The Road to Rio

During the last two decades, people began to realize that we cannot have a healthy society or economy in a world with so much poverty and environmental degradation. Economic development cannot stop, but it must change course to become less ecologically destructive. The challenge of the 1990s is to put this understanding into action, and make the transition to sustainable forms of development and lifestyles. From the farm field to the boardroom, from the shopping cart to the national budget, we will have to make major changes.

A road map to sustainable development is now taking shape. Agenda 21 is a guide for business and government policies and for personal choices into the next century. It was endorsed by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the largest-ever meeting of world leaders. This meeting took place during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which brought together the heads or senior officials of 179 governments. They were joined by hundreds of officials from United Nations organizations, municipal governments, business, scientific, non-government and other groups. Nearby, the `92 Global Forum held a series of meetings, lectures, seminars and exhibits on environment and development issues for the public. This drew 18,000 participants from 166 countries, as well as 400,000 visitors. There were 8,000 journalists covering the Rio meetings, and the results were seen, heard and read about around the world.

The foundations for the Rio process were laid in 1972, when 113 nations gathered for the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the first global environmental meeting. In 1983, the United Nations created the World Commission on Environment and Development. Four years later its landmark report, Our Common Future, warned that people had to change many of the ways they did business and lived or the world would face unacceptable levels of human suffering and environmental damage.

The commission said that the global economy had to meet people’s needs and legitimate desires, but growth had to fit within the planet’s ecological limits. The commission, known as the Brundtland Commission after its chairman, called for "a new era of environmentally sound economic development". It said that: "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable— to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

In 1989, the United Nations began planning a Conference on Environment and Development to spell out how to achieve sustainable development. For two years, experts from around the world hammered out difficult agreements along the road to Rio. The international negotiating system was opened up as never before. Thousands of people from non-governmental organizations, businesses, education, women’s groups, indigenous groups and others contributed to the Rio process.

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