Stakeholder Forum’s President, Felix Dodds, speech to the EESC

Chair of the 64th UN DPI NGO Conference and Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum Felix Dodds

We face huge challenges over the coming twenty years due to the lack of funding for and implementation of Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPoI).

Future generations will look at 1992 to 2012 as the irresponsible generation – the lost twenty years – when we could have put the foundations down for moving towards a more sustainable world.

Instead we have increased unsustainable consumption patterns and exported that idea to developing countries. This has resulted in increasingly negative and destructive impact on the world’s environment and poor.

We knew the problems, we knew most of the answers but yet we did not scale them up to deliver what was needed.

Rio+20 must ensure we take a different economic path. And while the term green economy has become controversial in some circles, it does at last put the economy on the table for discussion. I believe we should see it more as a just transition from where we are now to a one that puts sustainability and people, equity and fairness at its core.

To read the full speech, click here