The most revolutionary step in the present decade from environment perspective is considered to be “Rio Summit 1992”. Discuss as to why such importance is appended to this summit and its effect globally

The most revolutionary step in the present decade from environment perspective is considered to be “Rio Summit 1992”. Discuss as to why such importance is appended to this summit and its effect globally.

Introduction

We live in an earth where environment is polluted in every second. Pollution of environment is one of the biggest problems we face today. Health of human beings and other creatures on earth are affected by the polluted environment. “Dilution of the purity of natural resources takes place due to environmental pollution”. The elements of environment are different but interrelated. Since the elements are interrelated, the study of environmental pollution is quite difficult. If a certain part or section of ecosystem like air, water, soil etc is polluted by us, the consequences of this are bound to reflect in the form of imbalance in nature.

To protect the environment from those consequences, thousands of government delegates and a huge number of officials from UN organizations gathered in a conference to refocus global attention on the planet’s dreadful conditions. In this conference, conferees agreed on a widespread outline for sustainable development called “Agenda 21 and two sets of general principles: The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Forest Principles”[2]. The main message of this conference is a small transformation of our behavior and attitudes could bring the necessary changes for making the earth better for the next generation. The Rio Summit influenced all following UN conferences which have looked at the correlation between human rights, population, social development, women and human agreements and the environmentally sustainable development which is required for creating a healthy planet for generations to come.

Key words: Rio Summit, Environment, globally effect.

What is Rio Summit?

Rio Summit is a United Nations conference on environment and development. The short form of this conference is UNCED. It was held in Rio de Janerio and the date was 3-14 June 1992. Since this conference was held in 1992, it is known as the Rio Summit 1992. The informal name of this conference was the Earth Summit. The host government of this conference was Brazil. 108 heads of state or government officials from 178 countries participated in this conference. The secretary general of this conference was Maurice F. Strong who was from Canada. The organizers of this conference were UNCED secretariat. The main themes of this conference were environment and sustainable development. Twenty four hundred representatives of NGOs and 1700 people from the parallel NGO forum attended the conference[3].

Resulting Documents or Agreements of Rio Summit

In Rio Summit, all nations or governments or heads of state agreed to make three major agreements to change the usual move toward any development. Those agreements were:

i. Agenda 21: This is a wide-ranging agenda of actions for global action in all parts of sustainable development.

ii. The Rio declaration on environment and development: This agreement represents all the rights and responsibilities of states.

iii. The statement of forest principles: This is a set of values to motivate the sustainable management of forests worldwide.

In addition, there are also two more agreements to pr Conference global climate change and the annihilation of the diversity of biological species was released for signature at the Summit. Those agreements were[4]:

i. UN framework Convention on climate change and

ii. Convention on Biological Diversity.

Follow-Up Mechanisms of UN

To ensure the proper implementation and full support of Agenda 21, UN created three bodies worldwide[5]:

i. UN Commission on sustainable development

ii. Inter agency commission on sustainable development and

iii. High level advisory board on sustainable development.

Principles of Rio Declaration

The principles of Rio declaration mean the rights and responsibilities of a country or states regarding Agenda 21, forests and other non-legally binding statement. This declaration is basically on environment and development of nature. These principles contain-

I. Human beings have the right to lead a healthy and productive life in harmony oh nature and for that reason they are concerns for sustainable development.

II. If there is any doubt about environmental deprivation, there may have threats of serious or permanent damage. So scientific uncertainty should not delay actions to put off the degradation of the environment.

III. A country or a state has the right to utilize their own resources but they can not hamper the environment of other states.

IV. To gain a sustainable development, full participation of women is important.

V. For sustainable development reducing of inequalities and poverty in worldwide standards of living are important.

VI. Developed countries have the responsibility to make a healthy global environment by the technologies and financial resources they control.

VII. Not only developing or undeveloped countries but also developed countries should make an effort to make the world green by forest conversation and reforestation.

