Earth Summit

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For other uses, see Earth Summit (disambiguation).
The Earth Summit was a UN event

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit , Rio Summit, Rio Conference, and Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992.

In 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development was also held in Rio, and is also commonly called Rio+20 or Rio Earth Summit 2012. It was held from 13 to 22 June.

Overview

172 governments participated, with 116 sending their heads of state or government.[1] Some 2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attended, with 17,000 people at the parallel NGO "Global Forum" (also called Forum Global), who had Consultative Status.

The issues addressed included:

  • systematic scrutiny of patterns of production — particularly the production of toxic components, such as lead in gasoline, or poisonous waste including radioactive chemicals
  • alternative sources of energy to replace the use of fossil fuels which delegates linked to global climate change
  • new reliance on public transportation systems in order to reduce vehicle emissions, congestion in cities and the health problems caused by polluted air and smoke
  • the growing usage and limited supply of water

An important achievement of the summit was an agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol. Another agreement was to "not to carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or that would be culturally inappropriate".

The Convention on Biological Diversity was opened for signature at the Earth Summit, and made a start towards redefinition of measures that did not inherently encourage destruction of natural ecoregions and so-called uneconomic growth.

Twelve cities were also honoured by the Local Government Honours Award for innovative local environmental programs. These included Sudbury in Canada for its ambitious program to rehabilitate environmental damage from the local mining industry, Austin in the United States for its green building strategy, and Kitakyūshū in Japan for incorporating an international education and training component into its municipal pollution control program.

Results

The Earth Summit resulted in the following documents:

Moreover, important legally binding agreements (Rio Convention) were opened for signature:

In order to ensure compliance to the agreements at Rio (particularly the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and Agenda 21, delegates to the Earth Summit established the Commission on Sustainable Development(CSD). In 2013, the CSD was replaced by the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development that meets every year as part of the ECOSOC meetings, and every fourth year as part of the General Assembly meetings.

Critics point out that many of the agreements made in Rio have not been realized regarding such fundamental issues as fighting poverty and cleaning up the environment.

Green Cross International was founded to build upon the work of the Summit.

The first edition of Water Quality Assessments, published by WHO/Chapman & Hall, was launched at the Rio Global Forum.

See also

References

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  3. ↑ United Nations Agenda 21 Archived May 10, 2009 at the Wayback Machine
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External links

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