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National High School Model United Nations 2015
HLPF
COMMITTEE HISTORY
The concern for environmental and economic sustainability has not always been at the forefront of
international agendas. It was not until the 1960s that the international community started to explore
the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation due to alarming oil
spills and loss of marine biodiversity. 1 Global environmental awareness continually gained political
prominence and by 1972 it was officially addressed in an international conference. The UN
Conference on Human Environment was the first global effort to place environmental concerns
high on political agendas. 2 By 1992 the international community met in an unprecedented
conference to discuss not only the environment but also development as a whole. The Earth
Summit took place in Rio de Janeiro and resulted in a key document for development issues, the
Agenda 21, which is a global plan of action for sustainable development. 3 However, the main
outcome of the conference was the creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development
(CSD), the first UN body on this subject. 4
CSD was mandated to regularly review the progress and implementation of commitments such as
the Agenda 21. It was responsible for promoting dialogue between states and building partnerships
that integrated the three dimensions of sustainability. 5 Moreover, the Commission aimed to
encourage the implementation of technology, finance, and capacity building in such partnerships for
development. During its twenty years of operation, CSD was crucial in maintaining sustainable
development’s high place in political and developmental agendas. 6 It was also innovative in keeping
sustainable development under permanent review.
Nevertheless, CSD was not as successful in attracting varied participation from all stakeholders and
dimensions of sustainable development. The Commission was supposed to involve actors from the
three major fields of sustainability: economy, society and environment. However, CSD turned into
mainly an environmental forum as it attracted predominately environmental discussion, neglecting
other aspects of its mandate. Furthermore, the Commission lacked consensus at the international
level and did not have coordinated dialogues at regional and national levels. 7 These issues were
addressed by the international community in the twenty-year review of the Earth Summit, the
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20, in 2012.
Seeing the need to further address global sustainability challenges and the numerous limitations of
CSD, the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) was created in June 2012
as a universal, intergovernmental forum to continue discussing the sustainability challenges the
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1 “Sustainable Development,” News and Media Division of the United Nations Department of Public Information: Basic Facts About
the United Nations (2011): 186-224.
2 “High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development,” UN Sustainable Development Platform, last modified May
2014, http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?menu=1556.
3 “Sustainable Development.”
4A/67/757, “Lessons Learned from the CSD,” 26 February 2013, accessed 10 June 2013,
http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/67/757&Lang=E.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
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