The Rio+20 conference received a record one billion tweets from around 50 million people worldwide.

Dennis Garrity, UN Drylands Ambassador and Senior Fellow at World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), says this public interest in the environment must be channeled into a social movement that will essentially “force” governments everywhere deliver on the commitments they made this June at the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Among these commitments is to work "towards achieving a land-degradation-neutral world".

Speaking at Rio+20, Garrity says agroforestry is key to regenerating the land economically and feasibly. Farmers in the Sahel, with 50 million hectares of farmer-managed agroforests, have something to teach the world about landcare, a discipline that Garrity forecasts is poised to “explode into a global movement.”

Garrity sees the massive public interest around Rio+20 as a sign that social mobilization could pressure governments into improving on their dismal scores on the original Earth Summit commitments, and compel them to aim for A’s in meeting those made at Rio+20.