Earth Summit

The Earth Summit, also known as the Eco ′92, is the informal and best-known name for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. During the conference, representatives of 172 governments produced the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, a global statement to preserve the environment and to achieve social justice.

The 1992 Earth Summit was a turning point in the modern world's environmental, economic, and political history. It set the cornerstone of environmental principles, which are nowadays considered the basis for any kind of development project. Departing from the sustainable development notion, it joined efforts to negotiate an Earth Charter. Representatives of 172 governments produced the following documents:

• Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, consisting of 27 principles intended to guide future sustainable development around the world.
• Agenda 21, consisting of an ambitious, comprehensive action plan to be taken globally, nationally, and locally by organizations of the United Nations and governments to protect the atmosphere, oceans, and other global resources.
• Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed by 176 countries, sets as objectives the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources.
• The Forest Principle, the informal name given to the Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation, and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forest.
• Framework Convention on Climate Change, consisting of a treaty aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gas in order to combat global warming, an antecessor of the Kyoto Accords.

From a global perspective, the Earth Summit marked the arrival of environmental concerns on the international stage as a major new consideration in foreign policy. The presence in Rio of foreign ministers, [Page 500]prime ministers, development ministers, and presidents put forward that environmental issues must be accommodated in decisions and policies affecting trade, energy, agriculture, and economic development. Environment concerns could no longer be left behind.

Around 2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attended, with 17,000 people at the parallel NGO Forum who had so-called consultative status. This parallel forum was as important as the conference itself and proved to be a place to exchange opinions, personal data, and common problems and solutions for many activists around the world. Searching for global justice, many of them are engaged in the anti-globalization movements.

Ten years after the first Earth Summit, another summit, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, to evaluate the progresses made and to update the plans to reconcile development and economic growth with environmental sustainability. Organized by the United Nations, it gathered some 65,000 delegates from 185 countries, including more than 100 heads of government. Unlike the Rio summit, there was a strong presence of multinational firms in 2002. The Johannesburg summit's objectives included proposals for how to keep on applying the Agenda 21. The results were quite unsatisfactory, and included agreements to halve the 2 billion people living without clean water by 2015, to set up a solidarity fund to wipe out poverty, to restore depleted fish stocks by 2015, and to reduce the loss of species by 2015. Governments and companies have declared the meeting a success, while charities have widely declared it the worst political failure in decades.

...