There are two ways to respond when you watch the world’s leaders attempt to solve the planet’s most pressing problems and fail: You can despair or you can raise hell.

After watching the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen collapse, many bright-eyed young people despaired, suffering through months of what can only be described as a “Hopenhagen” hangover. More recently, when the diplomats at the Rio+20 Earth Summit produced a policy document with all the weight of a fluffy pink cloud, we watched the cloud pass and decided to get down to business.

I attended Rio+20 as the communications coordinator for SustainUS, an entirely youth-run and volunteer-led nonprofit that helps U.S. youth sort through the alphabet soup of the United Nations and push for meaningful change at conferences like Rio+20. It was truly inspiring to be entrusted with the stories of young people across the globe.

For so many of us, sustainability isn’t something we do in our free time; it’s a way of life. It’s an identity that cuts across national boundaries and issue areas, an identity that’s gaining popularity under the term “ecological citizenship.” So it is all the more frustrating when world leaders can’t seem to keep up. On the second-to-last day of Rio+20, young people organized a “people’s plenary” to make our voices heard and then walked out of the conference center after symbolically ripping up the summit’s final “outcome document.”

Unlike many of the gray-haired negotiators, we can’t afford to let our system continue to fail. We’re coming of age in a time of rising inequality, staggering rates of global unemployment [PDF], severe declines in natural resources, and this fun little thing called climate change that even scientists funded by Big Oil can’t seem to deny. Many of my peers and I have come to see this doom and gloom as an incredible opportunity to change the way the world works.

I’ve seen the green economy lift up communities in my own work with Solar Mosaic in Oakland, Calif. Through our crowdfunding platform for solar projects, we’ve managed to save local nonprofits thousands of dollars on their utility bills while creating green jobs and clean energy. We’ll be scaling up the platform even further soon.

And I’m not the only one who has seen the need to change the way the system works. Reverberating through the Occupy movement that encamped in cities worldwide, the Arab Spring that toppled dictatorships, and now even murmuring from the conference halls of the United Nations, is the idea that economic growth — the topic that sucked up most of the energy and air at the official Earth Summit — hasn’t translated into increased well-being for much of the world.

In fact, while the final Earth Summit agreement contains some rainbows and sunshine about “recognizing the need for broader measures of progress,” the push for a new way of thinking about progress dominated discussions at many of the side events run by environmental and social justice groups. As many of the lecturers pointed out, there was a unique combination of factors that led to the formation of gross domestic product, or GDP, as the global indicator of choice: American hegemony after World War II, a strong focus on economic growth as a means of reconstructing Europe, a perceived abundance of natural resources, and the strong belief that economic growth would lift all boats. Clearly, we now live in a different world.

As the old adage goes, “what gets measured, gets managed,” and our sole focus on the production of goods and services has led us to a system that optimizes economic efficiency at the expense of our social and economic values. This isn’t a new idea. Decades ago Sen. Robert F. Kennedy pointed out that GDP (and its corollary GNP) count numerous destructive activities as economic positives:

The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior … GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile …

Now, people young and old are beginning to push for a new framework for defining progress. The famous economist Jeffery Sachs gathered crowds at Rio when he gave speeches warning that by failing to account for the things that make us well-off and satisfied, our current metrics of progress will lead us over a cliff. Karma Tshiteem, Bhutan’s National Secretary of Happiness, lectured to hundreds of civil society members on how the tiny Himalayan country’s Gross National Happiness indicator can serve as a model for the world.

Surprisingly, even many corporations are jumping on board, recognizing that their sole focus on the economic bottom line is hurting both their reputations and the long-term sustainability of their business. Though we’ll need to stay vigilant for signs of greenwashing, by far the strongest commitments at Rio+20 came from the business community. Over 200 corporations made sustainability pledges through the U.N. Global Compact, which are time-bound, measurable, and are expected to be held accountable through public disclosure and annual reporting.

A few of the most exciting side commitments include: Microsoft’s pledge to become carbon neutral by the end of 2013, Unilever’s pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions associated with its products in half by 2020, and Bank of America’s pledge of $50 billion by 2022 for clean energy and energy efficiency initiatives. The Consumer Goods Forum — a group of heavyweights like Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft, and others — have pledged to have a zero-deforestation footprint by 2020.

