KCNA-KNS via AFP - Getty Images

This undated photo released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on July 27, 2012 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his wife Ri Sol-Ju reacting after watching a performance by members of the Korean People's Internal Security Forces (KPISF) at Ponghwa Art Theatre in Pyongyang.

BEIJING -- Change in North Korea, and its potential impact on American interests in the Asia-Pacific, is likely to be on the agenda when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets Chinese leaders next month on her region-wide tour.

Is the hermit kingdom, with its nuclear weapons program and a “military-first policy” that prioritizes its 1.2 million-strong army, capable of social reform?

Or is the latest staged-managed imagery from Pyongyang—of a Swiss-educated young leader displaying a stylish wife, giving thumbs up to pop music and promising that the belt-tightening days are over—a sign of a new beginning for the impoverished and isolated nation?

The buzz about North Korea’s tantalizing hints of change has gained currency with the recent visit to China of Jang Song Thaek, the powerful uncle of the new North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, followed by reports that Kim himself is seeking to visit China next month.

China vowed greater support and investment in North Korea’s languishing China-style special economic zones, and urged Pyongyang to let “market” principles guide its moribund economy.

But while signs are pointing to change in Pyongyang, North Korean propaganda was denouncing as “hallucination” any talk of reform, denying that the new leadership is breaking with the past.

Authoritarian dictatorship
As a neighbor and ally, China is sensitive to any shift in Pyongyang’s policy directions that could impact China’s interests.  While Beijing provides Pyongyang with massive aid to prevent regime collapse that could cause regional instability, China is opposed to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

“I think it’s not possible for Pyongyang to sacrifice its military-first and nuclear arms policies, and that in turn will limit all possibilities for reform,” observed Zhang Liangui, China’s top scholar on North Korea who graduated from Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang.

“I am not optimistic about reform because Kim Jun Un alone cannot decide, it will be decided by North Korea’s political system which prioritizes the army,” said Zhang, a professor of international strategic research at China’s central school for training communist party officials.

“There is low probability of significant change,” said Daniel Pinkston, Seoul-based senior analyst of the International Crisis Group.

KCNA via AFP - Getty Images

A file picture released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on December 28, 2011 shows Kim Jong-Un and his powerful uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, at the funeral of late leader Kim Jong-Il.

North Korea’s system is “structurally set up as an authoritarian dictatorship…as long as the Kim family is in power it will be extraordinarily difficult to renounce the legacy of his father and grandfather,” Pinkston told NBC News, explaining his group’s latest report analyzing the barriers to reform in North Korea’s militarized society.

Preventing a Gadhafi-like fate
“As long as the Kim family regime is in power, they will not surrender nuclear weapons.  But I do not see why this is an obstacle for reforms,” argued Andrei Lankov, a Seoul-based Russian scholar on North Korea who also attended Kim Il Sung University.

“They will keep their nuclear devices, five or ten of them, for the deterrence purposes, just to make sure that they will not suffer the sorry state of Colonel [Moammar] Gadhaf i—while reforming the country if they consider that reform suit their interest,” he told NBC News.

Lankov noted, however, the “destabilizing” effects of reform. ”Sadly, the conservatives might be correct and I will not be surprised if the reforms will bring about a sudden collapse of the North Korean state,” he said, alluding to the examples of East Germany and Tunisia.

“It is still possible to take steps toward the market without giving up the nuclear program, though you would have to limit military spending,” according to Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

But for Sneider, one issue is the challenge posed to Pyongyang’s legitimacy by South Korea. North Korea used to be more prosperous than the South due to pampering by China and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.  But now, the North’s economy is barely three percent of the South’s, with half the population. The majority of North Koreans suffer from food shortages, according to UN reports.

“In the South, there is a wonderful example of a highly successful Korean market economy—the North claims to be morally superior and a purer Korean state, unpolluted by Western capitalism.  If they go down the road of market reform, that undermines a central plank of North Korean ideology,” Sneider said.

“The path of reform will be chosen by North Korea but China will certainly provide help,” said Lu Chao, director of North Korea Studies at the Academy of Social Sciences in Liaoning province, which shares a long border with North Korea.

