In this post on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog, Vicky Markham, founding director of the Center for Environment and Population (CEP), summarizes a Rio+20 side event that took place on Thursday, titled “Rio+20 and Women’s Lives: A Cross-General Dialogue.” The event, co-organized by Climate Wise Women, CEP, and Columbia University’s Coalition for Sustainable Development, “featured six outstanding global women activists of different generations (from Uganda, Nigeria, Cook Islands, Mississippi/U.S., Philippines, and Brazil) who shared their colorful personal narratives to help us understand the cross-cutting impacts of climate change and other environmental issues on their lives” and “discussed the importance of women’s empowerment and reproductive health, and new, innovative connections among women of all ages for practical implementation of the Rio+20 outcome and beyond,” she writes (6/21).