For questions 27 through 30, choose the best answer in accordance with Text 3.

Text 3 Rio+20: reasons to be cheerful

Read the commentaries from Rio+20, and you'd think a global disaster had taken place. The UN multilateral system is said to be in crisis. Pundits and NGOs complain that it was "the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war", "a bleak day, a disastrous meeting" and "a massive waste of time and money".

Perspective, please. Reaction after the 1992 Rio summit was uncannily similar. Countries passed then what now seem far-sighted treaties and embedded a slew of aspirations and commitments into international documents – but NGOs and journalists were still distraught. In short, just like Rio 2012, the meeting was said to be a dismal failure of governments to co-operate.

I was pretty downhearted then, too. So when I returned I went to see Richard Sandbrook, a legendary environmental activist who co-founded Friends of the Earth, and profoundly influenced a generation of governments, business leaders and NGOs before he died in 2005. Sandbrook made the point that NGOs always scream blue murder because it is their job to push governments and that UN conferences must disappoint because all views have to be accommodated. Change, he said, does not happen in a few days' intense negotiation. It is a long, muddled, cultural process that cannot come from a UN meeting.. Real change comes from stronger institutions, better public information, promises being kept, the exchange of views, pressure from below, and events that make people see the world differently.

Vast growth in global environmental awareness has taken place in the past 20 years, and is bound to grow in the next 20.

[From The Guardian PovertyMatters blog- adapted]