The General Assembly agreed on four thematic areas on which to focus the Earth Summit. These thematic areas will replace the cluster cycles of the 20th CSD cycle which has been suspended and shifted to 2013.

The four thematic areas which will provide the basis of negotiations and debate, and which the different major groups and stakeholders will be able to comment on and influence the debates are:

Stakeholder Forum together with its partners and a range of stakeholders through out the world will be carrying out a range of activities on these different areas, and feeding these results into the intergovernmental process.