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Brazil & Southern Cone - June 2012 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Obama skips out on the future to deal with crises present

In a blow to the Brazilian hosts and international environmentalists, President Barack Obama will not put in an appearance at the Rio+20 Conference on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, which began on 13 June and will run for just over a week. Despite pressure from the likes of the United Nations (UN) secretary general Ban Ki-moon, a week ahead of the summit the White House announced that the US delegation would be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instead. Obama had domestic political reasons to avoid another UN ‘junket’ this presidential election year, but other key leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel and the UK’s David Cameron have also ducked out, in their case pleading the more pressing meltdown in the Eurozone. Expectations for the Rio+20 have been set low, with the draft summit agreement, entitled ‘The Future We Want’, dismissed by leading activists as toothless even before the conference got underway. Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, told reporters, “The Rio Earth Summit will not bring about the Future We Want, it will provide a stark and distressing reminder of the present we have….A world in which public health, human rights and sustainable development are subordinate to private profit, shallow national interest and 'business as usual'."

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