Mechanisms for activating the environmental dimension of sustainable development

Abstract

After the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the environmental dimension of development was established to achieve sustainable development. It changes the perception of organizations to harmonize their economic effectiveness with their social and environmental profitability on the one hand. Recent attention has shifted to researching mechanisms to help promote sustainable development, especially the environmental dimension, across the world on the other hand. This study details these mechanisms, in particular environmental governance and citizenship, by providing a framework known as global environmental governance and environmental citizenship. With the presentation of a number of tools that environmental governance and citizenship can activate in the service of sustainable development to allow the transition from theoretical frameworks to the application on the ground based on the descriptive analytical approach. It is expected that the study will identify these two modern concepts in studies (environmental governance and environmental citizenship) and highlights the most important tools used by these concepts in practice to increase attention to the environmental dimension of sustainable development to reach a number of results. Perhaps the most important of which is global environmental governance requires an international, local legal and institutional framework starts from the citizen. To focus environmental citizenship on pro-environmental behaviors in the public and private sectors, this concept should extend beyond the State to the adoption of general international environmental law through several dimensions, beginning with special responsibility: justice in the distribution of resources and collective action to protect the environment. The study concludes with a number of recommendations to alert the importance of these two variables in activating the environmental dimension of sustainable development around the world.