Earth Summit

The Earth Summit—formally known as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)—was held from June 3 to June 14, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It heralded a new era as it initiated a global compact to achieve sustainable development.

UNCED was an exceptional conference in terms of its significance, size, and scope. As a result, the Earth Summit provided many new focal points for research in global studies. First, with the creation of novel institutional mechanisms, more input has been given for research on regime effectiveness. Second, the Earth Summit serves as a model for participation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in international policy making in terms of the variety and scale of their involvement. This has created much food for thought for the analysis of non-state actors in international relations. Third, the Earth Summit was also important in its attempt to bridge the North-South divide, which initiated more research in this field. These new points of departure for research form the focus of this entry. After providing a brief outline of the events leading up to UNCED, the entry elaborates on the main outputs of the Earth Summit and the resulting research opportunities in global studies.

Historically, the Earth Summit followed the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, which was first in line of a series of environmental mega-conferences. The 1972 conference, however, failed in fully grasping the relation between environment and development. In the following years, the importance of sustainable development was increasingly underscored once it appeared that developing countries were unable to ensure environmental protection due to poverty issues and their development needs. Yet, the main impetus came with the 1987 Brundtland report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, which emphasized the inseparable relationship between environmental problems and socioeconomic issues. As a result, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 44/228 on December 22, 1989, calling for a conference with a specific mandate on environment and development: UNCED.

The Earth Summit resulted in three agreements: the Agenda 21; the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; and Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests. Additionally, two binding treaties were signed at the Earth Summit but had been negotiated separately: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. These agreements led to the creation of several institutional mechanisms and bodies. In particular, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development was created to coordinate and monitor an [Page 440]effective follow-up of the Earth Summit. Researchers in global studies have examined the effectiveness of these new agreements. A related issue of concern has been the lack of new and additional strong financial measures created at UNCED to support the implementation of Agenda 21.

The participation of nonprofit NGOs at the Earth Summit was remarkable; more than 1,400 NGOs participated at the formal conference and thousands of additional NGOs were involved in parallel meetings at the Global Forum. Yet, reservations still existed among many developing nations. They feared that the increased participation of NGOs was part of a neoliberal strategy, as the majority of the officially accredited NGOs were funded by, and often stationed in, an industrialized country. Nonetheless, the Global Forum provided a platform for unrepresented groups and initiated dialogue between northern and southern NGOs, and between the locally and internally oriented NGOs. The Earth Summit also stimulated NGOs and private actors to form international alliances, such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. This development fueled new debates on the legitimacy of private actors in international policy making, but also formed an impetus for the creation and use of public-private partnerships.

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