By Richard Ingham

Rio de Janeiro, June 23, 2012 (AFP) -- The outcome of the Rio+20 summit provides further proof that the nation-state system is failing badly in tackling global environmental threats, say analysts.

The UN's Conference on Sustainable Development had been billed as a once-in-a-generation chance to overhaul an economic model that had left a billion people in poverty and imperiled the biosphere.

But veteran observers who watched the 10-day event drag to a close on Friday shook their heads in dismay.

To them, it was a fresh failure by the United Nations system, after the near-disastrous 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, to respond to eco-perils that are now approaching at express speed.

"It's a demonstration of political impotence, of system paralysis, and it makes me feel pessimistic about the system's ability to deliver," Laurence Tubiana, director of a French think-tank, the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), said in an interview.

"The multilateral process today is not delivering the urgent action we need," WWF's Jim Leape told AFP in an email.

"International action is in fact important, to galvanize a global response to these challenges, but it's clear that we need to look to leadership in other places... that means looking for changes everywhere -- communities, cities, national governments and companies."

After a three-day summit of 189 nation-states, the conference issued a 53-page declaration with the horizon-sweeping title "The Future We Want."

It itemized a distressingly long list of problems -- from global warming, deforestation and fisheries collapse to water stress, pollution and biodiversity loss that scientists fear could turn into a mass extinction.

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Rio+20 shows UN 'impotence' in global eco-crisis: analysts