Twenty Years After the Rio Earth Summit: What is the Agenda for the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development?

Twenty years after the Rio Earth Summit, the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) offers an important opportunity to consider anew the challenge of sustainable development and to provide guidance and inspiration for the path ahead. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is among the discussants within the U.S. government effort led by the U.S. State Department to advance a positive and constructive intervention at the Rio+20 conference. This includes advancing the discussion to pursue effective environmental governance, particularly at the national level, within the institutional arrangements component of the Rio+20 agenda. This will serve to highlight the critical importance of effective governance and will help catalyze an international effort to more fully operationalize ideals, objectives, and commitments through government systems and modalities that are fully functional.