And though the commitments from civil society were clearly more exciting than anything the governments could come up with, there are key suggestions in the final Rio+20 text that young people, and civil society in general, must put pressure on world leaders to strengthen. Among them are strengthening the United Nations Environment Programme, which is currently one of the least funded and weakest U.N. bodies, creating clearly defined Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals that expire in 2015, and ensuring that the G20 follow up on their commitment to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.

Though the negotiations might have failed to set ambitious targets for sustainable development, Rio+20 has given us a sense of our common cause and inspired all of us to work harder to put the correct systems into place to create the future we truly want. This time we’re not turning away in despair. We’re walking away determined to lead where our leaders could not.

Editor’s note: The original version of this story attributed the GNP quote incorrectly to President John F. Kennedy.

As those of us who attended the Rio+20 Earth Summit get back into the daily grind, and those who weren’t in Rio have already forgotten it ever happened, we begin to realize the mistakes that were made and the lessons we can learn.

As a young person who will live with the results of Rio+20 for years to come, it is already feeling like a missed opportunity for something much better. The slogan that was bandied about, plastered onto the wall of the conference center, and put at the top of the final “outcome document” was “the future we want,” but the “we” clearly didn’t refer to the young people who were at the summit, or the many who didn’t even consider going.

The future we want was never going to be made in Rio, but a few things sealed its dim fate:

1. Most people declared the game over before they even jumped into play.

In the schoolyard, the kid who sits on the sidelines and poo-poos the game is always the biggest annoyance to the kids trying to play it. In Rio there were a lot of folks declaring that the United Nations was the wrong forum, that a summit was the wrong tool. Rather than suggesting, or starting, a new game, far too many just sat on the sidelines and griped.

Sure, the U.N. is a bureaucratic mess and has been woefully inadequate in addressing our environmental challenges, but is anyone really expecting the nations of the world to come together and come to agreement smoothly? Just because it is hard, does that mean we can let our political leaders off the hook?

From the press coverage of Rio that condemned the conference from the beginning to the absence of major environmental groups and President Obama, the cynicism bug was pervasive and turned out to be self-fulfilling. No one came into Rio believing they could win the game, so in the end, no one really did. It turns out inertia is a pain in the ass to overcome, especially when you don’t really believe you can overcome it.

2.The game was played by an outdated set of rules.

Okay, so there were a few that came to play the game — to dive into the policy and plow a path forward. The halls were filled with veterans of U.N. negotiations. But rather than being played like a great chess game, it was more like checkers, with the usual cast of characters posturing and stonewalling.

There was the U.S., which wanted any mention of “equity” scratched from the final agreement; the Vatican, which seemed able to exercise a supernatural ability to erase mentions of reproductive rights from the text; the European Union, which wanted to bolster the U.N. Environmental Programme and build better governance structures; and then the G77, a group of developing countries, that did everything it could to make sure growth and development could continue unfettered. The path plowed forward was essentially the same as the path we came on.

What if, instead of the same-old-same-old, the U.N. had really taken to heart input from a wide array of stakeholders? What if negotiators had really looked to their citizens to advise them on what direction they should take? Rio afforded an initial attempt at this, the Dialogue Days, but the results had no formal way of being incorporated into the negotiations and so, like so much, they fell short.

3. It isn’t actually a game, although leaders treated it like one.

It would be nice if this were all just a game — one where we could play it again and it would come out differently. Unfortunately it is no such thing. The Rio+20 conference was about us, and our home — our one home, Earth. As Rio+20 began and world leaders arrived, they posed for pictures and gave nice speeches, but there were no actual negotiations at the summit itself. The lackluster outcome document was declared agreed upon before the conference began, as if it had all been figured out and we had time to spend three days patting each other on the back.

Where to now?

Rio+20 was just one attempt to catalyze global coordination toward a future where all people can live well. While our leaders dealt us a full dose of disappointment, we will move on and learn lessons that will enable us to overcome the blades that keep our social fabric torn and the greed that makes our natural resources scarce.

Here in the vacuum created by inadequate international policy, an array of solutions is springing up. People are recognizing that our national governments aren’t capable of fixing our problems; instead, we must fix them ourselves while holding our governments accountable for enabling our progress.

On the grave of the famous futurist Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the idea of a spaceship as a metaphor for Earth, it says, “call me trimtab.” The trimtab is the very edge of a ship’s rudder, which turns first to disturb the water so that the rest of the rudder can turn much more easily, which then turns the entire ship.

Let’s call Rio+20 — and the crucial new space for action that was born from it — a trimtab, and go on to do more than we ever imagined.

