ABSTRACT
I would like to begin my analysis of the post-Rio process with a short comment on the name that was originally proposed for the event in 2002: ‘Earth Summit III’. Why a concern about names? The fact remains that the official name of the Rio conference, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, was not the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. This seemingly simple choice of words affected much of the thinking and political positioning around the conference’s agenda and had an effect on its outcome. The choice of name was also not coincidental, since leaving the words ‘sustainable development’ out of the title opened the door to leaving equity and poverty issues to the side.