Limited risk
Lu, who frequently meets with North Korean officials and businessmen from across the border, detects Pyongyang’s new focus on the economy.

“Kim Jung Un is focused on improving the quality of life, this can be seen in his visits to parks and artistic performances, in contrast with his father who prioritized the military,” Lu told NBC News.

“Some reforms are going on in the country, especially in agriculture,” he added, noting that farming reforms will pose “limited risks” to the regime.

For the International Crisis Group’s Pinkston, US policy should remain “deterrence and containment while being observant”.  

“The US should monitor, bilaterally and multilaterally, the situation in North Korea, maintain a strong deterrence and containment posture, but be willing, when the opportunity presents itself,  to engage North Korea if it changes its policy directions,” Pinkston said.

Clinton is scheduled to visit China Sept 4-5, before becoming the highest-ranking US official to visit East Timor, which gained independence from Indonesia in 2002.

She will later visit the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vladivostok, eastern Russia.

NBC researchers Tianzhou Ye and Lorraine Liu contributed to this report. 

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Mario Tama / Getty Images

Protesters demonstrate against the Forest Code and Belo Monte dam project at the Rio + 20 counter summit or "People's Summit" on Monday, June 18, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The "People's Summit" is financed by the Brazilian government and involves 200 ecological groups and social organizations. Over 100 heads of state and tens of thousands of participants and protesters will descend on the city for the high-level portion of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or "Earth Summit" this week.

In 1992, nearly every country in the world took part in what was hailed a “historic moment for humanity.” 

The Rio Earth Summit in Brazil delivered a plan of action that would tackle greenhouse gases and climate change, stop species going extinct and save the forests. And if all that wasn’t enough, they committed to creating a “safe and just world” for all.

Amid the optimism fostered by the fall of communism, global leaders embraced the "revolutionary" new idea of sustainable development – economic progress in harmony with the natural world.

Two decades later, that spirit of enthusiasm has been replaced by talk of “broken promises” and “a very uncertain future” in the run-up to this week's unheralded Rio+20 summit, formally the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

In 1992, then President George H. W. Bush was at Rio, but his successor Barack Obama has no plans to go this time and other world leaders – like the U.K.’s David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel – are also expected to stay away from the summit, which begins Wednesday.

Indeed, such is the apparent lack of interest, the conference was rescheduled from early to late June partly to avoid a clash with the U.K. queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, as it was feared some world leaders would rather celebrate the 60th anniversary of the start of an unelected head-of-state’s reign than reach a deal on the future of the planet.

Andrew Jordan, professor of environmental politics at the U.K.’s University of East Anglia, a world-leading center for environmental research, told msnbc.com that the idea of sustainable development had “gone right down the agenda since Rio in 1992.”

“I think there’s probably still enough support within the U.N. and environmental system to just about keep it on the policy agenda, but you can see a general lack of interest,” he said.

“I would say the world wouldn’t be doing this [Rio+20] unless it was already in the diary,” he added. “Starting with a blank sheet of paper, they wouldn’t have been talking about sustainable development this year or possibly even at all.”

Jordan said “green growth” – rather than sustainable development – was the new buzz word among industrialized countries, but “really it’s growth, old-fashioned growth” with “a bit of a nod towards the environment.”

World warmer, with fewer species, trees
The lack of progress since 1992 is plain to see in a U.N. report, Keeping Track of Our Changing Environment.

The much-trumpeted drive to tackle greenhouse gases saw carbon dioxide emissions actually increase by a massive 36 percent between 1992 and 2008. And, between 1992 and 2010, global warming continued apace, with the mean temperature of the Earth rising by 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit); the last decade was also the hottest on record since 1880.

J. DAVID AKE / AFP / Getty Images

US President George H. W. Bush signs the United Nations Climate Change convention, 12 June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, during the UN-sponsored Earth Summit.

As for stopping species from dying out, biodiversity in the tropics has fallen by 30 percent since 1992. And saving the trees? Again, primary forest cover has fallen by 741 million acres – an area larger than Argentina – since 1990.

Brazil Senate OKs easing of rules to limit Amazon deforestation

In February this year, following a meeting of the world’s environment ministers, Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, called for “bold, transformative decisions ” at Rio+20.