Rio+20 was like Carnival without the party — unless you consider 50,000 people cramming into conference centers, soccer stadiums, and makeshift meeting halls, all struggling to access the internet and navigate between venues as much as three hours apart by bus a good time.

The official summit and negotiations were, as we predicted, a bomb. The final “outcome document” [PDF], signed by world leaders last Friday, brings empty political speak to new heights. The 49-page tome amounts to a long list of “acknowledgements,” “affirmations,” and “underscorings” of statements and agreements already put in writing years or decades ago.

In a nutshell, the leaders of the world said, “We recognize that we are in deep doo-doo, and we need to do something about it.” What that “something” is remains unclear.

Even where clear solutions exist, they were laughably noncommittal. Consider this paragraph, about ending fossil fuel subsidies:

Countries reaffirm the commitments they have made to phase out harmful and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and undermine sustainable development. We invite others to consider rationalizing inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by removing market distortions, including restructuring taxation and phasing out harmful subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts, with such policies taking fully into account the specific needs and conditions of developing countries, with the aim of minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development and in a manner that protects the poor and the affected communities.

That’s right. We “invite” you to “consider rationalizing” those subsidies — but only if you really want to. That’s leadership!

Granted, fossil fuel subsidies are a tricky issue, and they were not a big priority for this summit. But check out this gem, from the paragraph hailing the launch of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s ambitious Sustainable Energy for All initiative, aimed at bringing solar and other renewable energy sources to the world’s poor:

We are all determined to act to make sustainable energy for all a reality, and through this, help eradicate poverty and lead to sustainable development and global prosperity. We recognize that countries’ activities in broader energy-related issues are of great importance and are prioritized according to their specific challenges, capacities and circumstances, including energy mix.

Again, we are totally committed to making this happen, except when we’re not. Now can we all go home?

The summit has been panned as “perhaps the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war,” “a staggering failure of responsibility,” and other less family-friendly things. Leaders in the developed world failed to deliver a requested $30 billion to help developing countries make the transition to a green economy. A proposal to protect the “high seas” — those areas outside the boundaries of national waters — dried up and blew away. And throughout the text, language was watered down to appease world leaders who, almost without exception, plead poverty.

The bright spots from the official talks, if you can call them that, include:

• Hey poor people, here’s a turbine or two: Despite the flaccid endorsement in the outcome document, the Sustainable Energy for All initiative won wide backing from individual nations, banks, and private investors, who pledged over $80 billion to make it a reality.

• Oceans, you’re all right: While the high seas rescue plan failed, there was wide agreement on the need to do more to protect oceans and fisheries. Again, world leaders were long on talk and short on action, but this seems like one area where the international community is poised to actually make real progress in coming years.

• Go for the goals: The gathered nations also pledged to develop a set of “sustainable development goals” by 2013 that will replace the Millennium Development Goals, a set of priorities that have been adopted by all of the U.N.’s member countries. It’s a baby step at best (unable to agree on specific goals, the Rio delegates created a “high level political forum” that will spend the next year and a half developing some recommendations), but it is a sign, at least, that sustainability will become a central tenet to international development policy.

Is that meager progress worth 3,600 tons of CO2? You decide. But the U.N. wasn’t the only outfit throwing a party in Rio last week. There were dozens of sideshows, subconferences, media events, and award ceremonies around the city, and these were the sources of the most notable progress. A few examples:

• Banking on transit: In what was arguably the biggest announcement of the week, international development banks promised to spend $175 billion to promote transit, bike lanes, and other sustainable transportation in the world’s largest cities.

• Fishy business: While the U.N. could only commit to toothless pledges of future action, Australia, the Maldives, and Mexico actually drew some lines in the sand, unveiling substantial new ocean and fisheries protections.

• Pure rubbish: The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group announced a new initiative aimed at helping cities reduce methane emissions from garbage. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 20 times more powerful than CO2, and can be captured and burned to generate electricity.

• Good company: A number of corporations and industry alliances like Unilever and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition rolled out initiatives designed to protect forests and give poor people a boost. Skepticism is merited here, obviously, but considering that large corporations now dwarf many national economies, any signs that they are paying attention to the planet are positive ones.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has created a website called Cloud of Commitments to promote — and track — the multitude of pledges made at the summit. But the real question is how the NRDC, or anyone else, will make those in the cloud live up to their promises. At minimum, they’re gonna need a lot of interns.

