Pardee Director Writes in TripleCrisis on Rio+20 Negotiations

Prof. Adil Najam, Director of the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and a contributor to the TripleCrisis blog wrote an op-ed post on the forthcoming negotiations in preparation for the ‘United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development,’ or the so-called Rio+20 Earth Summit. The Rio +20 summit is scheduled to be held in Brazil in June 2012 and the preparatory negotiations will be held at the United Nations headquarters from May 17-19, 2010.

Referring to a paper published by the Pardee Center before the decision to hold the Rio+20 Earth Summit was taken, Prof. Najam writes: “I had argued before these decisions were made that if the purpose of Rio+20 is merely to have another global party, then we are better off without it. The world is already partied out. However, if we do decide to have the party then let us be sure that there is a reason big enough to match the size of the party.”

In the op-ed, Prof. Najam suggests that sustainable development governance will remain a key issue on teh agenda: “What remains to be seen is whether institutions that define themselves as ‘environmental’ will be really willing to give prominence to those who are primarily ‘development institutions. Even more unclear is whether ‘development’ institutions will have any interest in sitting next to their ‘environmental’ cohorts. If that happens – as it well could – the idea of sustainable development governance will die the same way it was born. Without fanfare. And that would be a real pity.”

Read full blog post here: Adil Najam in TripleCrisis – Getting Ready for Rio+20.

The Pardee Center has been active as a research node in the run-up to these negotiations, including publishing a number of papers, holding a special Pardee Center seminar at the United Nations headquarters prior to the negotiation, and Prof. Najam working directly with Ministers and delegation leaders from Commonwealth countries on their priorities for these negotiations. Pardee Center research already focuses on many of the development issues that are at the Center of the Rio+20 agenda and will continue to do so (see here).