By Yula Pannadopoulos
Yet another conference ended, and one more time we are left with few answers, if any. I will not go into details, and whine about what should have been done, or what could have been achieved. I am sure you all followed to the post Rio+20 press, and heard just about every negative thing about lack of will, failure to commit and so on and so forth. I will focus on the positive.
More than ever before the UN showed that it realizes the need to adapt, to change, and to re-invent itself from an organization with a rather outdated, slow and certainly (at least for the outsiders) frustrating ways of communication to a modern, fast(er) and more open minded entity. Don't get me wrong. I don't think UN does not have an open mind in general terms - of course it does. What I meant was mostly about communication with the outside world, that, without a doubt, needs to be more 'updated' and more relaxed. (where 'updated' equals social networks, visuals and creativeness).
This year, at this conference, more than ever before, we saw (on social networks) a true, honest effort to connect, to share, to inform, and to support a dialogue. There was an amazing number of ways to engage, communicate one's thoughts, opinions, and ideas on the future one wants. Twitter and Facebook timelines were positively overwhelmed with great information, visuals, videos, and, most importantly, with messages and comments from all of us. People, and youth in particular, finally became a factor in the equation.
And maybe Rio+20 was a failure - from many perspectives it certainly was. But a wider, more open, more transparent dialogue has been opened, and it is almost impossible to reverse that fact - and that's a great thing. That's pretty awesome.
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Artwork by Junior Lopes via toonpool.com
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