But beyond all the wrangling, speechifying and promise-making, Rio offered a clear look at the human spectacle, and the challenges that lie ahead as we hurtle toward 9 billion people on this planet.

Rio is a metropolis of more than 12 million souls. Its traffic is epic, its air thick with diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke, and its turquoise water so polluted that it is unsafe to swim in much of the year. The chasm between rich and poor yawns wide, though they live side by side, with slums spreading up steep hillsides above posh, beachside neighborhoods, and catadores wheeling carts of scavenged recyclables through the streets alongside shiny luxury cars.

One evening, as the early winter darkness fell over the city, I walked through the seaside park that was home to the People’s Summit. Two young boys splashed in the surf as scissor-tailed seabirds glided silently overhead. Out in the water, lights twinkled on a massive oil platform as container ships moved in and out of port, delivering goods from the far corners of the ever-shrinking globe. On the city skyline, a sign lit up in neon green: Hotel Novo Mundo.

Welcome to the new world, my friends. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Meanwhile, Bill McKibben called the event a “formulaic bureaucracy-fest” wherein the only real excitement was a walkout staged by young activists.

So where was food and agriculture in all this? Food was one of seven “critical issues” identified by the U.N. before Rio+20 began, as population growth (we’ll have another 2 billion people on the planet by 2050) and climate change have put the question of food access into sharp focus. But a quick look at the “issue brief” prepared before the summit will tell you most of what you need to know about the vast chasm that exists between the kinds of goals articulated in meetings like this and the level of real change occurring on the ground. “Global delivery of the food security and sustainable agriculture-related commitments has been disappointing,” the brief reads. And it’s easy to see why; a table reporting on target goals set as early as 1995 is filled with stalled progress, lack of funding, and a general dearth of political will. Here are a few examples:

Target: To develop and maintain in all countries the integrated plant nutrition approach, and
 to optimize availability of fertilizer and other 
plant nutrient sources.
Year proposed: 2000
Progress: Not achieved. Several areas are nutrient depleted.

Target: National systems for environmentally sound management of chemicals, including
 legislation and provisions for implementation
 and enforcement, should be in place in all
 countries to the extent possible.
Year proposed: 2000
Progress: Some progress made. Limited resources and political will hamper progress.

Target: Globally harmonized hazard classification and 2000 compatible labeling system, including
 material safety data sheets and easily
 understandable symbols, should be available, 
if feasible.
Year: 2000
Progress: Harmonized system developed. Uptake is slow.

Target: Improve the efficient use of water 
resources and promote their allocation
 among competing uses in a way that gives 
priority to the satisfaction of basic human
 needs and balances the requirement of preserving or restoring ecosystems and their functions.
Year: 2005
Progress: Not achieved — several areas are running out of water.

Target: Halve the proportion of the world’s 2015 people whose income is less than $1 a 
day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Year: 2015
Progress: On track to reach poverty but not hunger target.

You get the idea. Every few years, the international community comes together to think big about how agriculture could and should really change. And then they let a few years pass before they meet again to reiterate the same goals.

In Rio last week, food did end up in the final document — in the form of something called a Zero Hunger Challenge — but it appears that to save themselves the embarrassment of missing the mark later down the road, the negotiators kept the targets nice and vague.

The Zero Hunger Challenge comes with a list of five worthwhile goals, including “all food systems are sustainable,” along with food security (or an end to hunger through redistribution), support for small farmers, and the reduction food waste. But, as The Guardian adds, “there is no reference to how [sustainable food systems] could be achieved” and “no deadline has been set for achieving these aims.” The Rio+20 draft outcome document also mentions the need to “address the root causes of excessive food price volatility.”

There was also a whole daylong event in Rio dedicated to food and farming, but it too was full of grand, vague messaging about sustainability. (Ever since companies like Monsanto started using “sustainable agriculture” to describe their work, it has become especially difficult to tell if and when the term has any teeth.) Try reading this Huffington Post blog entry, written by a representative from a food and climate NGO, and you’ll see what I mean.

To feed a global population of 9 billion people by 2050 will require a 60 to 70 percent increase in global food production and a 50 percent rise in investments in food, agriculture, and rural development. Unabated climate change could cost the world at least 5 percent of GDP each year and seriously undermine the ability of small-scale farmers to provide food for their families and national and global markets. We must take heed of the reminder from Dyborn Chibonga, CEO of the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi, that “the hand hoe is an instrument of mass urbanization,” and step forward to develop and disseminate appropriate technologies for meeting gaps in yields, in livelihoods, and in climate resilience.

