Bad reviews for Rio+20 summit

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RIO DE JANEIRO, June 23 (UPI) -- The Rio+20 summit ended in Brazil Saturday with environmental and social activists saying not much concrete was accomplished.

The final declarations coming out of the big meeting on sustainable development were considered watered down and weak.

"We had the leaders of the world here, but they really did not take decisions that will take us forward," Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam GB, told the BBC.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, who the BBC said authored a major U.N. statement on sustainable growth 25 years ago, blamed corporate influence over national political leaders for the seemingly timid statements.

Proposals to end subsidies for fossil fuels and support reproductive rights for women were among the ideas that failed to make it through the conference.

The member nations of the Rio+20 summit will spend the next three years developing strategies to meet the goals that did pass muster at the conference, the BBC said.