The World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002, took place in South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss ustainable developmentorganizations, 10 years after the first

Earth Summit The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Earth ...

in Rio de Janeiro. (It was therefore also informally nicknamed "Rio+10".)

Declarations

The

Johannesburg Declaration The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development
A/CONF.199/20, Chapter 1, Resolution 1, Johannesburg, September 2002 wa ...

was the main outcome of the Summit; however, there were several other international agreements. It laid out the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation as an action plan.

Agreements

Johannesburg, 27 August: agreement was made to restore the world's depleted fisheries for 2015. It was agreed to by negotiators at the World Summit. Instead of new agreements between governments, the Earth Summit was organized mostly around almost 300 "partnership initiatives" known as Type II, as opposed to Type I Partnerships which are the more classic outcome of international treaties. These were to be the key means to achieve the

Millennium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight international development goals for the year 2015 that had been established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millenn ...

. These are kept in a database of Partnerships for Sustainable Development.

U.S. participation

The absence of the United States rendered the summit partially impotent. George W. Bush boycotted the summit and did not attend. Except for a brief appearance by

Colin Powell Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...

, who hurriedly addressed the closing stages of the conference while his airplane taxied on the runway of Johannesburg International, the US government did not send a delegation, earning Bush praise in a letter from conservative organizations such as

Americans for Tax Reform Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U.S. advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." According to ATR, "The government's power to contr ...

American Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. ...

, and

Competitive Enterprise Institute The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a non-profit libertarian think tank founded by the political writer Fred L. Smith Jr. on March 9, 1984, in Washington, D.C., to advance principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individ ...

History

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, was first held in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 1972, and marked the emergence of international environmental law. The Declaration on the Human Environment also known as the Stockholm Declaration set out the principles for various international environmental issues, including human rights, natural resource management, pollution prevention and the relationship between the environment and development. The conference also led to the creation of the

United Nations Environment Programme The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on ...

. The

Brundtland Commission The Brundtland Commission, formerly the World Commission on Environment and Development, was a sub-organization of the United Nations (UN) that aimed to unite countries in pursuit of sustainable development. It was founded in 1983 when Javier Pé ...

set up by

Gro Harlem Brundtland Gro Brundtland (; born Gro Harlem, 20 April 1939) is a Norwegian politician ( Arbeiderpartiet), who served three terms as the 29th prime minister of Norway (1981, 1986–89, and 1990–96) and as the director-general of the World Health Organiza ...

, the pioneer of sustainable development, provided the momentum for first

1992 – the United Nations Conference on Environmental Development (UNCED), that was also headed by Maurice Strong, who had been a prominent member of the Brundtland Commission – and also for

Agenda 21 Agenda 21 is a non-binding action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development. It is a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. It is an action age ...

. South Africa's first National Conference on Environment and Development entitled, "Ecologise Politics, Politicise Ecology" was held at the

University of the Western Cape The University of the Western Cape (UWC) is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other ...

in conjunction with the Cape Town Ecology Group and the Western Cape Branch of the World Conference on Religion and Peace in 1991. Prominent persons involved in this conference were Ebrahim Rasool,

Cheryl Carolus Cheryl Carolus (born 27 May 1958) is a South African politician. She was born in Silvertown, on the Cape Flats, Cape Town. Carolus became involved in politics while still at school and became an activist after joining the United Democratic Fr ...

, Faried Esack, and Julia Martin. The initial informal discussions on a possible new Summit in 2002 were held in February 1998 and hosted by Derek Osborn who co-chaired the preparatory meetings for Rio+5 and Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future. A set of 10 governments started working informally to start putting together the possible agenda for a Summit. the non-papers produced in 1998 and 1999 ensured that when the UN Commission met in 2000 it could agree to host another Summit in 2002.

References

External links