30 April 2012: The latest issue of “The Greenline,” a newsletter of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), highlights contributions that the GEF will make to the Rio+20 process, among other items.

In an article titled “The Legacy, and the Promise, of Rio,” GEF CEO and Chairperson Monique Barbut highlights that the GEF’s history is intertwined with the outcomes from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). She indicates that the GEF will bring to the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) a “key message about the need to promote synergies between environmental conventions within the different environmental focal areas – biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, ozone depletion substances and persistent organic pollutants.” Barbut also indicates that the GEF will launch a book highlighting the broad spectrum of the projects that the GEF has supported since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, titled “From Rio to Rio: A 20-Year Journey to Green the World’s Economies,” featuring 20 GEF projects. The GEF will also release a report on lessons learned from climate change and biodiversity projects. And the GEF Evaluation Office will present the results of a review of GEF achievements vis-à-vis expectations as set out for the GEF at the 1992 Earth Summit.

In another article, titled “Why Rio+20 Will Succeed,” Gustavo Fonseca reviews the expectations for Rio+20 and the experience of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and concludes that the dream for Rio+20 “will most likely emerge from the realization that groups of committed people, organizations, businesses and states can indeed make a difference in the time frame that the planet and our society require.”

The issue also reports on recent GEF publications and recent and upcoming meetings. [April issue of The Greenline]