Universities key to Rio+20 despite countrywide strike

Universities are playing a key role in every part of the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20. But with widespread strikes at a number of public universities across the country, some feel an important opportunity is being missed.

Rio+20 is expected to be the largest conference the world has ever seen. With 130 heads of state and tens of thousands of visitors arriving in Rio de Janeiro, the stage is set for what UN Security-general Ban Ki-moon has described as a “once in a generation” event.

Rio is transforming into a thick web of debates and workshops, growing out of the main heavyweight political conference happening on 20-22 June.

With as many as 1,000 official and unofficial side events, Rio+20 has the flavour of a festival more than a UN conference. Spaces all over the city have been booked for an eclectic array of events, discussing everything from new types of biofuels to protecting Amazonian aboriginals and securing international sanitation and water supplies.

While Rio’s universities will be involved through widespread student participation, academic presence on expert panels and hosting events, the strike at public universities appears to have left much of the heavy lifting to the private university, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, or PUC.

The prestigious university has placed itself at the centre of academic participation in the conference, creating a specific initiative PUC-RIO+20, which is publishing research and articles through its website and holding a number of high-level events on the campus in Gavea, south Rio.

“PUC believes that this is one of the most important events of the century in terms of sustainability, and we believe that the input of professors in this event is absolutely fundamental,” Luiz Felipe Guanaes, director of PUC’s Interdisciplinary Centre for the Environment and a key organiser of PUC-RIO+20, told University World News.

The university is hosting several events, including a debate on environmental issues with Princeton University, and Fair Ideas – a partnered event with the International Institute for Environment and Development, IIED.

Mike Shanahan, spokesperson for IIED, stressed the importance of having the support of a local university to make these types of events happen.

“Without PUC-RIO our Fair Ideas event could not happen. Our colleagues there have spent a lot of time and energy in helping to organise the conference and letting people in Brazil know about it,” he said via email.

Shanahan also stressed the role of universities in general, saying: “They are the crucibles of ideas that can transform unsustainable systems and of research that can inform policy.”

The interaction between the academic and the political spheres is one of the key elements of Rio+20 and one of the advantages of having such a huge conference with the mix of visitors it draws.

“One of the big problems with today’s society is the gap between conclusions arrived at in the sciences and concrete political action,” said Guanaes.

Especially important, in Guaneas’ view, in terms of closing this gap, is the role of the younger generation. “The youth have the means to construct a new environmental ethic, a new philosophy of consumption, a new blueprint for collective existence”, he said.

In line with this vision, PUC-RIO+20 will see around 500 student volunteers being involved in each step of its programme of debates and forums, with events also organised and led exclusively by students.

A number of postgraduate students will be taking notes with the aim of assimilating the main points of the discussions into a final document.

Ricarda Hammer, a consultant at IIED, explained that the institute had organised a group of graduate students from PUC and Yale, who will be heavily involved throughout the conference so as to provide “a strong and international voice from the student body”.

Thiago Pacheco, a student at Curso Clio, the renowned preparatory school for the Brazilian diplomatic exam, is one of about 200 official UN student volunteers for the Rio+20 conference.

He will be coordinating 16 other volunteers at Pier Mauá, downtown Rio de Janeiro, where a number of events including an innovation and technology fair and exhibitions of civil society groups will be held.

Pacheco said students were enthralled by the opportunity of participating and that many had Facebook groups discussing how to get the most out of the conference. “They have been training for weeks and are excited about starting,” he added.

However, Pacheco was not so sure that public universities had made the most of Rio+20.

“I believe students, independently, are much more engaged than universities. As a matter of fact, most of the federal universities in Brazil are on strike at the moment. That surely puts their chances of making the most of the opportunities presented in jeopardy,” he said.