Earth Summit

The Earth Summit, formally known as the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), was held between June 3 and June 14, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro. The summit focused on the production and consumption behaviors and growing populations exerting unsustainable pressures on the environment. Governments recognized the need to redirect international and national plans and policies to ensure that all economic decisions take into account environmental impacts.

[Page 387]The effort to reconcile economic development with environmental protection and social progress was at the center of the Earth Summit. The summit emphasized the need for a framework to guide business, including the travel and tourism industry, to achieve sustainable development. This framework remains largely a set of voluntary goals and ambitions, including the notion of corporate ...