Media

Twenty years ago, governments from around the world met in Rio de Janeiro to discuss sustainable development, and created some of the most far-reaching environmental agreements. As the negotiators prepare for Rio+20, we asked young people across Europe – born around the time of the first Earth Summit – to show us their vision for a sustainable future.

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The world needs to move away from measuring success in purely economic terms, and should instead consider other criteria, including distribution of resources, sustainability, health, human rights and education. These were the discussions in a landmark meeting of the United Nations (UN), calling for new measurements of wellbeing beyond GDP in the run up to the Rio sustainability summit in June.

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Climate change is already evident in Europe. Across the continent, policy makers are starting to respond to current and future impacts and risks associated with rising temperatures, changing precipitation, melting glaciers, ice and snow, rising sea levels, and more frequent and intense floods and droughts.

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Ground level ozone causes health problems, decreases crop yields and damages the environment. Ozone levels exceeding certain targets in Europe were less frequent in summer 2011 than in any year since monitoring started in 1997. However, the long-term objective was exceeded in all EU Member States and it is likely many of them will not meet the target value, applicable as of 2010.

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Consumption of products and services impacts the environment in many different ways. For example, the things we buy contribute, directly or indirectly through the product lifecycle, to climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and resource depletion in Europe and other regions.

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