Council on Competitiveness President and CEO Makes the Innovation Case in the UN Rio+20 Sustainable Development Dialogues

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Council on Competitiveness President and CEO Deborah L. Wince-Smith – at the invitation of Brazil’s Minister of External Relations, Antonio Patriota, and Brazil’s Minister of Environment, Izabella Teixeira – is participating this week in the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.

Wince-Smith is leading the kick-off Development Dialogues panel, “Unemployment, Decent Work and Migration” – joined by Al-Jazeerah. journalist Rageh Omaar; Secretary-General of the International Trade Union Confederation of Australia Sharon Burrow; Professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin, James Galbraith; Senior Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and former Senior Advisor to the President of the World Bank, Maurice Strong; and, others.

The Rio+20 Conference – the most important global meeting on sustainable development in our time and coming 20 years after the first UN Conference on Environment and Development – convenes world leaders, together with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups to discuss sustainable development as a pathway to a safer, more prosperous, and pro-environment driven world.  

As Wince-Smith argues, “The challenges and opportunities we are addressing at Rio+20 – including how to build greener economies to achieve sustainable development and lift people out of poverty – represent the confluence of a perfect storm. And only through innovation in new products, services, industrial capacity and social interaction will we achieve the productivity growth that will be at the heart of economic vitality and job creation in the 21st century.”

Press Contact:

Chad Evans
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