MAPAMA (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment) has today received contributions from representatives of organizations from different sectors of civil society to integrate them into the position of Spain and the European Union at the next United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development “Rio+20”.

The Ministry’s Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment, Guillermina Yanguas, closed this afternoon at the Royal Botanical Garden/CSIC in Madrid the conference “Spain on the way to ‘Rio+20’, a meeting of Civil Society”, in which more than a hundred organisations participated and which concluded with a document that collected their main contributions.

Among the main suggestions included in this text are the need to work towards an economic model of development based on the value of sustainability, a new political model based on responsibility and better governance, and a new ethical model based on the value of solidarity that allows for increased social participation.

To this end, the participants (companies, trade unions, NGOs, public administrations or research centres) have proposed a series of objectives that should be achieved at the next “Rio+20” conference, such as promoting a new green economy, generating employment, putting social and environmental governance before economic interests, committing to a new environmental taxation and ensuring environmental coherence in the development of all sectoral policies.

During the closing, Guillermina Yanguas described this meeting inaugurated this morning by Minister Miguel Arias Cañete as very “fruitful”, and explained that the document includes the visions that civil society wants to convey to the Spanish Administration with a view to the final process of negotiations in Rio de Janeiro. In addition, it allows the Ministry to know the opinion and ideas of the organizations and to integrate them, as far as possible, into the national and European position in this next world environmental forum that will take place in Rio de Janeiro between June 20 and 22.

The participation of civil society will be a milestone in the future “Rio+20” conference, enhanced by new computer, communication and social media.

The Director General pointed out that Spain is facing “Rio+20” with the conviction that significant progress will be made in this area, which is why she invited society to continue participating through the virtual space that has been set up to facilitate communication (http://www.fundacion-biodiversidad.es/rio20).