Rio+20: Green infrastructure gets its day to shine
Held two decades ago, the original Earth Summit gathered world leaders in Rio de Janeiro to try to grapple with climate change, biological diversity, and other environmental challenges. Rio+20 is smaller, but still generating interesting ideas.
Held two decades ago, the original Earth Summit gathered world leaders in Rio de Janeiro to try to grapple with climate change, biological diversity, and other environmental challenges. Rio+20 is smaller, but still generating interesting ideas.
Twenty years ago, world leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro to grapple with climate change, biological diversity, and other environmental challenges. Today they are back again, but with much less fanfare. If my Twitter feed is any indication, Rio+20 is getting much less attention that the original Earth Summit.
One item that deserves attention is greater emphasis on getting business involved in protecting the environment. For example, two dozen leading businesses鈥揻rom Alcoa to Xerox鈥搕eamed up with The Nature Conservancy on a vision for聽The New Business Imperative: Valuing Natural Capital听(颈苍迟别谤补肠迟颈惫别,听辫诲蹿).
The report lays out the business case that natural resources have real economic value, even if they aren鈥檛 traded in markets, and that protecting them can sometimes reduce costs, maintain supplies, soften the blow of future regulation, and build goodwill with customers, communities, and workers. All kind of obvious, at one level, but nonetheless useful to see in print with examples and commitments.
One item that caught my eye is the potential for 鈥済reen鈥� infrastructure to replace 鈥済ray鈥�:
To encourage such investments, where they make sense, lawmakers and regulators need to focus on performance鈥搃s the wastewater getting clean?鈥搑ather than the use of specific technologies or construction.