By Suzanne York, HowMany.org Rio de Janeiro — Some of the biggest names in the population and women’s empowerment movement weighed in at Rio+20 on successfully promoting these topics at the UN conference and beyond. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former president of Norway and now the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change who has been around
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org Rio de Janeiro — My first Rio+20 side event was titled “From Rio to Cairo to Rio…and Beyond”, but for me it was actually from San Francisco to Charlotte to Rio…and even beyond to Rio Centro, site of the UN Rio+20 conference, far from downtown..  So quite a trek just to get
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By Suzanne York, howmany.org, June 14, 2012 The past month or so has seen the release of several reports and studies focused on the state of the planet. The timing coincides with the run-up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20 Earth Summit. Most of the publications are on the increasingly dire
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  By Suzanne York, HowMany.org In less than a month the world, or at least the environmentally-inclined members of the world, will be in the throes of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), or Rio+20. Despite the official summit focus on the green economy and sustainable development, there are many groups and individuals working
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Editor’s note: This interview with was originally published by Antoinette Siu at Wiser.org on May 24, 2012. Are you going to Rio? Do you have specific expectations? Hear from Suzanne York, from Howmany.org on what someone like her might expect from Rio. Antoinette: What will you be focusing on and looking to get out of Rio? Suzanne
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By Suzanne York, May 11, 2012 If you think there is one issue that could gain bi-partisan support in the U.S. Congress, ending child marriage would likely be near the top of the list. Not only would a little bi-partisanship be good for the country, but preventing girls from marrying too young would improve lives.
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org, May 3, 2012   It’s getting down to the wire for preparations for Rio+20, the United Nations follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the past week or two, there have been several important developments regarding the issues of population growth, youth and reproductive health, human
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org, April 18, 2012   In her TED talk in early April, Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation mentioned that if the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in India were its own country, it would be the fifth largest in the world, with over 200 million people. And in this populated land,
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org, April 2, 2012   It’s very hard to comprehend that here we are in the 21st century, living in a supposedly advanced and democratic nation, and there is a huge debate about women’s rights – namely women’s access to and use of contraceptives in the United States. As a Generation X’er,
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org, March 21, 2012   The official focus of the upcoming United Nations “Earth Summit”, aka Rio+20, will be on the green economy and solidifying a sustainable development framework. This past January, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out five imperatives of an action plan to “build the future we want.” These are
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