United Nations Environmental Summits

The United Nations (UN) has laid the foundation for heightened global environmental awareness since the 1970s. A central approach to address these wide-ranging issues, and bring them to the forefront of the international agenda, is through high-level environmental conferences of national leaders. These summits have provided space for critical dialogue among world leaders, government representatives, and civil society. They have become the arena in which environmental objectives are set and plans of action written and adopted. Three major summits have convened since the 1970s.

The first of the global summits was held from June 5 to 15, 1972, in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the progenitor of the Rio Summit and the Johannesburg Summit and marked a historical turning point in terms of political and public recognition of environment and development issues at a global scale. The Stockholm Summit laid the basis [Page 2907]for international environmental cooperation and led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme and related global and regional environmental-monitoring networks. It also paved the way for civic engagement in the global arena. However, the actual number of civilian participants was low by contemporary standards, with fewer than 300 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) attending.

Following Stockholm, the Brundtland Commission published a provocative and widely circulated document in 1984 titled Our Common Future. Lauded by the international community, it railed against the world's inability to achieve development goals sustainably and outlined visionary actions for preventing environmental catastrophes. It rallied international support among world leaders for another global environmental conference and generally outlined the topics for discussion.

The subsequent global conference was the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), held in Rio de Janeiro. By the time of the Rio Conference, the global environmental movement had gained momentum, and political will on behalf of governments to address environmental issues had grown substantially. Fourteen hundred NGOs were officially registered, and 18,000 representatives attended a parallel summit for NGOs. The main plan of action developed at the Rio Earth Summit is known as Agenda 21. It was adopted by 178 nations and is an all-inclusive outline of actions to be taken at all scales by UN organizations, governments, and key groups in all areas in which humans affect the environment.

The most recent of the UN global environmental summits was the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held from August 26 to September 4, 2002, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Its main objective was to reinforce an intergovernmental commitment to sustainable development and natural resource use. It also took stock of developments since Rio. More than 20,000 participants from governments and NGOs, the private sector, and the scientific community participated. The large number of unmet accords inherited from the 1992 Rio Summit called for a novel approach to include civil society in global agreements and action plans: the UN Stakeholder Forum Implementation Conference (IC). The IC was designed to mobilize stakeholder participation and facilitate the implementation of commitments established in Rio as embodied in Agenda 21.

While the UN summits have received increasing attendance and media recognition, concrete results have consistently fallen short of international agreements. Consistent summit shortcomings, leading to a sense of “summit fatigue,” shifting geopolitical coalitions, and struggling financial markets, will continue to challenge the accomplishment of summit accords.

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