The “dissemination of appropriate technologies for meeting gaps in yields”? In this context that phrase could refer to something as simple as adding a mule to the farm, or something as complex as introducing a combined program of GMO seeds and the pesticides they’re engineered to be used with.

Especially confusing in this regard is the use of the relatively new term “climate smart agriculture,” which was established at the U.N. conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, last December. The plan was to reduce and sequester carbon emissions while conserving soils and feeding people in Africa. That sounds great, right?

But, as Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau writes in Climate Connections, these aren’t the same as true agroecological practices.

International social movements like La Via Campesina had argued compellingly for years that “small farmers cool the planet,” relying on many studies that ecological agriculture can reduce climate change. Ecological agriculture or “agroecology” uses no chemicals like fertilizers or pesticides derived from fossil fuels, and biodiverse agriculture systems greatly reduce carbon in the atmosphere while maintaining local resilience in the face of climate change.

Meanwhile:

 “Climate smart agriculture” still uses fossil fuel-based chemicals. A U.N.-commissioned panel of experts issued a report again touting the climate change reduction potential of sustainable agriculture. The Montpellier Panel report advocated a transition to agroecology, but defined it as a technique that can be used with existing industrial practices like “transgenic crops, conservation farming, microdosing of fertilizers and herbicides, and integrated pest management.”

But as prominent agroecology scholar Miguel Altieri has recently written [PDF], “Agroecology does not need to be combined with other approaches … it has consistently proven capable of sustainably increasing productivity and has far greater potential for fighting hunger [than industrial agriculture].”

Meanwhile corporations like Pepsi Co. were also present in Rio, where they were trumpeting food investments that purported to support developing world farmers while going after cheap raw materials for their own needs. Take this promising-sounding initiative to address malnutrition in Ethiopia. It would “dramatically increase chickpea production” as a “locally sourced, nutrient-rich, ready-to-use supplementary food (RUSF) to address malnutrition” through “modern agricultural practices” (there’s that vague term again). And, of course, the company also admits that for PepsiCo, “chickpea-based products are an important part of the company’s strategy to build a $30 billion global nutrition business by 2020.” (Remember that the Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, and Frito-Lay brands are all now under the Pepsi Co. corporate umbrella.)

The company’s official, full-color brochure [PDF] tells us that the effort is “part of a global strategy to make Pepsi Co. a leader in sustainable agriculture around the world.” Just like Monsanto. We can all rest easier now.

The Earth Summit in Rio may be over, but just like spring break, the triumphs, tragedies, and terrible judgment calls will live on in memory. Here are some of our favorite moments captured in all their photographic glory. For more of Grist’s Earth Summit coverage, click here.

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron were both big no-shows during the Rio Earth Summit this week, but in the surest sign that this party was a bust, even former Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger decided not to come. This is a bit surprising, because he’s no stranger to the allure of the Marvelous City — and now that he’s on his way to being single again, this could’ve been the perfect opportunity to pick up where he left off:

Schwarzenegger was scheduled to help hand out the Sustainia awards Wednesday evening, but reportedly got tied up with a movie shoot. Mmm hmmm. If not even the language of love could lure him to Rio this week, we must assume he had more important affairs to deal with. Ahem.

But really, who could blame him for staying home? The Earth Summit wraps up today with an endless stream of near-identical speeches from world leaders and their surrogates. (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke for the U.S.: “Good morning” blah blah blah, “Brazil’s deft and effective leadership” blah blah blah, “a real advance for sustainable development” blah blah blah, etc.) Later today, bigwigs will sign a final “outcome document,” widely panned as a watered-down and insufficient plan that provides exactly zero help in meeting the challenges of creating a green economy for the globe. Afterwards, they’ll all probably go out for a show and a couple of caipirinhas.

All of which means we may have to wait until Rio+40 before we see Arnold reprise his carnival debauchery. Consider me and the internet crushed.

“I am the son of a catadora,” begins João Paolo de Jesus, sounding like someone who has told his life story a few times before. “I lived around the open pit dump from the time I was 7 until I was 11 or 12.”

João Paolo’s mother was a trash picker, one of thousands of people in Brazil who subsist by sifting through society’s castoffs, gleaning copper, aluminum, plastics, and paper for sale to scrap dealers and recycling companies. The two of them lived near an open dump in Salvador, Brazil’s third-largest city. At 26, João Paolo has taken up the trade as well, and he is working to build pride and legitimacy for catadores locally and across the country.

