Bosnia and Herzegovina

Rio+20 Legacy: World Centre for Sustainable Development launched by Brazil and UNDP

29/06/2012 - As a major and concrete legacy of the Rio+20 Conference, the Brazilian Government announced the creation of Rio+ Centre, the World Centre for Sustainable Development, at a ceremony attended by Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Helen Clark, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator, held on the last day of the UN Conference.

The Rio+ Centre will facilitate research, knowledge exchange and promote international debate about sustainable development. It will bring together a broad international consortium of partners, consisting of government agencies, United Nations agencies, local governments (including the state government and municipality of Rio de Janeiro), NGOs, universities, think-tanks and the private sector.

“Governments, private sector, and civil society actors will be able to use this Centre to learn from each other’s experiences, identify people and partners with critical expertise, plan ahead, and design programmes and policies. UNDP can contribute with its extensive networks of experience and expertise to this new Centre. We have a long history of capacity development support, and an established role as an impartial broker who can connect sustainable development initiatives that need to go up scale,” Helen Clark noted.

The objective behind the creation of the Rio+ Centre is to build on new and innovative mechanisms for engaging the participation of local governments, civil society, business and academia in knowledge exchange and discussions around the subject.

The new centre will build on the successful existing partnership between the Government of Brazil and UNDP: the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), established in 2004, in Brasilia. Since its founding, IPC-IG has been playing a key role in the dialogue between countries of the South on policies for social protection and inclusion, development innovation as well as rural and sustainable development issues.

The Rio+ Centre facilities will be initially hosted by Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s Institute of Graduate Studies and Research in Engineering (COPPE/UFRJ), at the Ilha do Fundão Campus. Rio's Municipality has stated its willingness to provide a space for the future headquarters of Rio+ Centre.