Gearing up for the Earth Summit

Gus Schellekens, of PwC's global sustainability and climate change team, reports from Rio as activity ramps up to the Earth Summit.

With three day to go to the start of the formal sessions of the Rio+20 convention, Copacabana is a mixture of activity and inactivity.

Sunday is clearly a day off and many local families have chosen to spend the day relaxing on the beach. Alongside traditional activities, the beach this weekend is also decorated with ever impressive sand sculptures of castles and turtles to highlight the presence of the Rio+20 talks.

NGOs, charities and groups representing citizens are creating a colourful and energetic backdrop to events. Groups in brightly coloured T-shirts wave banners, hold rallies and try to engage the crowds walking back and forth along the 4km boulevard. Amongst all of this, buses are busy desperately trying to ferry the thousands of delegates to the geographically disparate locations where the formal and informal events are taking place.Conversations reminisce about the original talks and exchange their hopes for the current ones. Hopes are clearly building that progress can be made. The discussions and presentations in the hundreds of individual pavilions across Rio in the coming days will clearly advance these but at the moment, as typified by Sunday's activities, it is also clear that the main show has not yet started.