Gillard defends environment summit

Updated June 24, 2012 11:29:14

Mixed reactions as Earth summit wraps up Video: Mixed reactions as Earth summit wraps up (ABC News)

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the United Nations Earth Summit achieved important outcomes, denying the Brazil summit was a failure.

The summit has adopted a 53-page document, The Future We Want, which aims to lay the groundwork for a green economy and replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals from 2015.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon calls it a blueprint for making the world a brighter, safer place.

But green groups have criticised the agreement because it only lays out broad aspirations for improving environmental protections.

Ms Gillard says collective action is hard and global collective action is even harder, but there have been important agreements at the talks.

"There is a commitment to address the subsidies which lead to overfishing," she said.

"There is recognition of the effects of climate change on our oceans and recognition we need to address the management of our oceans beyond the exclusive economic zones of individual nations.

"I can certainly understand that there are many groups and many people around the world who would have had an ambition for more progress at this meeting.

"The nature of global action is that it needs to be collective, it needs to embrace and involve everyone. And this is the process that embraces and involves everyone."

Rio+20 was the biggest UN summit on sustainable development in a decade.

Its statement highlighted the many perils facing a planet whose human population is set to surge from seven billion today to 9.5 billion by 2050.

Pacific positive

The long list includes climate change, desertification, fisheries depletion, pollution and deforestation, and the danger that thousands of species will go the way of the dodo.

But critics say the summit was a historic opportunity which had been thrown away.

British economist Lord Nicholas Stern, author of a landmark study into the costs of global warming, said: "The two defining challenges we face today are eradicating global poverty and managing the risks of climate change.

"But the conference has failed to acknowledge the compelling evidence about the scale and urgency of action required."

Greenpeace's executive director, Kumi Naidoo, said: "Rio+20 has been a failure of epic proportions."

But youth organisations in the Pacific responded positively to the outcomes of the Rio+20 conference, despite the lacklustre response of many world leaders to the summit's environmental declarations.

Founder of Samoa's Future Rush Environment Group, 14-year-old Brianna Fruean, told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program that the vibe at Rio+20 was "very alive".

"I see all the world leaders that have come in today and yesterday and I find it a place of change," Ms Fruean said.

"A lot of change can happen from Rio+20 and it's all really in the hands of our leaders."

Ms Fruean attended Rio+20 in Brazil as one of around 3,000 youth members at two youth summits.

Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama addressed the summit on Thursday, and spoke about the challenges facing Fiji such as safe energy supplies, biodiversity and disasters related to climate change.

He also called on "the world's most advanced nations" to assist small island nations in "addressing matters of environmental and economic development and security".

Topics: environment, climate-change, event, brazil, australia, pacific, samoa, fiji

First posted June 23, 2012 14:47:08