The effort has brought João Paolo and several dozen other catadores to Rio this week under the banner of the National Movement of Collectors of Recyclable Materials — the Movimento — for the People’s Summit, a grassroots alternative to the Rio+20 Earth Summit.

Catadores often subsist on less than $250 a month and live in the country’s ubiquitous favelas, or slums. Still, they have been dismayed by the living conditions here in Rio. People’s Summit attendees have been housed in a squalid encampment that turned to a muddy morass as a steady rain fell through Wednesday night.

“Members of the Movimento are staying in unsanitary conditions. The bathrooms are incredibly filthy,” João Paolo said through a translator Thursday. “The food is terrible. Many companheiros have food poisoning.”

The scene is a stark contrast to the heavily guarded compound on the city’s far fringe where the official Earth Summit proceedings are taking place. There, besuited dignitaries and delegates bustle between air-conditioned tents and prefabricated buildings, wielding cell phones and laptops, sipping espresso and bier served by Brazilian waitresses dressed as German bar wenches. Special buses shuttle officials between the summit and hotel rooms that soared to nearly $500 a night as the summit approached.

The situation is evidence of the void that exists between this city’s gritty reality and the face that it is putting on for the world as it hosts a series of mega-events, including the Earth Summit, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the 2016 summer Olympics. It is also a glimpse of the challenges the world’s cities will face as they struggle to accommodate another 2 billion people by mid-century. All of these people will need food, clean water, jobs, and decent housing.

Still, if the People’s Summit is a cautionary tale, it is also a spectacle of human diversity. Stretched along roughly a half-mile of beachfront just off downtown, the summit is a combination political action encampment and massive bazaar. Dozens of tents house lectures and discussion circles covering everything from women’s rights to nuclear power and rainforest logging. In the grass in between, craftspeople have laid out blankets arrayed with baskets and wooden bird whistles, organic fruit and nuts, toy dart guns, and plastic Elvis figurines.

Members of indigenous tribes strolled the pathways in elaborate, multicolored headdresses, geometric designs tattooed across their arms, chests, and faces. A band of singers, including a man wearing a black Guy Fawkes mask, the adopted trademark of the Occupy movement, raised a righteous ruckus. The air is laced with cigarette smoke, sea salt, and sewage, and alive with the sounds of drums, bicycle bells, and cell phone ringtones.

The People’s Summit, funded in part by the Brazilian government, has been a forum for rainforest tribes, labor unions, feminists, Occupiers, and conservationists to air their concerns about the Earth Summit proceedings and the planet’s current course. Vandana Shiva and other counterculture luminaries have made appearances. And Wednesday, the summit spawned a march, thousands strong, through downtown Rio.

And then there are the catadores, whose work was pushed into the spotlight by the Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary film Waste Land. They’ve been in the news lately because, just weeks before the Earth Summit, Rio made good on a years-old promise to close the Jardim Gramacho dump, a mountain of trash that loomed over, and leached pollution into, one of the city’s scenic bays.

The more than 1,700 people who worked in the dump will get a one-time payment from the government of about $7,500. Many will no doubt continue to pick trash, a fallback vocation for many of the developing word’s urban poor. While catadores in dumps get much of the media attention, many work the streets, sifting through garbage cans and dumpsters, and hauling recyclables away from shops and grocery stores.

Meantime, the members of the Movimento are tolerating awful conditions in order to have a chance to spread the word about their work and exchange notes with others in the field, many of whom have banded together in cooperatives in recent years as a defense against the predations of unscrupulous middlemen and scrap dealers. They are also campaigning against garbage incinerators, which both undermine their livelihood and pump poisons into the air.

Slowly, these catadores are trying to help their companheiros shed the stigmas that come with rummaging through other people’s garbage for a living. Their treatment here hasn’t helped.

Still, João Paolo de Jesus is philosophical. “After an experience like this, for all of us, it’s something we’re going to learn from,” he says. “What do the next 20 years look like? Government action or action of the people? This is something the social movements need to reflect on right now.”

This story would not have been possible without the guidance, knowledge, and translation of Meghan Mooney, a Fulbright Scholar researching social inclusion of catadores in Salvador, Brazil.

The final “outcome document,” to be signed by heads of state at the end of the week, was “closed” to changes Tuesday night, and while there is a chance that it could be opened for further discussion, Brazilian leaders, who are shepherding the document to completion, have stated that they don’t intend to let that happen. By most accounts, the agreement is a great disappointment.

