Escaping from Rio, seeking solutions among mayors and judges

This note is a little bit more personal and provides some background why I have decided to take a short break away from the Rio Centro and the Rio+20 negotiations…

I joined a UN process for the first time in 2008, during the UN climate conference in Poznan. My main motivation at the time was to use my contacts with local high schools (I had lived there for a year) to bring international youth activist into Polish classrooms and explain the background to the local pupils. I thought that this would be a one-shot experience and that I would be mainly focusing on educational projects. Somehow, this experience ended in a different direction, and I became involved in international youth networks working around the climate negotiations.

During the past four years, I have attended many international conferences and negotiating sessions related to sustainable development. These experiences were inspiring thanks to the visionary people that I met along the way. However, and with a few exceptions, most of them concluded rather bitterly, the actions and commitments of governments falling short from addressing the issues at stakes. The frustration grows even more when those in charge of these processes attempt to sell the outcomes of these discussions as successes rather than to focus on acknowledging what remains to be done, Copenhagen and Durban being good example of such “success-wash”.

Still, I remain convinced of the crucial role that governance needs to play in the transition towards sustainable communities. As much as bottom-up projects are needed to deliver the positive change that we need to see in practice, these initiatives need to be supported by a top-down approach in order to ensure that they become the norm rather than the exception. The urgency and the depth of the social changes required are such that we cannot afford to only lead by positive examples and voluntary actions. Institutional and political frameworks need to be strengthen so that governance can provide the legal and economic incentives (both negative and positive) to smoothen and fasten this transition.

So here is my dilemma: I deeply believe in the need for proper governance to address the challenge our generation faces, but have witnessed the UN processes fail repeatedly at delivering those so far. And after four years engaging passionately in these processes, I have come to a point where I desperately need to find the light and learn of positive experiences to build upon. I wonder if I should not have focused on local educational and awareness raising project rather than to engage in these processes often completely disconnected from the reality.

So while others have remained in Rio following the negotiations debating over the same paragraphs since months, I have decided to simply run out of this process for a while and escaped Rio altogether. A few hours later, I have now joined the ICLEI World Congress on Cities and Sustainability in Belo Horizonte, a few hundreds of miles away from Rio. I am hoping to listen to and engage with mayors who have acted decisively at the local level and who take actions to design sustainable communities. After this experience, I plan on continuing my escape a couple of hours West of Rio to attend another parallel event during which judges, legal practitioners and parliamentarians discuss how law can help reshape the society and contribute to a more healthy and equitable planet.

I would like to share the story of this escape away from the UN and looking for solutions around Rio+20 rather than inside the UN sessions. So please, feel welcome to join me on this journey and check this page during the coming days. If all goes well, I will find inspirational stories on how governance can and do make a change on the ground, so that I can come back to the Rio+20 summit itself with a renewed vision and sense of hope.