VIII. A country can develop a forest according to their socio economic needs.

IX. Particular financial resources have to be provided to different develop programs to inspire economic and social policies.

Importance of Rio Summit

Rio Summit 1992 is a special Conference for the present decade from environment perspective. It is a revolutionary step with a huge work program for the 21st century. The importance of this Conference becomes more valuable for this huge work programs. This vast work programs are approved by the world leaders in Rio. The main reasons of adding more importance to the Rio Summit 1992 are-

I. This Conference creates a dynamic program which will be agreed over time by different actors according to regions, situations, capacities and different priorities.

II. It creates the global partnership to provide a growing world.

III. It creates the guiding principles of development, resource management and poverty be incorporated.

IV. One of the objectives of this Conference is improving education, health care, safe water and sanitation of poor people, empowerment to the women and restoration of ruined resources.

V. The main problem of the planet is unsustainable consumption of natural resources. This Conference creates new concepts to make the greatest efficiency in the use of energy and resources and how to reduce the dependency on earth’s limited resources and more on unlimited resources like solar energy.

VI. This Conference promotes how to make a healthy environment and how to protect health hazards and risks from environment pollution.

VII. This Conference gives the guidelines of how to improve rural living conditions, use appropriate construction materials, design and technologies in urban area.

VIII. This Conference describes the way of creating sustainable development policies to incorporate social and environmental policies in all ministries and at all stages.

IX. This Conference advises to make the efficiency in energy production and consumption, development of renewable energy resources and control the atmospheric pollutants.

X. This Conference tries to improve and enforce laws and regulations to support sustainable use of land and use of techniques that focus on an ecosystem.

XI. This Conference encourages governments, business and nongovernmental groups to plant more forests and protect forests to pollutants that affect air, water and soil.

XII. This Conference calls for the study to improve forecasting about world climate change to support forestation and problem of erosion.

XIII. This Conference produces information on mountain ecosystems so that government can protect areas from erosion floods, landslides, earthquakes, snow avalanches and other natural hazards.

XIV. This conference also influences the national governments, private sector and the international community to make wider access of techniques for increasing the productivity of food, reducing food spoilage, conserving soil and water resources, ecosystems planning, private rights and reasonable market prices. It also advises to use techniques in tillage conversation, integration of pest management, rotation of crop, use of terracing, agro forestry, mixed cropping and plant nutrients. All of these are for developing the rural area and make the agriculture sustainable.

XV. This conference illustrates the importance of transferring the biotechnology to the developing countries and improving the productivity and the nutritional quality and shelf-life of food and animal feed products.

XVI. This conference specifies a goal and different programs to protect the oceanic resources for the benefit of the nations who have oceans and the nations that share oceans with other nations.

XVII. This conference explains the development of long-range weather and climate forecasting to clear out of the most apparent sources of pollution, to make safe the supply of fresh water for the next doubling of the human population.

XVIII. One of the objectives of this conference is “full evaluation of 500 chemicals before the year 2000”[6]. This conference enlightens the importance of controlling chemical hazards through pollution avoidance, discharge inventories, product labeling, banning of high risk chemicals.

XIX. This conference asks for international support to manage the hazardous wastes. Governments should invent something to create clean production methods by preventive and recycling technologies. Hazardous waste is the responsible for the environmental imbalance. Governments should push for waste reduction and rose recycling as tactics toward sound waste treatment and clearance. This conference also encourages countries to minimize and limit the creation of radioactive wastes.

Global Effects of Rio Summit

The Rio summit influenced all following UN conferences like the Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island in Barbados in May 1994 and the world conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 which are based on the connection between human rights, population, social improvement, women and human settlements and the environmentally sustainable development. The Rio summit did well in presenting innovative outlooks on economic progress. It was praised as the creation of a new era and its achievement would be calculated by the implementation locally, nationally and internationally. People who attended the conference came to know that changing the environment is not an easy task. It would be a multi staged process and would require a larger amount of financial funds.

