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Sustainable Development: Acronyms Areas Countries Marine

Sustainable development is development or fullfil all human requirements without harming present or future generations rights

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Mina Kumari Yadav
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59 views

Sustainable Development: Acronyms Areas Countries Marine

Sustainable development is development or fullfil all human requirements without harming present or future generations rights

Uploaded by

Mina Kumari Yadav
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sustainable development

ACRONYMS AREAS COUNTRIES MARINE TERMS

DEFINITION

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.

World Commission on Environment and Development 1987[1]

KEY POINTS

The term “sustainable development” dates to the 1987 Brundtland Commissions’ report
“Our Common Future”. The concept was a key driver behind the Rio Earth Summit in
1992.
New sustainable development goals will be developed and take effect as of 2015, as was
decided during the Rio+20 summit (2012), held to review the progress of implementation
of agreements taken during the first Rio Earth Summit (1992).
Sustainable development is an overarching theme of the three Rio Conventions: The
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Sustainable development has recently been identified as one of five key priorities by the
United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in the UN Secretary-General’s five
year action agenda.
INTRODUCTION

Sustainable development is a core concept within global environmental policy. It provides a


mechanism through which society can interact with the environment while not risking
damaging the resource for the future.

FIRST UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT CONFERENCE

The history of sustainable development in the UN can be traced back to 1972 with the
United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment (CHE), the first UN conference
to focus on environmental issues. At this conference the Stockholm Declaration and
Principles were developed, which incorporate the idea of sustainable development although
the phrase itself was not included 2.

BRUNDTLAND COMMISSION

Following on from this conference, the UN General Assembly established the World
Commission on Environment and Development in 1983 (WCED). This commission was
chaired by the former prime-minister of Norway, Gro Harlum Brundtland, earning it the name
“Brundtland Commission”. In 1987 the commission submitted their report entitled “Our
Common Future” 1. This report is considered a landmark publication which popularised the
definition of sustainable development given here 3. Central points of the Brundtland
Commission were that sustainable development contains within it two key concepts: the
concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor (to which overriding
priority should be given); and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and
social organisation on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.

RIO EARTH SUMMIT

The report, Our Common Future, is considered to have been a key driver behind the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), known as the Rio Earth
Summit, in 1992. The recommendations of the report, including the issue of economic growth
and how it could be sustainable formed the primary topics of debate at the UNCED 4. The
UNCED had several key outcomes for sustainable development articulated in the conference
outcome document, Agenda 21. It states that “sustainable development should become a
priority item on the agenda of the international community” and goes on to recommend that
national strategies be developed to address economic, social and environmental aspects of
sustainable development 5.
RIO CONVENTIONS

Three major conventions, called the Rio Conventions, have come to be seen under the
umbrella of UNCED: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC). Each convention structures a framework around sustainable
development in the context of their respective themes of biodiversity, land management and
climate change In 2002 the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), known as
Rio+10, was held in Johannesburg to review progress in implementing the outcomes from
the Rio Earth Summit. WSSD developed a plan of implementation for the actions set out in
Agenda 21, known as the Johannesburg Plan 8, and also launched a number of multi-
stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development.

RIO +20 AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

In 2012, 20 years after the first Rio Earth Summit, theUnited Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development (UNCSD) or Rio+ 20 was held. The conference focused on two
themes in the context of sustainable development: green economy and an institutional
framework 9. A reaffirmed commitment to sustainable development is key to the conference
outcome document, 'The Future We Want’ to such an extent that the phrase ‘sustainable
development’ appears 238 times within the 49 pages 10. Outcomes from Rio +20 included a
process for developing new sustainable development goals, to take affect from 2015 and to
encourage focused and coherent action on sustainable development in all sectors, and the
formation of an intergovernmental high-level political forum on sustainable development 11. In
2012, sustainable development was identified as one of five key priorities by the United
Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in the UN Secretary-General’s five year action
agenda 13, highlighting the key role sustainable development takes in current international
policy.

REFERENCES & WEBSITE

1. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Report of the World


Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future [Brundtland
Report]. United Nations, Oslo, Norway 
2. UN (1972) Report of the United Nations on the Human Environment. United Nations,
Stockholm, Sweden 
3. International Institute of Sustainable Development (2010) Sustainble Development: From
Brundtland to Rio 2012. United Nations, New York, USA 
4. Ravenhill J (2008) Global Political Economy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, Cambridge
5. United Nations (1992) United Nations Conference on Environment & Development Rio
Agenda 21. United Nations, Rio, Brazil 
6. UN (2002) Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development
Contents. United Nations, Johannesburg, South Africa 
7. UN (2011) Rio+20 - United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.
http://www.uncsd2012.org/objectiveandthemes.html. Accessed 29 Jul 2013 
8. UN (2012) The future we want. United Nations, Rio, Brazil
9. UN (2013) Format and organisational aspects of the high-level political forum on
sustainable development. United Nations General Assembly, New York, USA 
10. Ki-Moon B (2012) The Secretary-General’s Five Year Action Plan. United Nations, New
York, USA 

Category:
Internationally recognised definitions

Key terms: In depth

Related pages
Sustainability (Terms)
Sustainable use (Terms)
Rio Conventions (Three) (Terms)
Rio Earth Summit (Terms)
Rio +20 (Terms)
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) (Terms)

Page last updated 16 October 2014

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