Race to Rio: Each Summit 2012

This coming summer, world leaders will gather in Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to mark the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992.  This year, meeting attendees will focus on building capacity for sustainable development and taking advantage of green economic opportunities for improving sustainability and eradicating poverty.  Nonprofits and resource management agencies look to this gathering of political leadership to gauge the amount of commitment being directed toward various issues facing society and the environment.  The Natural Resources Defense Council has been working diligently on their "Race to Rio" campaign, where they are advocating for more than just another treaty.

A gathering of this nature with 150 national leaders and over 50,000 people of course requires careful planning, but the NRDC has been preparing in a different sort of way.  They are looking for a commitment to action from industry, communities, corporations, and civil society.  Actions taken on short-term improvements for climate and energy, public health, and food security can support existing initiatives and stimulate new ideas for governance, monitoring, and enforcement of environmental law and policy.  Because the world is a big place, it is difficult to identify tangible actions to implement on a meaningful scale, but these agreements and gatherings do have the potential to positively impact the planet with enough public support.  

So, where do the oceans fit into all of this?  The oceans present an immediate conservation and management challenge in that territorial laws cannot apply to the high seas or the fluidity of marine resources that migrate, drift, or circulate around the world.  These issues will be prevalent in Brazil, but three key areas for oceans at Rio+20 include  implementing international governance on the high seas, motivating political accountability through modern communications, and incorporating conservation priorities into sustainable development goals.  But... how does that UN-speak translate into real issues we can relate to?  At the most recent panel discussion of the D.C. Marine Community, speakers focused on issues such as regulating seabed mining, sharing data on biodiversity and oceanography, and reviewing the accomplishments of the Regional Fisheries Management Organizations around the world.  Climate change (including ecosystem shifts, warming, and acidification) is quickly overtaking overfishing as the biggest marine conservation challenge we face, and witnessing how the world's leaders plan to overcome it would certainly be an eye-opening experience. 

Let us know if you're lucky enough to attend!