IICA at the Río+20 Summit

Brasilia, June 14, 2012 (IICA). Starting on June 13, all the members of the United Nations will gather in Rio de Janeiro, venue for the Río+20 Summit, to discuss the path towards sustainable development over the next two decades.

Since the Rio-92 Summit, this topic has been a part of Brazil’s external policy. As chairperson of the Conference, the country will be responsible for coordinating discussions and will seek to achieve consensus and take concrete decisions.

The objective of the Conference is to ensure that there is renewed political commitment to achieving sustainable development and to evaluate the progress to date and the gaps that still exist in the implementation of the results of the main meetings held on sustainable development. The emerging challenges will also be addressed.

The following video from Romélia Souza, Project Specialist at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), provides a better understanding of Rio +20.

IICA is aware that the topics currently being discussed in support of a strategic definition for Brazil’s policies, may provide useful inputs into the discussions expected during the Rio+20 Meeting.

A group of specialists from the Institute, led by David Williams, Manager of the Agriculture, Natural Resources Management and Climate Change Program, and by Manuel Otero, IICA Representative in Brazil, is already in Rio de Janeiro to monitor the discussions and orientations during the event.

From there, a group of communication specialists will upload to the Institute’s portal and to the social networks, (Facebook and Twitter), all the information gathered by the IICA specialists who are on site.

According to Manuel Otero, “IICA’s participation in the Summit Rio+20 Conference underscores the importance of the relationship between the field and the city and of Brazil’s efforts to encourage the adoption of environmentally friendly practices and guarantee stability and high yields from production in the long term”.

To this end, IICA and the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MDA) of Brazil organized from April 9-30, the International Virtual Congress on Green Economy and Socio-productive Inclusion: the Role of Family Agriculture. This event was organized to garner technical support to strengthen institutional positions at the World Conference.

Digital territories

The program from the MDA stand at the Rio+20 Summit includes a presentation on June 18 of a short video on the project, Digital Territories, which was produced within the framework of the alliance with IICA, in order to show the impact of this important Project on the life of communities such as Engenho II in Cavalcante, Goiás, and Assentamento Rural 17 de abril in Eldorado dos Carajás, Pará, whose realities are clearly shown in the video.

IICA is one of the partners of the MDA in the execution of the Digital Territories Project. Since being launched in 2008, the Project has established more than 110 digital houses in the five regions of Brazil, including computer equipment and furniture, internet access and training. The idea is to get the rural communities on board digitally by broadening the perspective of users in the rural areas. The Project currently uses satellite technology and is acquiring new stations in order to establish other houses.

For more information, contact:
david.williams@iica.int