Background

In the context of the preparation of the Rio+20 (UNCSD) summit in June 2012, the UN Division for Sustainable Development will conduct a study, entitled "Sustainable development in the 21st century (SD21)". The objective of the SD21 study is to prepare a substantive contribution to the debate at the Rio+20 conference, which takes stock of the changes and evolution having occurred since the 1992 Earth summit in the area of sustainable development, and provides a clear vision and way forward for the international community, national governments, partnerships and other stakeholders in implementing the sustainable development agenda in an integrated manner. The study is expected to also become an important analytical and political contribution in its own right. Workshops and expert group meetings will be organized to gather inputs to the SD21 document. The present expert group meeting focuses on one component of the study, i.e., sustainable development scenarios.

Objectives

The overall objective of the expert group meeting is to take stock of scenario initiatives for Rio+20 and foster further collaboration on a coherent set of SD21 scenarios and the related SD21 study. The expert group meeting constitutes a critical step to the mobilization of global expertise on sustainable development scenarios as envisioned in the SD21 study. The meeting will allow for an interactive discussion with the modelling community at large on how to best specify long-term sustainability scenarios that can be used for the SD21 study - in essence, quantitative and qualitative SD21 sustainable development scenarios, covering a wide range of sustainable development issues and policy instruments, well beyond energy and climate change. The expert group meeting will also be used to raise awareness of the study, and mobilize the full community of modellers, thereby facilitating the identification of quality contributions to the SD21 study.


Proceedings of the meeting are available in the meeting report.