One U.N. official believes that it is unlikely that a conclusive deal will come out of the Rio+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro next week.
Amina Mohamed, deputy executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, told AlertNet that current economic troubles will make participating countries less likely to agree on a conclusive plan.
“We need to do this but it is going to require energy, it is going to require resources, it's going to require a sense of focus and we don't have that because we are trying to focus on reviving our economies,” Mohamed told AlertNet.
The Rio Earth Summit led to the creation of the Kyoto protocol, but only four of its 90 most important commitments have been met, according to a UNEP report mentioned in the AlertNet article.
Mohamed attributed this failure to “lethargy” and said that “business as usual” will not be sustainable.
“[The conference is] an opportunity that we should not lose. If we lose it we will have to wait for another 20 years," Mohamed told AlertNet. “By then, the damage that we see today will be 20-fold.”
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