Global Connections

It’s high season for politics. Yes, we are back to balancing campaign trail accusations with attack ads, as well as parsing the meanings of sound bites and polls. It would seem as though not much is actually happening in Washington, but that’s not completely true. Despite the rhetoric, there is some action on Capitol Hill – and it’s not a battle over taxes, it’s about treaties. For the historians, between 1946 and 1999, the United States completed nearly 16,000 international agreements.
READ MORE

Last week, Rio+20 focused the world’s attention on sustainable development. Issues ranging from expanding access to energy to protecting the oceans to improving health care led the global conversation. While much of the attention surrounding the conference has focused on the outcome document – which is important and should be examined – we can’t measure Rio+20’s success based solely on text.
READ MORE

Two years ago, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said, “We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the global community.” This week, I saw her call to action happening live, as a group of six Internet Freedom Fellows, brought together by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Mission in Geneva, sat down to break bread with UNESCO and the United Nations Foundation here in our Washington D.C. offices
READ MORE

The United Nations Foundation’s energy and public affairs team, led by UN Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth, have been in Brazil the past week for the Rio+20 summit. There has been a buzz in the halls about energy, touching two points: There’s a BIG and urgent need to enable everyone in the world to have access to electricity and modern fuels, and that creates a market opportunity.
READ MORE

After months of hard work and planning, I took my seat Tuesday morning in the Rio+Social audience, plugged in my computer, my phone, and my other phone, opened up all of my social media channels, and waited anxiously for the program to begin. As others took their seats and plugged in, I witnessed first-hand a connection between those in the room and the thousands of tweets that began to stream in with the hashtag #RioPlusSocial.
READ MORE

During today’s Rio+Social event coinciding with Rio+20, the historic UN conference on sustainability, world leaders are convening to address the earth’s biggest sustainability challenges. But you don’t have to be a world leader to join this important discussion about the future we want.
READ MORE