Author: Kerstin Schnatz

They are infamous, a great way to meet new people and loved even by state delegates: The parties of civil society groups during the yearly climate summits.
This year’s party took place on a beach in the middle of the desert, about an hour’s drive away from Doha. We went there to soak up the atmosphere as well as for some late night networking.

Author: Kerstin Schnatz

A huge disappointment, a good basis to work from or “a major step forward in achieving a sustainable future” as the United Nations have put it? Depending on who you ask, the outcome of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 is evaluated differently.

In the run-up to the so called Rio+20 Earth Summit, we had asked our Global Ideas crowd to forward their questions to participants of the summit. In Rio, our reporters Philipp and Kerstin asked Stefan Rostock from the non-governmental organisation Germanwatch to answer them. Stefan followed the negotiation process very closely – listen to his answers:

Stefan Rostock Germanwatch by ideasforacoolerworld

About Germanwatch
The non governmental organisation Germanwatch advocates for a more sustainable future in countries of the so-called “South”. It researches and highlights the global consequences that economies and politics of industrialized states have on developing and threshold states – situated mostly in the geographical South of the planet. Germanwatch is based in Bonn and Berlin.

About Rio+20
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development took place in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With almost 30,000 participants from all around the world including representatives of 191 UN member states as well as 10,000 NGO people and almost 4,000 journalists, it was the biggest conference in the history of the United Nations. Download the 50-page outcome document “The future we want”.

Author: Kerstin Schnatz

How can we better tackle global environmental problems – such as the loss of biodiversity or air pollution? Many countries believe that the United Nations should have a bigger say in solving these problems – one of the most controversial issues at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, where over 115 world leaders come together to discuss global challenges.

The European Union for example favors an „upgrade“ of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to the same level as more powerful UN bodies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation or the World Health Organisation.

But other nations are opposed to this change – including Brazil, host of the summit. According to non governmental organizations watching the Rio+20 negotiations closely, a full scale upgrade of UNEP is by now almost off the table.

German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier sticks to the European position:

GLOBAL IDEAS has been at the Berlin based re:campaign, a conference that presents and analyses the best in online-campaigning. We shot a few interviews during the event which we will be releasing from today.

Our guest in the first interview was Ole Seidenberg. He is one of the organizers of the event. His agency ‘Nest’ counsels NGOs to build up successful campaigning using the internet. Ole has as well been one of the bloggers who was part of the initiative “Adopt A Negotiator.” We talked about climate change and social media. The interview was held in german.