PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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The underdevelopment debates of the 1980s were quickly superseded by
environmental debates, and half a decade after Brundtland, the UNCED Earth Summit in
Rio inaugurated environmentalism as “the highest state of developmentalism” (Sachs
1993:3, quoted in Nygren 1998:201). Since the Rio Summit, a whole cluster of UN
conferences, conventions and proceedings have concerned themselves with the subject of
sustainable development and its environmental, social and economic dimensions (see
table 2.1).
Table 2.1. The “Rio Cluster” of UN Summits, Conferences, and Conventions
o World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) – “Rio +10” (Jo’burg, 2002)
o UN Special Session “Istanbul +5” (New York, 2001)
o Earth Summit +5 (New York, 1997)
o Habitat II – “The City Summit” (Istanbul, 1996)
o UN Conference on Trade and Development (Midrand, 1996)
o Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995)
o World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995)
o Migratory and Straddling Fish Stocks (New York, 1995)
o Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994)
o Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (Barbados, 1994)
o World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction (Yokohama, 1994)
o World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993)
o Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992)
o United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Meetings (annually from
1993)
o UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC (New York, 1994),
resulting in the Kyoto Protocol (Kyoto, 1997) and additional Conferences of the
Parties (COPs)
o Misc. International Conventions on Biodiversity, and Desertification
Note: Details about these conferences and conventions including references to related
literature, can be found on the internet at http://www.igc.apc.org/habitat/unproc/index.html,
http://www.earthsummit2002.org/, and http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/.
Source: Pezzoli (1997), own additions