Partner Blog Post
The Road to Rio
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With the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day behind us, EDN’s International Staff is looking ahead, and our focus is largely trained one event: the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development—also known as the “Earth Summit.”
The Summit will take place in Brazil, and likely in Rio de Janeiro, as that was the site of the 1992 Earth Summit (or “The Conference of Environment and Development”), which many in the environmental movement look back upon as a turning point. Like the original Earth Day, it was a moment when Environmental issues were brought to the forefront of the minds of common citizens around the world.
Our colleague Heather Allen, at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has written two great blog posts—one on “The Road to Rio,” as we are calling it, and another on what the U.S. government hopes to see from the conference.
Keep coming back to Earth Day Network to see updates on our planned events, and to get a better idea of how we hope to shape the conference. In the meantime, if you need to bone up on your UN terminology or on the accomplishments of the past UN environmental conferences, I would encourage you to look them up on Wikipedia (No, I would not normally do this …). We will add a few links below.
The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
This was where it all began, in some ways. The first major UN conference on Environmental Issues
The 1983 Brundtland Commission
This group, led by Gro Brundtland (former Prime Minister of Norway, current member of The Elders) brought the term “Sustainable Development” to the world’s consciousness
Accomplishments of the 1992 Conference:
The drafting of Agenda 21, a major document outlining the steps required to develop a sustainable world economy.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—the foundation for the Kyoto Protocol and the COP meetings in Copenhagen and Cancún, among others.
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which spells out some basic tenets that all levels of government should take to heart.
And, finally, the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was a strong step toward protecting the world’s Biodiversity.
