Rio+20 sustainable development talks too focused on technology

The conviction that new technologies will solve the world's environmental and social problems has overly dominated early negotiations leading up to the Rio+20 summit in Brazil in June, a UN General Assembly meeting has heard. Mentions of technology were "almost endless" in the first draft of the outcome document, known as the 'zero draft', according to Pat Mooney, executive director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), a non-governmental organisation based in Canada. The message conveyed was that "... as policymakers, there's no longer any need to make policies, all you need to do is let technology sort your problems for you", Mooney told the General Assembly's Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature earlier this month (18 April). Although the first zero draft has been revised several times since, he said, "there is an assumption of a 'techno fix' for every problem".