Pardee Center to Co-Organize Side Event at UN Rio+20 Intersessional

Rio20Logo2The Pardee Center at Boston University will co-organize a side event titled “Achieving Implementation – Accountability, Engagement, and Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation” to be held at the United Nations in New York on December 16, 2011, at the Second Intersessional Meeting  for the forthcoming 2012 Rio+20 conference (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development). The event is co-organized by Natural Resources Defense Council, New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vitae Civilis, and Adelphi Research and will be held on Friday, 16 December 2011; 1.15-2.45pm in Conference Room 1 (NLB) at the United Nations in New York.

The institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD) and Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication (GESDPE) are the two themes of the Rio+20 Conference. Yet, with less than seven months to go until the Rio+20, there is a dearth of specific and implementable ideas under the IFSD agenda, while GESDPE has been met with a number of reservations in terms of how to accelerate its implementation in industrialized, developing and emerging economies.  Greater public awareness and participation will be required to enable the shift to a green economy. It is ever more apparent that if we want to achieve sustainable development, we need implementation and broader engagement.PardeePosterUNevent

In this context, the Side Event hopes  to positively contribute to the Rio+20 process by presenting different ways to address the implementation problem. The event will bring together (1) a mock-up of how a global registry of commitments on sustainable development could look, (2) fresh ideas about how to move toward a Green Economy from the Climate CoLab’s 2011 online Green Economy Contest (3) different formats of multi-stakeholder cooperation towards a Green Economy.

The Side Event will feature:

1) Stephan Contius, Head of Division for United Nations and Cooperation with Emerging and Developing Countries, German Federal Ministry for the Environment

2)  Miquel Muñoz, Pardee Center

3) Jacob Scherr, Natural Resources Defense Council

4) Thomas W Malone, New York University

5) Robert Laubacher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

6) Aron Belinky, Vitae Civilis

7) Dennis Taenzler, Adelphi Research

The Pardee Center has focused on the governance dimensions of the Rio+20 conference, including through its recent Task Force report on governance for a green economy (also here and here and here), participating actively in UN discussions (here and here), hosting discussions on accountability issues at the Pardee Center (here, here and here), through its previous seminars at the United Nations (here and here), and through its related publications, including a recent paper on accountability in global environmental governance. This brainstorming event will build on these activities, and ideas generated at the seminar will contribute to a future Pardee Center policy brief on the subject.