The Eye on Earth Summit (Eye on Earth 2011) convened under the Patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from 12-15 December 2011 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The Summit brought together over 1000 participants, representing governments, international organizations, academia, the private sector and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Held under the theme ?Convene, Converge, Collaborate,? discussions during Eye on Earth 2011 centered on strengthening existing efforts and inspiring a search for unified, global solutions to the issues that preclude access to data. I, Simran Vedvyas was recently appointed as the Youth Group Country Activator UAE for THE EARTH CHARTER INTERNATIONAL and therefore promoted the importance of utilizing the Earth Charter as a valuable framework towards building a more sustainable and peaceful world.    

I got the opportunity to represent the youth from around the world whose population is 1.1 billion which constitutes 18% of the total world population on stage by sharing stage with 15 great environmentalists during the Hypothetical conducted by Sir Geoffrey Robertson on the third day of the summit and also after the declaration was signed by the Senior  Officials. Eye on Earth 2011 featured plenary sessions featuring keynote speeches and panel sessions on varying issues, including water security, financing, disaster management, and oceans and blue carbon. The Summit also featured open sessions, during which four working groups on ?Policy, Governance and Institutional Networking,? ?Content and User Needs,? ?Technical Infrastructure,? and ?Capacity Building, Education and Awareness,? took place to finalize the Special Initiatives that were launched at the end of the event.   Former US President Bill Clinton, Sha Zukang, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary-General of Rio+20, Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UNEP, presenting on the EOE mission, Jane Goodall, Jack Dangermond, Henry Puna – Prime Minister Cook Island, were amongst the many speakers listed.

I , Simran participated in the Hypothetical debate conducted by Geoffrey Robertson QC.  Geoffrey Robertson QC moderated a ?hypothetical? debate involving 14 leading EOE participants, among them H E Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Secretary-General, Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD), Sylvia Earle, Julia Marton-Lefevre ( IUCN ), Jacqueline McGlade, Henry Puna ( PRIME MINISTER THE COOK ISLAND ), and John Scanlon ( CITES ) to name a few. Robertson guided the participants through a creative role-play, where each represented a different kind of societal actor in a fictitious small island nation struggling to balance the complex and often unpredictable tradeoffs inherent in conservation and development. The role-play interwove dilemmas over threatened species and cures for cancer, scientific uncertainty and demands for action, spiritual values and mining profits, and national sovereignty and global pandemic. The cast of characters juggled the various government, civic, businesses, media and scientific perspectives in play, finding opportunities to forge unexpected alliances always amid insufficient information. Robertson summarized the role-play with reference to the tragedy of the commons, whereby the various dilemmas faced by this fictitious island stood for other pressing problems like climate change, illustrating the need for better information and possibility of acting together for the common good.  I represented the commons in this hypothetical and was extremely confident and formed the backbone of this 90 minutes unscripted, unrehearsed but interesting debate session.

THE DECLARATION WAS SIGNED AT THE EYE ON EARTH SUMMIT on the last day of the event; as H E Khalifa Al Mubarak, Secretary-General, Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD)presented the EOE Summit Declaration, which was signed by herself, H E Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad –UAE Minister of Water and Electricity and Peter Gilruth, UNEP.