Inaction on economic, climate and resource threats raising anxieties at Rio+20

Writing for Alertnet, Laurie Goering highlights the growing realization that issues once discussed as future threats now turn into serious current problems at huge cost to communities and governments. “We are seeing the cycle of climate extremes has changed totally,” observed Eduardo Braga, a former governor of Amazonas state and now chair of Brazil’s Senate. “What was a climate extreme that came every 30 or 50 or 100 years is now much more frequent.”

The world needs to fundamentally restructure some of its most basic systems, including its economy, in order to effectively deal with the threats. And this goes through a reduction of the trade agenda within the negotiations, moving to a majority vote, breaking countries out of old established negotiating groups and reducing the growing north-south divide between those who “desperately want action” and those with their heels dug in against it.