The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) will take place in 2012,
marking two decades of official international action on sustainable development.
In the first
Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the international community came to recognize...
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The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) will take place in 2012,
marking two decades of official international action on sustainable development.
In the first
Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the international community came to recognize the unequal and
unsustainable character of dominant development patterns.
At the same time, it committed to
take steps towards more equitable and sustainable development, and produced the conventions
on climate change and biodiversity, and the Agenda 21 action plan.
Twenty years on, the world finds itself far off track in realizing the vision of Rio.
Global economic
expansion continues to severely strain the environment.
Humanity’s ecological footprint now
exceeds the planet’s biocapacity by over 50%, and three of nine planetary boundaries that define
the safe operating space for human life on Earth have been breached.
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Yet, despite the vast amounts of wealth being produced, the benefits and costs are shared very
unequally.
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