In June 2012, movements and leaders will meet in Rio for Rio+20,
two decades after the Earth Summit was organised in 1992 to
address urgent ecological challenges such as species extinction,
biodiversity erosion and climate change. The Earth Summit gave
us two very significant international environmental laws: the
United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the United
Nations framework Convention on Climate Change. It also gave us
the Rio principles, including the Precautionary Principle and
the Polluter Pays Principle. The world has changed radically
since 1992, and sadly, not for the better. Ecological
sustainability has been systematically sacrificed for a
particular model of the economy, which is itself in crisis. 1995
created a tectonic shift in what values guide our decisions, and
who makes the decisions. Rio was based on values of ecological
sustainability, social justice and economic equity - across
countries and within countries. It was shaped by ecological
movements, ecological science and