An Analysis of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) Discourse Using an Ability Expectation Lens

Jacqueline Noga and Gregor Wolbring
Additional contact information
Jacqueline Noga: Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, 3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary T2N 4N1, Alberta, Canada

Sustainability, 2013, vol. 5, issue 9, 1-25

Abstract: The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) was hosted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 20–22, 2012, 20 years after the first Earth Summit, with the intention of creating solutions to current global environmental issues. In this paper we present the results of an analysis of academic and newspaper articles that covered the Rio +20 summit, using an ability expectation lens. Articles were collected from academic databases such as EBSCO, as well as from newspapers such as the Globe and Mail (Canada) and China Daily; the articles collected were coded for ability expectations using an extensive list of codes which has been designed to identify ability expectations. Analysis of the discourse has revealed a number of ability expectations, such as the ability to produce and consume, the ability to work, and the ability to control. These ability expectations reveal what is seen as a necessary part of development. The opportunities and challenges which occur during development may be related to the expectations of the public, academic, private and not-for-profit sectors. The authors submit that in order to move forward towards universal sustainable development, it is critical to consider the ability expectations which are both explicitly and implicitly included in the Rio +20 discourse.

Keywords: ability studies; ability expectations; Rio +20; content-analysis; discourse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/9/3615/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/9/3615/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:9:p:3615-3639:d:28207

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().