Many organizations throughout the world joined them together to implement the concept of Agenda 21. Now many organizations think about the natural resources before they take any kind of investment decisions as they know that natural resources for short term turnover is awful for business in the long run. After Rio summit UN created three bodies to ensure the implementation of Agenda 21. Those bodies created many programs to make the planet healthy.

After Rio summit, many countries approved many sustainable development plans and the involvement of NGO remained high in those development plans.

Rio summit creates the awareness of the many negative motivates which continue to support the people to become wasteful consumers.

Along with the positive effects, there were many areas where the governments refused or proved to be unable to address properly like increasing amount of international debt, failures to develop technology transfer, coordination of institute, diminish excessive levels of production and consumption and capacity building for contribution and improvement.

Findings & Conclusion

The Rio conference has given importance to environmental issues on the political outline. It brought out the questions, though it did not have all the answers and informed a whole generation of strategy makers, government officials, industry and the common people about the issues. Additionally, it said again the call for international collaboration on environmental issues that were first in 1972.

Bibliography

Department of Public Information (1997) Background of UN Conference on Environment and Develpoment (1992), 23 May, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp2.html” http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp2.html [5 March 2013].

Department of Public Information (1997) UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992), 23 May, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html” http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html [5 March 2013].

Heinrich Boll Foundation World Summit 2002 Johannesburg (2003) 1992: The Rio Earth Summit, 18 July, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://www.worldsummit2002.org/index.htm?http://www.worldsummit2002.org/guide/unced.htm” http://www.worldsummit2002.org/index.htm?http://www.worldsummit2002.org/guide/unced.htm [12 March 2013].

Keating, M. (1992) ‘The Earth Summit’s Agenda for Change’, The Earth Summit Times, September.

Ling, C.Y. (2011) The Rio Declaration on Environment and Develeopment: An Assessment, 12th edition, 131, Jalan Macalister: TWN.

Meakin, S. (1992) THE RIO EARTH SUMMIT: Summary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development , November , [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp317-e.htm” http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp317-e.htm [12 March 2013].

Nakate, S. (2011) Environmental Pollution Effects, 28 March, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://www.buzzle.com/articles/environmental-pollution-effects.html” http://www.buzzle.com/articles/environmental-pollution-effects.html [5 March 2013].

Public Administration Department (1997) UN Follow-Up, 23 May, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp3.html” http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp3.html [5 March 2013].

Schechter, M.G. (2013) Earth Summit, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “http://www.pollutionissues.com/Co-Ea/Earth-Summit.html” http://www.pollutionissues.com/Co-Ea/Earth-Summit.html [5 March 2013].

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, (1992) The Rio Declaration On Environment and Development (1992), September, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK “file:///J:\\www.unesco.org\\education\\nfsunesco\\pdf\\RIO_E.PDF” www.unesco.org/education/nfsunesco/pdf/RIO_E.PDF [12 MArch 2013].

[1] Nakate, S. (2011) Environmental Pollution Effects, 28 March, [Online], Available: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/environmental-pollution-effects.html [5 March 2013].

[2] Schechter, M.G. (2013) Earth Summit, [Online], Available: http://www.pollutionissues.com/Co-Ea/Earth-Summit.html [5 March 2013].

[3] All those information collected from: Department of Public Information (1997) UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992), 23 May, [Online], Available: http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html [5 March 2013].

[4] Department of Public Information (1997) Background of UN Conference on Environment and Develpoment (1992), 23 May, [Online], Available: http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp2.html [5 March 2013].

[5] Public Administration Department (1997) UN Follow-Up, 23 May, [Online], Available: http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp3.html [5 March 2013].

[6] The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, (1992) The Rio Declaration On Environment and Development (1992), September, [Online], Available: www.unesco.org/education/nfsunesco/pdf/RIO_E.PDF [12 MArch 2013].

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