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Rio: A Global Consensus on the Environment
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20057 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1992 |
2,005 Words |
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Edgar Maravi
A specialist in international development, Edgar Maravi is a
freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. He was a delegate
to UNCED for the Harvard Law School Project on Environmental
Issues. |
Although to many Americans the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in June will best be remembered as the event where the United States stood firm in its refusal to sign a previously unknown international treaty on biological diversity, the "Earth Summit" may in time prove to be a turning point in dealing with environmental issues.
Not only was the treaty on biodiversity signed, by over 100 nations, but a treaty on climate change, an agreement on forest principles, a blueprint for acting on global environmental issues called "Agenda 21," and a "Rio Declaration" were also signed, by more than 150 heads of state who attended the conference. These accords have already had a tremendous cumulative effect on governments' efforts to protect the environment and on public awareness of environmental destruction.
Other outcomes of the Rio summit are more difficult to quantify. Without question the conference has had a profound impact on the international nongovernmental organization (NGO) movement. Two other institutions were winners in the conference: Brazil, which hosted the summit, and the United Nations, whose future has been under increasingly sharp review as it approaches its 50th anniversary in 1995.
Although the United States had remained steadfastly opposed to the creation of any new institutions through the UNCED process, several were established: the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, new mechanisms for overseeing the implementation of both biodiversity and the climate change treaties, the jointly managed Global Environment Facility (GEF), and a new nongovernmental body called the Earth Council.
Despite these agreements, many have mixed feelings about the actual achievements of the summit. The tensions between North and South remained strong and real, and the major backdrop to the entire conference was the rekindling of the 1970s challenge to a new international economic order. Some developing country participants led by the Group of 77, or G-77, feel optimistic in that the linkage between environment and development were permanently forged, and the nature of the environment and development debate was unquestionably altered through the UNCED process. They feel that UNCED either enabled or coerced governments to acknowledge the links between economic development and environmental protection in a way few previously cared to admit. While in the Northern, or industrialized, countries environmental protection has been an increasingly important element in policymaking in the
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