UNITED NATIONS -- Negotiations over an official agenda document that will frame talks at the U.N.-backed Rio+20 summit in Brazil next month broke off last week without a focused agreement on how to proceed.

The stalemate over the "outcome document" came with less than two months to go until the start of the conference, which has been billed as a celebration of the first U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago as well as an attempt to promote sustainable development for poor nations.

The scuttlebutt out of New York lately about Rio+20 has been prevailingly negative. Concerns that Brazil is ill-prepared to host the summit have been exacerbated by what is perceived to be a lack of clarity or enthusiasm about identifying the conference's goals.

Officially, negotiators have added five more days from May 29 to June 2 to come back to the table in an attempt to produce a streamlined outcome document. Unofficially, time is running short on preparations for a major event that has yet to emerge with a clear theme.

The meat of the conference, featuring more than 100 heads of state and other senior officials, is still pegged for June 20 to 22. A final preparatory meeting will take place in Rio de Janeiro on June 13.

Rio+20 Secretary-General Sha Zukang was blunt in his assessment of the situation, given the reality that the "zero document" had ballooned from 19 pages to more than 200 pages of crisscrossing proposals and was pared back last week to 100 to 200 pages. The document has been described internally as still too large and containing too much repetition to pave the way for success in Rio.

Everyone fills in the blanks

"Let us be frank: The negotiating text is a far cry from the 'focused political document' called for by the General Assembly," Sha said.

Others at the talks concurred that the size and variability of the views expressed have become a problem. Jacob Scherr, director of global strategy and advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the challenge is getting 192 member nations at the United Nations on the same page of what is already a vaguely conceived subject for the main event: sustainable development.

"It's such a broad subject matter that everybody starts filling in their ideas and their views," he said, adding that the discussions last week devolved into standard U.N. arguments over old issues, with negotiators flailing to "write a business plan for the planet."

"Doing that is just absolutely impossible," he said.

By week's end, Kim Sook, permanent representative of South Korea and a key figure in the preparations, said that the extended week starting in late May will feature "a change in working methods." A U.N. memo on the pre-Rio talks explained that the changes will include a new text prepared by the co-chairs.

Sha said the objective would be to arrive in Rio with at least 90 percent of the text ready to go. The remaining, most difficult 10 percent would be hashed out at higher political levels, he said.

A European diplomat close to the talks who asked not to be named acknowledged frustration but said the discussions are "moving forward." He added that Brazil, which he called "notoriously absent" from the talks until recently, has decided to get more involved.

"They seem to have realized that Rio+20 will actually happen in their country," he said. "In the last few days, they have finally showed some interest and come prepared."

'One foot firmly planted in the 1970s'

Some of the trickiest disagreements have been over whether to push green economy targets onto developing nations without sparking green protectionism (trade barriers) or limiting growth. Also in flux are ideas to eliminate gross domestic product as the best measurement of growth and to declare clean water a fundamental right, as well as how to enforce benchmarks for "sustainable development goals."

Another proposal would create a world environment organization out of the U.N. Environment Programme, but the idea appears unlikely to gain much traction given opposition from host nation Brazil and the United States (ClimateWire, Feb. 17).

According to a briefing bulletin prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the talks last week got hung up largely on how Rio should treat the green economy in terms of both defining it and asking sovereign nations to promote it.

The bulletin described this part of the talks as reflecting "long-standing divisions" between developed and developing nations. As before in international climate talks, the Group of 77 smaller nations plus China wants the West to take more responsibility for its lifestyle, while the United States, Europe and Japan are trying to push for pursuit of a green economy as a "common undertaking" by all nations.

Scherr confirmed that the discussions degenerated into developing nations squaring off against developed. He said the talks reminded him that the United Nations, as an institution, "has one foot firmly planted in the 1970s and one foot in the 21st century," in reference to a debate on how to eliminate poverty that reminded him of U.N. fights from more than 30 years ago.

Key issues of this broader fight within the outcome document include the future status of the Commission on Sustainable Development and UNEP as well as a proposal to develop sustainable development goals.

G-77 plus China supports "the sovereign right of states to exploit their own resources in text on each country choosing an appropriate path towards green economy," the bulletin said. The group also wants wealthier countries to "undertake significant lifestyle changes in text on managing natural resources in a green economy."

Also in conflict was setting up an international platform for knowledge sharing, but G-77 plus China has balked, calling proposed language too prescriptive.

More than 600 side events

With time running so tight, some participants with travel arrangements for Rio said they are worried the trip could be a flop. But Scherr said the problem is that negotiators have approached Rio as if it is a standard U.N.-backed conference when he expects anything but, with more than 600 side events.

Scherr said he expects a "different kind of meeting" to emerge that will look more like a Clinton Global Initiative get-together, with side actors playing a more prominent role than sovereign nations. He said the top-down approach of past U.N. conferences has run its course.

"The story of Rio is really going to be about a lot of nonglobally negotiated commitments," he said. "There is a culture shift going on in the world today, from an international system to a system that recognizes there are powers in the world beyond nations."

He pointed to CGI, the Gates Foundation, Wal-Mart and the World Bank as powers that tend to wield more authority than many nations with a seat at the United Nations.

Others who said they have no plans to attend expressed little surprise that the goals have been muddled. Robert Stavins, director of Harvard University's Environmental Economics Program, said he would hope the conference would provide a snapshot of how "things have progressed since Rio No. 1," but he wasn't sure an international conference is necessary to get there.

Otherwise, Stavins said he never really saw Rio as trying to advance concrete mandates such as how to cope with climate change.

"Whereas it is understandable that there are many people -- including both some government representatives and [nongovernment organization] leaders -- who would like to see the Rio+20 event make progress on international climate negotiations, this is unlikely to happen," he said.

The next opening for "serious attention by the key national governments" on greenhouse gas emissions will come in Bonn, Germany, and Doha, Qatar, where negotiators under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change's Conference of the Parties will work on moving forward with the Durban Platform, Stavins said.

Sullivan is based in New York.