How the national councils that grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit worked, why the global network faded, and where that work continues today.
National Councils for Sustainable Development
WSSD – World Summit for Sustainable Development
Agenda 21, Chapter 18: protecting freshwater resources
Chapter 18 of Agenda 21 set out the first global programme for freshwater management. Here is what it asked for and how the water agenda looks today.
Regional sustainable development networks: Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Europe
Sustainable development work is organised by region as much as by country. An overview of the regional bodies and where their reports can be found today.
The Ramsar Convention
The Ramsar Convention was approved in Ramsar, Iran in 1971. The treaty involving members from all regions of the world took force in 1975. It is the only
Climate Change Convention
On November 28, 2011 the United Nation’s Climate Change Convention will take place in Durban, South Africa. This convention will bring together the very best minds in the
Recent applications of the Convention on Biodiversity
The Biodiversity Convention (1992) is the first law of its kind, to recognize that the conservation of biological diversity should be a common concern for all of
How To Think About The Convention to Combat Desertification
On a global scale, there is deepening confirmation that the climate is changing, and that word-wide climate change is a factor that is contributing to an increase in
Integrating economic social and environmental action and perspectives
Every society is composed of a multi factorial system that contributes to the overall status of the society per se. Among the varied systems that make up the
The World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) refers to a summit that occurred in Johannesburg in the last week of August and first week of September 2002.
It was held under the auspices of the United Nations and was a follow up to similar summits that had taken place in Stockholm, Sweden, 1972 and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992, where the name Earth Summit was first coined.
WSSD looked to follow up on where Rio had left off, and also sought to examine any forgotten lessons from Stockholm. The world had changed considerably since the Rio de Janeiro summit, and against this backdrop, five areas formed the basis of the summit: 1) Water and sanitation 2) Energy 3) Human health 4) Agricultural productivity 5) Biodiversity and ecosystem management.
The summit was held in a much less optimistic atmosphere than the previous two summits, due to the geo-political situation at the time as well as the obvious lack of political willpower on the part of the developed world to keep to the agreements of the Rio de Janeiro.
Sustainability was the catch phrase of the WSSD, and even as it drew to a close, the organizers looked to come up with ways of binding the participants into agreements that would actually be effective, particularly considering the ineffective nature of the resulting declarations from both Stockholm (The Stockholm Plan of Action) and Rio de Janeiro (Agenda 21). This led to the rather unique nature and structure of the Johannesburg Declaration.
The structure of the agreements within the declaration were referred to as ‘Type 2’ agreements and involved arrangements or Memorandums of Understanding between states and non-state players or Non-Governmental Organizations, as well as between states themselves and also, between NGOs. This was not only a response to the rather ineffectual agreements of the previous summits that states had largely ignored, but also a direct recognition of the greater role that non-state players like NGOs had in the world.
Some of the goals of the plan of Implementation ensconced in the Johannesburg Declaration include the establishment of a poverty eradication fund; reaffirmation of the UN Millennium Summit goal to cut in half the proportion of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day as well as the number of people who lack clean drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, and halving the number of people suffering from hunger.
WSSD has been criticized for being less ambitious and weaker than its predecessors, but it’s proponents argue that it was by far a summit with more realistic goals.
Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.