Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum: Innovation & Collaboration for the Future We Want

The Rio+20 Forum is the most important corporate sustainability event of 2012. Preliminary events began on the 14th of June and the official start is on June 15th. The Forum will run until June 18th. The event is officially subtitled “Innovation & Collaboration for the Future We Want.” This event is organized by the U.N. Global Compact and is being held in cooperation with the Rio+20 Secretariat, the UN System and the Global Compact Local Network Brazil. The week-long Forum is taking place in in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and consists of dozens of highly focused workshops and thematic sessions linked to the Rio+20 agenda.

The objective of the Forum is to strengthen the business contribution to sustainable development globally – seeking to bring greater scale and quality to implementation of corporate sustainability practices, innovation and collaboration.

This Forum addresses the critical role the private sector must play to realize sustainability. Through the UN Global Compact alone, over 6,000 companies have committed to conduct business in line with human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption principles.

There are already a number of innovative business solutions in the areas of energy access, water security and carbon emissions. The goal of the Forum is to explore way the right incentives and enabling environments to help the private sector to make significant and lasting contributions to the sustainable development agenda.

The participants at the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum give business and investors an opportunity to meet with governments, local authorities, civil society and UN entities in dozens of highly focused workshops and thematic sessions linked to the Rio+20 agenda.

The Forum’s objective is to bring greater scale and quality to corporate sustainability practices. As a showcase for innovation and collaboration, the Forum is designed to be a launching ground for widespread action.

Over the course of four days at the Windsor Barra Hotel, the Forum will hold over 60 focused sessions held in parallel on themes related to the Rio+20 agenda. These themes include energy, climate, water, ecosystems, agriculture, food, social development, urbanization, cities, economics and finance of sustainable development.

These sessions are designed to spur action and stimulate greater uptake. Innovative public-private partnerships, business contributions and new commitments will be showcased for each theme.

For more information read Corporate Sustainability Leadership: A Framework for Action at Rio+20 and Beyond.