The Asia-Europe Environment Forum (ENVforum) convened in partnership with the Hanns Seidel Foundation, the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies, the Swedish Environmental Secretariat for Asia and the United Nations Environment Programme the 2nd Scenario Planning Workshops on Asia-Europe Strategies for Earth Summit 2012 in Uppsala, Sweden from 10th to 12th October 2011. This Asia-Europe Strategies is a series of three informal consultation workshops to be held among stakeholders of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process in the lead up to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) or ‘Rio+20’ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the beginning of June 2012. This series aims to provide inputs and recommendations for an institutional reorganization of UN Organizations engaged with environmental protection and sustainable development under changing global frame conditions.

The workshop in Uppsala composed 55 international experts representing different sectors such as policy makers, academics, civil society activists – all being involved extensively in sustainable development and environmental governance. They discussed following possible conference objectives for the Rio +20 conference:

• Securing political commitment for Sustainable Development through the creation of a Sustainable Development Councils (SDC) at all levels: international, regional and national that will integrate three pillars of sustainable development economic, political and environmental.
• Acknowledging the need of addressing gaps in already agreed commitments as well as to ensure the overall coordination of sustainable development within UN system and Bretton Woods Institutions: To effectively address gaps in existing commitments and ensure the over-all coordination of sustainable development in the international system, the SDC should map and address any overlapping areas and use available funding in an efficient and transparent way.
• Addressing new and emerging challenges: To address new and emerging challenges, scientific and technological innovations should be integrated as an integral part of the decision-making process.
• Horizontal Integration: Human activity has seriously affected planet boundaries that directly endanger ecosystem stability and all countries, especially developing countries, need access to the resources required to achieve sustainable development. The 2011 Solo Message resulting from the High Level Dialogue of IFSD called for an international body to promote the Integration of the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development. The SDC should therefore be established by building upon the precedents and useful lessons to be drawn from relevant institutional reforms, including recent experience in establishing the UN Human Rights Council.
• Vertical Integration: The horizontal integration of the economic, environmental and social pillars should be replicated vertically, according to the principle of subsidiarity throughout the international, regional, national and sub-national levels in the implementation of sustainable development goals. A multi-level SDC should facilitate the creation of sustainable development bodies, where they do not exist, and complement, where they do, the existing structures at the international, regional and national levels to provide a strengthened mechanism for sustainable development.

This series of informal consultation workshops will be continued through a final workshop in Bangkok at which all recommendations and proposals will be collected and evaluation for further submission to the United Nations.