The biggest meeting the United Nations has ever held, the Rio+20 Earth Summit, is currently underway in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
The aim of the summit is to solve core environmental problems, which Environment and Conservation co-chair Cath Wallace says should be a priority for New Zealand.
“The science says we should be much more urgent about it, and it’s not just climate change, it’s also oceans, it’s the state of forests, and it’s the state of systems on the planet,” she says.
Ms Wallace says she hopes the Government brings back some valuable lessons from the summit.
“I think that this particular government in New Zealand quite some time ago decided to ignore sustainability, and I hope that Amy Adams, the new minister, has got a bit of a wake-up call going there,” she says.
She believes that the public are losing faith in governments’ ability to address key environmental issues.
“I think that people are becoming more cynical about government leaders,” she says.
Watch the video for Firstline’s full interview with Cath Wallace