And he warned that incremental reforms were “leading seven billion down an unsustainable path and [toward] a very uncertain future."

Arctic sea ice ‘megabloom’ tied to climate change 

It was Maurice Strong, the conference secretary-general at Rio in 1992, who described that summit as a “historic moment for humanity” as it came to an end. 

Since then, the Canadian entrepreneur has complained of “continued broken promises” and is now looking to Rio+20 for real action.

Slideshow:

Mario Tama / Getty Images

The Amazon rainforest has meant prosperous times for many in Brazil, but environmental and cultural disaster for others.

Launch slideshow

“If you add up all the commitments they made, if they had implemented them, we’d be a long way down the road. They’ve not been implemented to any great extent,” he told msnbc.com.

“If we stay on the same pathway, whatever the politicians say, we’ll not be sustainable,” he said. “The achievement of sustainability needs to be revitalized.”

“The irony is the science has become more definitive … since ’92 things have got worse,” Strong added. “On the other hand at the political level … the will to act has been overshadowed by immediate concerns of a political and economic nature that are less important in the long run.”

Revolution needed?
But he said he was still hopeful “because pessimism is self-fulfilling.”

“As long as there’s a chance, we can do something,” Strong said. “We need the equivalent of a revolution.”

Earth nearing 'tipping point,' study warns

And there is some hope in U.N. report for those convinced of the need to deal with climate change: Between 1992 and 2009, energy from solar power increased by 30,000 percent, from wind power by 6,000 percent and from biofuels by 3,500 percent.

Kate Newman, of environmental campaign group WWF, said she was “optimistic” about what Rio+20 would achieve, so much so that she thought it would be a “positive turning-point for the world.”

She said the Obama administration had showed “a lot of enthusiasm” about Rio+20 and dismissed the president’s decision not to go, saying “he doesn’t attend many of these events.”

World's cities to expand by more than twice the size of Texas by 2030

Newman said that many countries had been introducing policies to promote sustainable development.

“No matter what happens in Rio, those policies will stand. Countries are already doing important things in anticipation of Rio,” she said.

Newman said that China, for example, planned “to show the world what they’ve done in their own country to move to a green economy” at Rio.

Fossil fuel subsidies in firing line?
Nick Nuttall, spokesperson for the U.N. Environment Programme, told msnbc.com that he didn’t think Rio+20 was “intended to be a place of big agreements,” but pointed to several areas where there could be significant changes.

The world, including the U.S. and many developing countries, spends about $600 billion a year on subsidizing fossil fuels, Nuttall said, compared to about $70 billion on renewable energy.

Clinton highlights importance of oil-rich Arctic

“There is a sense the issue of fossil fuel subsidies may be dealt with” at Rio, he said.

 “One of the myths about fossil fuel subsidies is that many developing countries do it to protect the poor from oil price shocks,” he said. “Many of the poor never benefit because they don’t use fossil fuels.”

Rio closes its massive garbage dump

“The fact is all the analysis shows what these fossil fuel subsidies do is create inefficiencies,” Nuttall added.

He also said the Environment Programme could be upgraded to a more powerful body, like the World Trade Organization or World Health Organization.

“At the moment if you are a health minister and you go to the annual assembly of the WHO and you decide you are going to phase out some terrible disease across the world in 10 years, that is so decided,” Nuttal said.

“But if environment ministers of the world meet under the auspices of UNEP and they decide to have a 20-year program to get rid of cadmium, a heavy metal, [for instance] from the world, that decision then has to go to the General Assembly of the United Nations,” he added.

Rio could also spell the beginning of the end for Gross Domestic Product, with progress on what Nuttall described as a “more sustainable, sophisticated measure of wealth that takes into account the human side, the environmental side.”

Sustainable development pioneer: Vote Obama
The idea of sustainable development – controversial to some – was given life by the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, which was chaired by then Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The report defined sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Speaking to msnbc.com, Brundtland said the concept had been a “revolutionary breakthrough in thinking.”

“Across the world there was a realization that something dramatic was ahead of us and we must change path,” she said. “It was all quite amazing what the world was willing to sign up to 20 years ago.”

