THE LONG ROAD TO JOHANNESBURG

The idea of sustainable development is not new. Its concepts have been used implicitly in many societies of ancient history. Increasing environment and development needs of the last decades led to the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference on Human Environment that resulted in the formation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan defined principles for the preservation and enhancement of the natural environment, and highlighted the need to support people in this process, while development strategies were not meeting the needs of the poorest countries and communities.

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development produced the so-called Brundtland Report "Our Common Future", which framed much of what would become the Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration. The report defined sustainable development as development that “meets the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future genera-tions to meet their own needs”.

The UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the "Rio Earth Summit", convened in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, was the largest UN conference ever held. It agreed Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration and resulted in several international conventions. [ see overview of the results ]

The year 2000 saw the the UN Millenium Summit, with some 150 heads of State or government participating. The summit addressed major global challenges such as how to pull over 1 billion people out of extreme poverty, reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and protect the environment.

The state of the world has not improved since UNCED, but the summit can still be considered a milestone in achieving sustainable development. A multidimensional process of conferences, dialogues, negotiations, agreements and action plans started after the summit and is still ongoing.

The different strains of environmental and development concerns on global, regional and national level are being bundled again for the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), to be held in Johannesburg in September 2002. Progress in implementing Agenda 21 will be reviewed and new issues raised to tackle the prevailing challenges of the world.