summit provides further proof that the nation-state system is failing badly in tackling global environmental threats, say analysts. <\/p>\n
The UN's Conference on Sustainable Development had been billed as a once-in-a-generation chance to overhaul an economic model that had left a billion people in poverty and imperiled the biosphere. <\/p>\n
But veteran observers who watched the 10-day event drag to a close on Friday shook their heads in dismay. <\/p>\n
To them, it was a fresh failure by the United Nations system, after the near-disastrous 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, to respond to eco-perils that are now approaching at express speed. <\/p>\n
\"It's a demonstration of political impotence, of system paralysis, and it makes me feel pessimistic about the system's ability to deliver,\" Laurence Tubiana, director of a French think-tank, the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), said in an interview. <\/p>\n
\"The multilateral process today is not delivering the urgent action we need,\" WWF's Jim Leape told AFP in an email. <\/p>\n
\"International action is in fact important, to galvanize a global response to these challenges, but it's clear that we need to look to leadership in other places... that means looking for changes everywhere -- communities, cities, national governments and companies.\" <\/p>\n
After a three-day summit of 189 nation-states, the conference issued a 53-page declaration with the horizon-sweeping title \"The Future We Want.\" <\/p>\n
It itemized a distressingly long list of problems -- from global warming, deforestation and fisheries collapse to water stress, pollution and biodiversity loss that scientists fear could turn into a mass extinction. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Rio+20 shows UN 'impotence' in global eco-crisis: analysts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Richard Ingham Rio de Janeiro, June 23, 2012 (AFP) -- The outcome of the Rio+20 summit provides further proof that the nation-state system is failing badly in tackling global environmental threats, say analysts. Continue reading