The Rio+20 Conference has officially concluded, the Cariocas (natives of Rio de Janeiro) finally have their roads and beaches back, and the PECS Team is safely back on US soil. We’re taking advantage of this time to step back and evaluate what we gained from the conference. Check out the final daily update for some closing reflections from the PECS team on what they’ve brought home with them from the conference (and see if you can spot a hint of our time on the beach)!

 

Looking back on Rio+20, I’m both inspired and confused by what I saw. The official negotiations of the final document, The Future We Want, covered 3 days, and the unofficial side events put on by NGOs and universities spanned more than a week. In the side events, I saw youth and women, indigenous peoples and human rights activists coming together to voice a shared goal for more sustainable and inclusive growth. In the official negotiations, I saw a steady stream of heads of state striding to the podium to say essentially the same thing–we need to make sustainable development a priority.

At the end of the day, though, I’m still not sure what exactly got done. With the final document being dismissed as “little more than a plea for something better”, I’m left scratching my head about how 50,000 people can converge with a shared goal and not produce something that the world takes note of.

But perhaps the goal of the conference was not the official document, but rather the connection of dreams and ideas that occurred outside the plenary hall. On my bus ride to the last day of the conference, I sat next to a young lady from Germany who was traveling with the international youth group YOUTHinkgreen. We discussed the frustration of a lot of youth at the conference, who felt that their voices were not being heard by the heads of state and that not enough was getting done. She tied a green thread around my wrist–green symbolizing the color of nature, the thread symbolizing the fragility of our relationship with it, and the knot representing our shared responsibility for its well being. Their goal was to tie these threads for as many people at Rio+20 as possible.

As I soaked up the last hours of the conference, I noticed the thin green line around the wrists of person after person. Perhaps these small connections and the sense of investment from the next generation is something to be proud of. Whether it justifies the time and resources spent to put on the Rio+20 conference is another issue, but I was inspired by that young woman and her group’s determination to not stop speaking out, even if they didn’t think their voices were being heard. If I learned one thing from the conference, it’s probably this: my generation needs to keep stepping up, because we have a lot of work to do.