Re-think & Re-act
- One in five people live in extreme poverty
- One in seven people are undernourished
- One in seven people don’t have water to meet their basic needs
- One in six people live without electricity or with only erratic access
The 2012 Living Planet Report shows the urgent need for political leaders to ‘Re-think’ the way we manage our natural resources and ‘Re-act’ by putting words into actions at Rio+20 to protect our biodiversity and provide enough food, water and energy for all.
What is Rio+20?Rio+20 is the short name for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) that will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012.
The conference marks the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.
Rio+20 is an opportunity to build on the success of the first Earth Summit in 1992, and the sustainable development successes since then. Rio is the forum for leaders to bring about fundamental change in our economies towards environmental stability and social and economic equity, and ensure food, water and energy security for all.
Over the past few years we have seen how reckless mismanagement of the world's financial capital can wreak havoc in society, and yet we are treating the Earth’s finite natural capital in a similarly dangerous way. Rio+20 needs to set a new course for the global economy, sustaining the natural capital we will require to meet the food, water and energy needs of the future.
It’s time to get serious about the planet.
But for this, all of us – governments, companies, communities, citizens – step up to this challenge.