In the lead up to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, 16 Global Dialogues sessions were organised and facilitated between February and June 2012. These sessions were coordinated by ELIA together with a local team of Global Dialogues volunteers. The first series of Dialogues were sponsored by Omnicane, and with in-kind contribution from many organisations such as Mauritius Institute of Directors, Women In Networking, Talents Training Centre. The Rio+20 Mauritius event that took place in parallel to the UN Conference on 23 June 2012, was funded by the European Union, through the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) – Islands project. This event brought 200 people together in dialogue for a sustainable world and future.

During those 5 months over 630 people participated from all kinds of professional and personal backgrounds, to create an empowering new vision for our future. The outcomes of these sessions were harvested and put together into a report which was presented to the Mauritius Government in June 2012.

Understanding sustainability

Many participants shared that attending Global Dialogue sessions enabled them to better understand what ‘sustainability’ is truly all about, and how they can directly contribute to it. It also provided people with hope that a shared vision for sustainability and a commitment to the necessary actions is possible. People also agreed that a shared vision is only the beginning, that actions need to follow to implement this vision and that this requires often hard work and also changes in the way we live.