Jeff Moore/The Elders

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, second right, talks to two of the "Youngers," Marvin Nala, left, and Esther Agbarakwe, right, during the Elders+Youngers dialogue in Oslo, Norway.

Brundtland said progress since then had been slow, but added “we know as politicians that change takes time.”

“Those statistics [on emissions, climate change etc.] would have been much worse today without Rio and without the whole awareness,” she said.

Watch Elders+Youngers video: It's our future, it's our time

She said it was “a pity” that Obama and other world leaders would not be at Rio+20, but said she was “quite certain that he is aware of the seriousness of the issues” and added that she hoped he would win the November election.

“He is struggling with an American scene and a political system that is really difficult with polarization and climate deniers, a scene that is very different from the European scene,” Brundtland said.

“I do believe in people, I do believe there are a number of progressive leaders who see further than one year ahead and they will feel a responsibility to deliver,” she added.

But if world leaders fail to step up to the plate, Brundtland and other former world leaders in the “The Elders” group are hoping to inspire a grassroots movement of “Youngers.”

Watch Elders video: What kind of world do we want to leave our great-great-grandchildren?

“Elders and Youngers is our attempt to try and mobilize civil society, certainly on behalf of young people … who may be pessimistic about their future,” Brundtland said.

“Every human being is responsible for the future. It’s not enough to point at politicians and expect them to do the right thing,” she added. “We all have to try to make a difference, we all have to mobilize. This Rio is absolutely dependent on public participation.

“I think it will not be a failure,” Brundtland said, but added, “maybe it’s because I’m always keeping my optimism as a driving force.”

United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 20 to 22.

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Rahmat Gul / AP

A street vendor carries bread in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- There isn’t much of a buzz about NATO’s summit on the streets of the Afghan capital Kabul, at least not outside government agency walls.  The majority of citizens continue to focus on earning a few dollars a day to survive in a country tormented by war since 1979.

The NATO gathering in Chicago is expected to draw up an exit strategy and finalize a financial commitment to Afghan Security Forces (ANSF), as the foreign combat mission comes to an end in a couple of years.  The Afghan government is asking the international community to commit $4.1 billion a year to keep their security operations running. 

Friday after prayers at a mosque in the center of the city, most of the men did not even know what the summit in Chicago was about or even Afghanistan’s role in it.

Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Others used it as an opportunity to raise their frustrations about U.S. and international involvement in Afghanistan.

“They haven’t achieved anything in the last 10 years!” Mullah Khaista Gul said.  “They should learn lessons from the past.  We have seen conferences in the past, in London, Germany and Afghanistan, but none of them benefited ordinary Afghans.”

Obama, NATO leaders chart path out of Afghanistan

Some, although unaware of the purpose of this summit, know that it involves more financial aid and hope it can in some way benefit Afghanistan.

“The international community should not leave Afghanistan alone,” Khalil Khan, a 29-year-old pharmacist, said.  “The Chicago conference is a hopeful gathering and the international community and Afghans should really think about a good future for all of us.  They should hand their money and responsibility to good people who can be trusted, not warlords.”

Raz Mohammad, 27, who works with a trucking company, was the only one we spoke to who understood what the Chicago meetings on Afghanistan would be about -- the funding of Afghan security forces.

Mohammad said he thinks that the international community should continue to support the security forces if they want to make sure Afghanistan doesn't fall into Taliban hands again.  He said that too many mistakes have been made in the past and that they need to be resolved quickly and correctly.

Report: Taliban, Afghan troops forge agreements

“In Nuristan province last year, the police didn’t receive their salaries for four or five months.  Many of them got fed up and angry then decided to join the Taliban,” Mohammad said.

But he also believes that there are more problems than just financial and he said more needs to be done to stop the high attrition rates within the security forces. 

“I have also seen many people join the army or police for six months, make some money and go back to use that money to help grow their crops,” he said.  “It’s important that this be discussed in Chicago and see how they can fix it.”

As world leaders gather at the NATO summit in Chicago, most Afghans don’t know how it will affect their future.  But there are some who still hold on to the hope that those leaders will make the right decisions to benefit Afghanistan.

