During the last days of June 2012, the United Nations Sustainable Development Conference was organised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with the participation of all the United Nations member states. The main frameworks of the conference named as Rio+20 since it was organised twenty years after the Earth Summit of the United Nations again in Rio, where green economy in the context of sustainable development, poverty eradication with an institutional point of view was tackled.
The Rio+20 summit, has gathered United Nations member states and thousands of civil society representatives in order to prevent burden of global environmental issues including climate change on Earth and global poverty.
I, as former AEGEE member, was also in Rio, representing the Turkish State (member of official delegation), Green Party of Turkey and The Earth Association.
The discussions and the results of the meeting have disappointed many NGO representatives since any legally binding commitment and financial mechanisms were not defined in order to solve global issues and deal with the problems in front of the sustainability.
I know, the above mentioned sentences are too general for providing enough information about the conference so let’s go step by step and first give a closer look to the final outcome of the conference and then comment on what is waiting for us in the future:
The outcome of the conference: The Future We Want document
The document named “The Future We Want” has been prepared during the first days of the conference by the bureaucrats and then approved by the heads/high level representatives of the governments. Unfortunately, the document is very weak, open-ended and it is not legally binding. None of the items defined in the document are providing obligatory clauses for the governments, and nothing regarding how to provide sustainability/sustainable development defined.
The Document, consisting of 238 long paragraphs, is summarising the global issues one by one, but does not include any information or clause regarding solving these issues, how to make the sustainable development real (the sustainable development concept is also very problematic but it is another issue to be discussed), how to finance prevention of poverty and transition to green economy. Unfortunately, the document did not satisfy public and many so-called least developed countries, but I believe that multinational corporations were very satisfied with the document (I will explain the reason later).
With my previous experience with UN conferences especially on environmental issues, I can say that the outcome document was a classic UN document. The discussions during the conference were long and nonsense. For instance, it was very big disappointment that the negotiators were discussing for many hours whether to replace “support” word with “reinforce” and did not talk about financing issues for a minute.
According to UN data, Rio+20 Summit was the biggest event with more than 50.000 participants, but we have returned back to our countries without having anything, only private sector was satisfied.
I say that because during the meeting nobody defined green economy and green growth. Leaving these 
concepts without definition means leaving public sector to define these concepts as they want and to continue “business as usual”: they will make green washing*, change the cover of their business and keep on using their unsustainable methods. Moreover, they will start to use these concepts for their public relations.
However, the expectations and demands of the thousands of CSO representatives were a lot more different: to define the institutional framework needed for transformation of economic system to fair, egalitarian, nature centered economic system.
From my perspective, the only good part of the document is the acceptance of the failure of Sustainable Development policies for the last twenty years. Yet, again nobody answered this question: how could we solve global unsustainability problem with the document weaker than document of the Earth Summit, which failed. Due to that, CSO representatives were organising demonstrations every day. On the one hand, CSO representatives were organising demonstrations, shouting and pushing governments 
for more sustainable policies, on the other hand, they were also organising simultaneous events to discuss future for more egalitarian world, for nature, for the rights of the mother Earth at the “Peoples Summit”.
The discussions at the Peoples Summit were very fruitful and it is totally believed that these discussions should have been discussed at the official Rio+20 meetings.
The Future after Rio+20
First of all, we will start to hear the concepts of green economy and green growth more day by day. Decision makers, public figures and scientists will confuse more with these undefined and confusing concept. The dominance on public and environment and unsustainable business and development will unfortunately continue as usual, but they will use these concepts as a new cover. We can say that the “Era of Green Washing*” is officially started.
So poverty will not end, using nature as a resource, until it totally eradicates it will continue. It is very classic and unpleasant to say, but anyway I will say: bad days are waiting for us, unfortunately governments are not representing people anymore.
The result of Rio+20 is not The Future We Want but the “Future We Dread”!
Written by Devin Bahçeci, AEGEE-Ankara Oldie & Member of Green Party in Turkey
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* the term “green washing” is defined as “a coordinated attempt of using green ideas to hide unpleasant facts, especially in a political context.