“We all know what needs to be done, but we can’t get it done,” said John Adams, the co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who was among those who attended the very first international environmental summit in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972. “We can’t get government to work.”

“Unfortunately, the political and economic conditions we’re confronting today are not very conducive to the kind of action we saw in 1992” at the first Rio Earth Summit, said Maurice Strong, a longtime U.N. undersecretary general who was a key player in the 1972 meeting and is credited with much of the success of the ’92 summit. “Rio+20 is probably not going to have the results we were hoping for.”

Actor and conservationist Edward Norton was more blunt. “Five hundred years from now, people will wonder, ‘What were they thinking? As the fundamental fabric of life unraveled beneath their feet, they did nothing,’” Norton told a crowd gathered to watch as the Equator Prizes were doled out to grassroots conservation leaders from around the world.

Even the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, struck an apologetic tone. “Friends, please don’t give up,” he told the crowd. “For every person on this stage, there are millions more who count on us.”

“We all know this wasn’t the meeting where world governments were going to rise from the ashes,” Steiner said after the ceremony. “They did what they could, but it was not enough.”

Among the shortcomings of the final document: Efforts to strengthen the United Nations Environment Programme failed in the face of opposition from the United Sates delegation (which argued, probably correctly, that the Senate would never approve such a move). The document also fails to hold corporations accountable for bad behavior, as civil society groups had hoped. Language on ocean protection is weaker than conservationists wanted, and efforts to include language about women and reproductive health — which are key to creating healthy, sustainable societies, were unsuccessful. The negotiators couldn’t even agree to a definition of “green economy,” instead leaving it up to individual nations.

As the endless cavalcade of dignitaries and heads of state took the mike to bloviate about the importance of sustainable development and creating a green economy for the globe, thousands of protesters marched in the streets of Rio to show their discontent. “The text as it stands is completely out of touch with reality,” activist Leida Rijnhout wrote to the heads of state on behalf of environmental and social justice groups that gave input on the document. “If you adopt the text in its current form, you will fail to secure a future for the coming generations, including your own children.”

But there was at least one longtime summiteer who was seeing some silver linings to this dark cloud. Felilx Dodds, executive director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, says that the final agreement sets the stage for real progress on protecting oceans, and creates the framework for a set of sustainable development goals that should be adopted in 2015. He is also heartened by the initiative he has seen from cities and youth groups.

Beyond that, Dodds sees a fundamental power shift from developed countries in the north to the developing world in the south. “The developed world had to be dragged to the table by Brazil, South Africa, and other developing countries,” he said. “The emerging economies are driving the agenda now — because they can see what’s happening” to the environment.

Leadership from the South broke through two years of inertia, according to Dodds. “After [the] Copenhagen [climate talks in 2009], sustainable development was dead,” he said “This summit brought the family back together. We now have a frame of discussion about how we change the economic drivers, and what we do moving forward.”

John Adams, for his part, was also impressed with the many young people who took part in the process — young people who are now battle hardened and angry. “Coming out of this mess, we’ll see the future of the environmental movement,” he said.

Even Ed Norton couldn’t help but crack a few smiles at the Equator Prize ceremony. It was hard not to be cheered by the winners, who had flown in from isolated outposts around the planet for what must have seemed to them like the Oscars. As the ceremony came to a close, beloved Brazilian guitar player and singer Gilberto Gil walked onto the stage. As he crooned, the crowd sang with him. On the stage and in the audience, they danced.

The Earth Summit continues today and tomorrow with more speechifying and ceremony. City leaders have declared a school holiday in order to keep the roads clear for dignitaries and their motorcades. Traffic in the tight streets was lighter yesterday than any other day this week. The beaches, on the other hand, were bustling with kids chasing each other around the sand, boogie boarding, and  enjoying few days off.

The outcome document for this week’s Rio+20 summit is 49 pages long. Some 23,917 words.

Women were mentioned in less than 0.01 percent of the text. And only two of the 283 sections addressed women’s needs for family planning.

At first, this might not seem like a big deal. It’s easy to think of Rio as a purely environmental conference, dealing with issues related to sustainable development and a green economy. It’s easy to say that Rio is not about “women’s issues.”

Well, we have some news for you: You can’t have sustainable development without women. Despite the best efforts of women leaders in government and civil society, strong statements on access to contraception and reproductive health services are still in doubt. Of the seven priority areas of discussion at the summit, none included a focus on women’s health and empowerment.