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Updated 6:22 p.m. ET: CHICAGO -- President Barack Obama on Sunday pressed world leaders to help implement a strategy for post-2014 Afghanistan after U.S. troops leave, a transition that Afghan President Hamid Karzai said will mark the day that his war-torn country is "no longer a burden" on the rest of the world.

Obama and Karzai met on the sidelines of the NATO summit on Sunday to discuss Afghanistan's post-conflict future. After the meeting, Obama told reporters that the two-day summit would focus on Afghanistan's move to peace and stability after a decade of war.

"We still have a lot of work to do and there will be great challenges ahead," Obama said. "The loss of life continues in Afghanistan and there will be hard days ahead."

Standing next to Obama, Karzai reaffirmed his commitment to the transition timetable process, which he said will lead to a time when Afghanistan "is no longer a burden on the shoulder of our friends in the international community, on the shoulders of the United States and other allies."

Karzai also thanked Americans for the help that their "taxpayer money" has done in Afghanistan.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama, right, shakes hands with with Afghan President Hamid Karzai during their meeting at the NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday.

"Afghanistan is fully aware of the task ahead and of what Afghanistan needs to do to reach the objectives that we all have of a stable, peaceful and self-reliant Afghanistan," he said.

Obama later opened the summit by telling world leaders: "For over 65 years our alliance has been the bedrock of our common security, our freedom and our prosperty, and although times have changed the reasons for our alliance has not."

Obama urged NATO leaders to ratify a "broad consensus" for gradually turning over security to Afghan forces and pulling out most of the 130,000 NATO troops by the end of 2014.

Earlier, a top NATO official insisted that the Afghanistan fighting coalition will remain whole despite France's plans to yank combat troops out early.

"There will be no rush for the exits," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. "We will stay committed and see it through to a successful end. Our goal, our strategy, our timetable remain unchanged."

NATO leaders gathered in Chicago to chart a path out of Afghanistan as war-weary Western nations seek to fend off dissent in their alliance and ensure Afghanistan can hold a still-potent Taliban at bay when foreign troops withdraw.

Obama was hosting the two-day summit in his hometown, a day after leaders of major industrialized nations tackled Europe's debt crisis, backing keeping Greece in the euro zone and vowing to take steps necessary to revitalize the world economy.

Public opinion in Europe and the United States is solidly against the war, with a majority of Americans now saying it is unwinnable or not worth continuing.

Newly elected French President Francois Hollande has said he will withdraw all French combat troops from Afghanistan by year's end — a full two years before the timeline agreed to by nations in the U.S.-led NATO coalition.

"President Hollande has stated that France would be prepared to support Afghanistan in a different way," Rasmussen said.

But signaling tensions over the issue, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters: "We went into Afghanistan together, we want to leave Afghanistan together."

Hollande repeated a pledge during his inaugural visit to Washington last week to pull "combat troops" from Afghanistan this year. He has said an extremely limited number of soldiers would remain to train Afghan forces and bring back equipment beyond 2012.

"This decision is an act of sovereignty and must be done in good coordination with our allies and partners," said Hollande, who was to discuss his exit plans with Karzai.

A last-minute addition to the list of leaders at the NATO meeting was President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, whose western tribal areas provide shelter to militants attacking Karzai's government and NATO forces. He pressed the United States to help find a "permanent solution'' to U.S. drone strikes that have fueled tensions between the two uneasy allies.

"The president said that Pakistan wanted to find a permanent solution to the drone issue as it not only violated our sovereignty but also inflamed public sentiments,'' Zardari spokesman Farhatullah Babar said in a statement after the Pakistani leader met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of the summit.

The statement did not specify what such a solution might entail.

Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told Reuters he was confident a deal would eventually be struck but "whether it's in days or weeks, I don't know."

Zardari also called for the United States to do more to make amends for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers killed in November by U.S. aircraft along the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan has demanded a high-level apology for that incident, which the White House has resisted so far.

Fiscal demands, including plans for major cuts to defense spending in Europe and the United States, were sure to color the talks in Chicago, as they did those between G-8 leaders.

The overarching message from that G-8 summit reflected Obama's own concerns that euro-zone contagion, which threatens the future of Europe's 17-country single currency bloc, could hurt a fragile U.S. recovery and his re-election chances.

Information from The Associated Press and Reuters is included in this report.

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