Sustainable development in Rio+20: discourses, advances, regressions and new prospects

Abstract

Four decades after the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, and just a few months after Rio+20, this paper aims to deepen the path followed by the global agenda of sustainable development, since Rio+92 until the challenges, mostly frustrated, faced by the conference recently held in Rio de Janeiro. For this purpose, the advances and regressions in this agenda were identified, as well as the preparatory process, the results achieved in Rio+20 and the threats posed by the new global environmental agenda. The methodology adopted has a qualitative focus, by using a discourse approach with regard to the first stage of data analysis and a correlation between the work by Jared Diamond, 2006, and Rio+20, as a complementary phase. The paper concludes that the discourses of food security, deficient gross domestic product (GDP), scientific credibility, green economy, and the private sector importance for sustainable development stood out during the 2012 summit. Furthermore, analyzing the prospects of the international agenda in the coming years, the paper concludes that the world faces nowadays a clearly political deficit with regard to the implementation of decisions which have already been repeatedly adopted. In other words, the major challenge for sustainable development today is the inability of specific actors, clearly identifiable, to take concrete actions.