After four decades since the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and after just a few months of Rio+20, it seems appropriate to assess the path followed since Rio+92 and the challenges, mostly frustrated, posed by Rio+20 . For this purpose, it is analyzed the advances and shortcomings of the global agenda of sustainable development, of the preparatory process and the results achieved in Rio in June 2012, as well as of the threats posed by the new agenda of strategic security after the events of 11 September 2001 and by the economic and financial crisis lasting for half a decade already. The article concludes with the perspectives of the international agenda of sustainable development in the coming years.
Rio+20; Sustainable development; Global environmental agenda; Perspectives