MEPs feel only the EU is interested in taking forward sustainable development after inconclusive UN climate conference.

MEPs debate failure at Rio+20

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/16039742/n001-120705-001-en_mf.srt

It was in Rio in 1992 that world leaders  gathered for the Earth Summit.

Twenty years on, the UN  decided to see if it's possible

to take sustainable development forward.  The answer was 'no'.

MEPs who attended said  only the EU wanted progress.

China and India were not really interested  in a very ambitious deal.

So what you saw was that Brazil  was looking at all those parties around

I'll follow the line of the US,  China and India.

The EU will not be happy  but they will sign anyway.

Water was a big issue  for almost 100 leaders and 45,000 others

who gathered for what one delegate  described as a '12-ring circus'.

But proposals on energy access rights  and renewable sources were dropped

in favour of a non-binding agreement  of moderate ambition.

MEPs were disappointed but not surprised.

The most important thing  is to bring economic issues,

social issues  and environmental issues together

and to subject them  to modern, new thinking.

That is written in the paper but in reality  in the Member States there's no success.

Undertakings were made  about renewable energy but no promises.

Ambitious wording was deleted  from the final text.

on 'the power of market', as Hillary Clinton  put it, to come up with a solution.

There is a deep economic crisis  and also a deep climate crisis.

The two add up together to make poor  people even poorer around the planet.

Therefore the answers cannot be  those found in Rio.

It seems unlikely there will be a Rio+25.

Most climate change campaigners  have lost faith in the UN summit process,

but that doesn't mean  the search for answers is over.