Environmentalists leaving last week's U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro may as well have been wearing T-shirts that read, "My government went to Rio, and all I got was this lousy text."

But U.S. diplomats returning from the once-a-decade Earth Summit said yesterday the widely criticized 44-page Rio Declaration that nations signed there should not obscure the important agreements reached by governments, civil society groups and business leaders.

"It's a lot harder to get agreements in words and a lot easier to get agreements in actions," Ambassador Carlos Pascual, U.S. special envoy for international energy affairs, said yesterday.

Speaking at the Center for Global Development along with Deputy National Security Adviser Michael Froman and several leading climate change and energy analysts, Pascual said the real meat of the Rio+20 conference was in the hundreds of commitments on everything from energy efficiency to low-carbon energy access.

Among them: A $2 billion pledge by the United States aimed at extending aid to Africa for clean energy development and agreement among 57 nations, along with agreements by banks, investors and companies like Wal-Mart and Woolworths, to measure wealth in terms of natural resources. There were also energy action plans submitted by 52 countries under the United Nations' plan to extend energy access.

"It's not just a declaration. It's what we do on the ground," Pascual said.

Activists agreed, though there was no shortage of disdain for the 44-page declaration itself, as well as for the sustainable development mentions in the G-20 communiqué. The G-20 leaders had met days before Rio and, in addition to addressing the European economic crisis, addressed some environmental issues, like whether to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

Kel Currah, senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, contrasted the concrete, decisive language of the G-20 communiqué on the economy, which declared that nations would "take all necessary policy measures" to ensure financial stability, with the affirmative yet mushy language on the environment that "welcomes a dialogue" on items like fossil fuel subsidies.

Action movies vs. romantic comedy

It was the "language of action movies" versus the "language of romantic comedy," he said.

And Nathan Hultman, director of the Environmental Policy Program at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, said that after following the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change talks for several years, the Rio Document was something of a shock to him.

"I never thought I'd say this, but looking at the outcome document, the climate convention seems positively productive," he said.

Yet Hultman and Jacob Scherr, director of global strategy and advocacy at the Natural Resource Defense Council, also agreed that the commitments made on the margins of Rio deserve praise. Scherr noted that NRDC is compiling a site to track all of the country and company pledges made at Rio as well as follow-up actions. He criticized fellow activists who focused solely on the Rio Declaration.

"What they missed is the fact that there were about 45,000 other people swirling around and lots of energy," he said. "It generated a lot of political will and a lot of activity."

What it did not generate, however, were specific government pledges on some of the key issues -- most prominently, the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies.

"At the end of the day, what's come out is really weak," David Turnbull, campaigns director for Oil Change International, said from Rio as the conference concluded. The Rio document essentially points to existing commitments and invites other countries to join. More aggressive language was held back by Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Oil Change International recently published a report finding that G-20 countries have done almost nothing to fulfill a commitment they made three years ago to begin phasing out subsidies. Turnbull said the G-20 declaration also had little new in it, but a progress report has not yet been released.

Froman yesterday acknowledged that progress on eliminating fossil fuel subsidies both on the consumer side in developing countries and in the form of tax breaks in the United States and other oil- and coal-producing nations is slow going.

"A lot of it has to do with convincing other countries that they can phase these out in a way that's politically viable in their countries" while still protecting the poorest citizens who depend on subsidies to afford fuels, he said. "A lot of countries have made good progress on this, but there's a long way to go."