Earth Summits
What are Earth Summits
The Earth Summits are meetings of world leaders, organized with the help of the United Nations, to help identifying ways to achieve sustainable development since 1972.
Purpose
To bring together the individuals and organizations, to improve all kinds of categories of life, to identify what are humanity's most pressing challenges, to quantify them, identify solutions and develop a plan of action.
This plan of action is called Agenda 21 and implemented by many local governments under the name Local Agenda 21.
The plan of action is designed as a TQM - Total Quality Manual, designed smartly and open enough, so that also organisations, companies and individuals can use it as a basis for their own plan of action and guidance not to miss out on important issue
The 2000-2015 Millennium Development Goals and
the 2015-2030 Global Goals are results from these Earth Summits.
List of Earth Summits
1972 - The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHS) in Stockholm.
The 1972 summit gave birth to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
1982 - The 1982 Earth Summit in Nairobi (Kenya). An Earth Summit was held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 10 to 18 May 1982. The events of the time (Cold War) and the disinterest of US President Ronald Reagan made this summit a failure. It is not even mentioned as an official Earth Summit.
1992 - The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). It is also called as Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June in 1992.
The 1992 Summit launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose signatory countries have met annually since 1995.
2002 - The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg (South Africa)
2012 - The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) or Rio+20, also took place in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).Considered as the last earth summit.
2018 - The 7th Digital Earth Summit 2018, DES-2018, on Digital Earth for Sustainable Development in Africa was to be held in El Jadida, Morocco, from April 17-19, 2018
2019 - The Santiago Climate Change Conference, featuring the 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 25) to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) and meetings of the UNFCCC subsidiary bodies, will convene from 2nd to 13th of December 2019.
Procedure
The entry into force of an international treaty usually takes several years. This is a complex process as each country needs to complete two steps to join
1. Signing the treaty,
2. Ratifying it formally.
The treaty enters into force only when a sufficient number of countries have ratified it .
The signatory countries of this type of treaty organize, roughly once a year, a conference of the parties (COP).
Important achievements of the summit
Agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
Agreement "not to carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or that would be culturally inappropriate".
The Convention on Biological Diversity was opened for signature at the Earth Summit.
The Earth Summit resulted in the following documents
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
Agenda 21
Forest Principles
Important legally binding agreements (Rio Convention) were opened for signature
Convention on Biological Diversity
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
In order to ensure compliance to the agreements at Rio (particularly the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and Agenda 21), delegates to the Earth Summit established the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). In 2013, the CSD was replaced by the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development that meets every year as part of the ECOSOC meetings, and every fourth year as part of the General Assembly meetings.