Earth Summit

For other uses, see Earth Summit (disambiguation).

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The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Summit, Rio Conference, Earth Summit (Portuguese: Eco '92) was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 June to 14 June 1992.

Overview

172 governments participated, with 108 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" (a.k.a. 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 are 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 smog
• the growing scarcity of water

An important achievement was an agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol. Another agreement was to "not 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.

The Earth Summit resulted in the following documents:

• Rio Declaration on Environment and Development^[2]
• Agenda 21^[3][4]
• Forest Principles

Moreover, two important legally binding agreements were opened for signature:

• Convention on Biological Diversity^[5]
• Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Critics, however, 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.

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

See also

• Ecology summit
• International Institute for Sustainable Development (www.iisd.org)
• Precautionary principle
• The Environmental Institute
• United Nations Conference on the Human Environment 1972
• Earth Summit 2002 "Rio+10" held in Johannesburg
• United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development also known as Rio 2012 or Rio+20, hosted by Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, as a 20-year follow-up to the historic 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).
• Global Map

References

1. ^ Earth_Summit
2. ^ http://habitat.igc.org/agenda21/rio-dec.htm
3. ^ http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc.htm
4. ^ http://habitat.igc.org/agenda21/
5. ^ http://www.cbd.int

External links

• Documents from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (also known as UNCED or the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992
• video: George Hunt reviews UNCED 1992
• video: Severn Suzuki, 13 years old, speaks for Environmental Children Organization UNCED 1992
• Address at Rio Earth Summit, Dalaï Lama
• Agenda 21 at Spencer Hofmans' Center for a World in Balance
• A critical New Internationalist keynote about the 1992 Rio Earth Summit