The stakes at Rio are huge. Time is running out to develop plans for economic growth that reduce poverty without harming our environment. But there is no path to a sustainable future that doesn’t include women. Leave them out, neglect their needs, and risk failure.

Right now, more than 200 million women in developing countries want the right to plan their families, but lack contraception. Meeting their needs would not only improve their lives, but would help them respond to the effects of climate change, practice sustainability, and participate more fully in the economy and their communities.

Consequences of environmental change — floods, droughts, crop failure — affect everyone, but are especially hard on women and families. As the primary people responsible for gathering water, firewood, and other household resources, women are on the front lines of the climate crisis. When they are able plan the timing of their own childbearing, they can better adapt to the unpredictable impacts of climate change, and ensure the survival of their families.

Powering these households and ensuring access to electricity is essential. Investing in small-scale, distributed clean energy sources like solar is the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable method to provide electricity to women and families. This will create more resilient and robust rural communities while reducing the burden on families who are heavily reliant on dangerous kerosene for electricity.

Empowering women to make these critical decisions in their own lives can also contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Studies show that slowing population growth by giving women access to the contraception they already want could reduce emissions by between 8 and 15 percent [PDF] — roughly equivalent to ending all tropical deforestation.

Family planning and reproductive health are also fundamental to promoting environmental sustainability. A woman who cannot access contraception may have more children than she can afford to feed and educate. She will need more resources to take care of her growing family. In contrast, couples who can plan their own childbearing are better able to manage other aspects of their lives, including their use of natural resources. Access to family planning helps women raise healthy and stable families, which protects valuable natural resources for future generations.

As the world population grows, the demand for water, forests, and land mounts, and pressure on resources intensifies. The most resource-stressed areas typically have few resources, high population densities, and high population growth rates. Meeting the needs of a rapidly growing population not only taxes resources, but is a significant economic challenge for many of the world’s poorest countries.

Investing in women is a powerful antidote to poverty. Women who are able to delay childbearing are more likely to meet their educational goals, obtain productive employment, and increase household income. Smaller family sizes also allow more children to be educated, and promote girls’ education. In turn, educated women tend to have smaller families, and more resources to invest in their children.

Employment for women is also important to achieving full potential in the labor market, and growing a green economy. Currently, the proportion of working-age women who are employed lags behind men in all regions. Yet women are indispensable in agriculture, producing up to 80 percent of the world’s food, and their unpaid labor is estimated to contribute up to 50 percent of GDP in some countries. By preventing unintended pregnancies, family planning can enhance women’s employment opportunities, and increase their financial contribution to communities and nations.

In short, ensuring that women have access to contraception promotes sustainable economic growth. And it’s a cost-effective investment. Every dollar spent on family planning can save $2 to $6 in other development areas.

To those who say women’s issues are a distraction from the Rio+20 negotiations, we say nothing could be further from the truth. They are at the heart of this great challenge, and provide the foundation for creating a more sustainable world.

For all of Grist’s Earth Summit coverage, click here.

The Earth Summit in Rio begins today. What’s that? You thought it started weeks ago? Very understandable.

You can watch the plenary sessions here, or streaming below.

Later today, 17 year-old Brittany Trilford will speak to the assembly. (You can read Greg Hanscom’s interview with her here.) We’ll update this post after she does.

Non-governmental organizations continue to announce new initiatives related to the convening. Development banks yesterday committed $7.2 billion to help poor countries prepare for climate change. This morning, a group of banks made a $175 billion commitment to create sustainable transport systems.

You can follow commitments that have been made at the aptly named CloudOfCommitments.org.

Also worth checking out: The Guardian’s set of graphs detailing shifts in world demographics since 1992.

More updates to come.

Less important planets displayed at the summit. (Photo by Fora do Eixo.)

Update: Via TckTckTck, Brittany Trilford’s speech is now available. Inspiring.

You have 72 hours to decide the fate of your children. My children. My children’s children. I start the clock now. …

Are you here to save face? Or are you here to save us?

Update: The Atlantic has a great gallery of photos from the event.

Update: Venezuela has banned shark fishing in an 854 square mile area of the Caribbean.

“Venezuela’s decision to prohibit shark finning means that it now joins the rest of the countries of South America, North America and Central America in banning this wasteful practice,” said Jill Hepp, manager of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group. “Combined with the breeding ground safe haven in Los Roques and Las Aves, this is the latest step in the growing global movement to save these magnificent animals.”