Rio Summit Research Articles

Biodiversity management challenges: A policy brief

Global biodiversity has been lost at an alarming rate in the past century leading to what is often described as ‘the sixth mass extinction'. Leading causes of this loss are chemical pollution, habitat loss, unsustainable use of resources, invasive species, and climate change. Such environmental change can alter ecosystem functions irreversibly, leading to a direct loss of ecosystem services, such as food provision, climate regulation, and cultural services, which are estimated to have a global value of tens of trillions of dollars. International governing bodies have repeatedly set targets to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially within the framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Despite nation states’ pledges at the Rio Summit in 1992 to conserve biological diversity, progress has been lamentable. One reason for such failure is that action to redress biodiversity loss depends on national governments but it is of relatively low concern on the public agenda. This article reviews the UK and EU legal and policy biodiversity frameworks and exposes some of the complexities surrounding biodiversity loss, including non-compliance, public awareness, and valuation. Following a multidisciplinary roundtable on biodiversity in 2023, we suggest policy recommendations to overcome these issues.

Essay: The development of and tensions in the idea of sustainable development and SDG2030

This essay examines the evolution of sustainable development and the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG2030). It traces the historical roots post-WWII, highlighting the tensions between sustainability and economic growth. Key events like the Stockholm Conference (1972), Brundtland Report (1987), and Rio Summit (1992) are discussed, alongside themes such as neoliberalism’s impact and counter-discourses on capability and commons. The essay also covers the transition from Agenda21 and the Millennium Development Goals to the 17 SDGs, emphasizing the need for an analytical framework. Lastly, it addresses the integration of culture, the Anthropocene, environmental humanities, and education in sustainable development.

The survival of the weakest: the echo of the Rio Summit principles in environmental treaties

ABSTRACT This article examines the influence of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Rio Summit, on the design of subsequent international environmental agreements (IEAs). In particular, it investigates the extent to which the principles outlined in the Rio Declaration were integrated into IEAs concluded in the following years. We focus our investigation on three principles: the precautionary principle, common but differentiated responsibilities, and the polluter pays principle. Analyzing a collection of 2,211 IEAs and their 509 amendments, we find that the Rio Summit catalyzed the dissemination of these principles. However, our study also reveals that the Rio Conference was an inflection point, wherein weaker expressions of these principles became more prevalent. Stronger expressions, which were included in some IEAs prior to the Rio Summit, became relatively less common thereafter. We call this evolutionary process the ‘survival of the weakest’.

New paradigm in the economic literature on global warming

This study examines how international agreements (especially the 1992 Rio Summit, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the 2015 Paris Agreement) on climate change have fueled rampant economic literature worldwide. However, it has not been systematically classified or distinguished from the more traditional studies in this field. Hence, we use a scientometric analysis using four different approaches: natural language processing (NLP), citation analysis, co-citation network analysis, and content analysis. We conduct an ambitious Boolean search of 30 terms in Scopus and use NLP, along with unsupervised statistical learning techniques and content analysis to classify and analyze 2400 of the most relevant studies in this field. As such, independent results are complementary. We provide novel literature by mapping four major clusters: climate change corporate, climate finance, climate capitalism, and climate gateway belief.

Rescuing the Paris Agreement: Improving the Global Experimentalist Governance by Reclassifying Countries

The Paris Agreement design follows the Global Experimental Governance mode, which once achieved success in ozone protection. However, the implementation of the Paris Agreement encountered difficulties, as it inherited the traditional dichotomy country classification established at the 1992 Rio Summit. Still, over time, the capability and motivation in Annex I and non-Annex I countries developed so differently that incentive and constraint policies do not encourage more ambitious mitigation commitments using the previous classification. For this reason, according to a country’s capability and motivation, this research divided these countries into four categories: Leader, Reserve Force, Waverer, and Obscurity, and proposed a potential climate action roadmap for different types of countries to mobilize their internal forces by dynamically classifying a country’s character and to improve overall global climate governance.

Public Engagement in Environmental Conservation in the Kayunga Area of Uganda and how it is influenced by Public Access to Information

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate environmental conservation in Kayunga District with an aim of establishing the contribution of the Rio Summit of 1992 and the implementation of subsequent international environmental conventions to Kayunga District’s environmental conservation.
 Methodology: The study used descriptive survey design. It employed both primary and secondary methods of data collection. Oral interviews and county reports provide important sources of primary data. Data from secondary sources were gathered mainly from written works and internet materials.
 Findings: The findings of this study revealed the Rio Summit of 1992 and the subsequent international environmental conventions have shaped environmental conservation mechanisms in Kayunga District.
 Conclusion: The study concluded that environmental awareness programs cut across all sectors of society in Kayunga District.
 Recommendation: The study recommended that the departments involved in environmental conservation should therefore team up and develop a more structured environmental education programme and jointly coordinate the programme through a committee to make valuable use of the calendar environmental celebration days.

THE ROLE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN COUNTRY POLICY

The 1987 Brundtland Report defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Bartelmus, 2012). At the heart of this concept is the belief that over the long term, social, economic and environmental objectives should be complementary and interdependent in the development process. In 1992, the Rio Summit established sustainable development as the guiding vision for development in both industrialized and developing countries, and for international development co-operation (Chung, 2009).

SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS: EVOLUTION BEYOND BUILDING ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT METHODS

ABSTRACT The publication of the Brundtland Commission Report, popularly known as Our Common Future, was the precursor for what was to follow in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development or the Earth Summit. Both these events played a fundamental role in the global initiatives towards sustainability. The adoption of Agenda 21, a blueprint for sustainable development for the 21st century was a crucial agreement of the Rio Summit, which marked the beginning of an era where the term Sustainable Development came to be associated with all human interventions on planet earth. In this context, the building industry, which makes a significant impact on the social, environmental and economic well-being of the society, has a prime responsibility in meeting with sustainability requirements in all facets of the design, construction and operation of buildings. Currently efforts are being made by the building industry and the allied professions to adhere to sustainability norms by enhancing the current green building practices. The emergence of building environmental assessment (BEA) methods is such an attempt in addressing these issues, but is considered as insufficient to contend with the wider spectrum of sustainability. A technique to address complex attributes of sustainable performance of building projects has not been attempted before, owing to the dynamic nature of the concept of sustainability. This paper attempts to develop a framework to enhance current BEA methods, as the next stage of development towards meeting global sustainability initiatives. The main objective is to evolve a set of indicators that will assist in determining sustainability of a building. Three widely used BEA methods and Agenda 21, are analyzed, along with a focus group, to derive sustainability indicators. A total of 62 indicators under 10 categories are identified, some of which are common to BEA methods, while several new indicators are introduced to address sustainability issues not previously accounted for in BEA methods. The final outcome is a framework that can be used to determine the extent of sustainability of building projects. With the aid of the proposed framework of indicators, it is possible to develop a complete sustainability index by allocating values to each indicator, through a survey of professionals in the building industry. Such an index could be used as a tool in developing sustainable buildings, thus meeting with aspirations of building design teams and clientele who seek high quality sustainable solutions for their endeavours. This effort would also pave way for further research into the domain of building sustainability.

Diversity of Marine and Brackish Macrophytes in the Port-Cros National Park (Provence, France, Mediterranean Sea): Taxa and Research Effort over Space and Time

The terrestrial and marine Port-Cros National (PCNP) was established in 1963; it was then made up only of the Archipelago of Port-Cros. Since 2012, it has been extended to include a vast land and sea area, including not only islands but also part of the mainland, the new PCNP (N-PCNP); the marine core area and the adjacent marine area cover approximately 120,000 ha and extend over 63 km as the crow flies, from east to west. Taxon richness is just one descriptor of biodiversity among others (e.g., functional and ecosystem diversity), and is far from being the most reliable one; however, it deserves to be taken into consideration, provided that certain prerequisites are met, because it constitutes a convenient measure of, e.g., the research effort and the diversity of habitats. The number of reported macrophyte taxa amounts to 502: 73 green algae, 316 red algae, 104 brown algae and 9 magnoliophyta and other taxa. Two new combinations are proposed: Ericaria brachycarpa var. claudiae and Gongolaria montagnei var. compressa. This gamma species diversity is far from being exceptionally high, but rather is within the norm for the Mediterranean, if we take into account the size of the area considered. The number of reported taxa per site is highly heterogeneous throughout the N-PCNP area; it is, as expected, correlated with the number of studies per site. The research effort peaked in the 1970–1980s, and then irregularly declined, which may seem surprising in this era of biodiversity launched at the 1992 Rio Summit. The exceptionally extensive database available, covering more than a century, provides the basis for a critical analysis of the concept of biodiversity, as proclaimed by the general public and the ‘greens’, which can be naive or biased, and of the concept of ‘heritage value species’, which the authors of this article consider to be a ‘toxic concept’, as opposed to ‘ordinary biodiversity’, which enables ecosystem functioning. However, this database, straddling both areas highly impacted by humans (coastal development, tourist resorts) and areas that are effectively protected, does not highlight obvious changes over time.

Contesting Sustainability of Mega-Events in Chinese Metropolises: A Narrative and Practise Review

Since the Rio Summit, sustainability has been enshrined in the official claims of mega-events, and scholars' sustainability concerns over mega-events persist. This research is one of the few contextualising the debates in China where mega-events have become prevalent and contributed to metropolitan boosterism since the 1990s. It argues that the ill-defined, ambiguous meaning of sustainability leaves room for host cities to discursively strike a balance between environment protection, social equity and economic growth, but unavoidably leads to paradoxes of sustainability in actual practises. The argument is supported by a longitudinal study on 12 major mega-events held or to be held in Chinese metropolises. Narratively, Chinese government's articulation of sustainability declared by international organisations of top mega-events has evolved technocratic and inclusive. Practically, amongst the three variants of sustainability, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability appear to work better than social sustainability. Findings of this research call for clarified narratives and concrete measures to guide mega-event practises.

(Re)Discovering Known Biodiversity: Introduction

Biodiversity sciences, including taxonomy, are empirical sciences where all results are published in scholarly publications as part of the research life cycle. This creates a corpus of an estimated 500 million printed pages (Kalfatovic 2010) including billions of facts such as traits, biotic interactions, observations characterizing all the estimated 1.9 million known species (Costello et al. 2013). This library is continually reused, cited and extended, for example with more than an estimated 15,000–20,000 new species annually (Polaszek 2005). All of these figures are estimates because we neither know how many species have been discovered, nor how many are being discovered every day, let alone what we know about them. Following standard scientific practice, previous publications, specimens, gene sequences, or taxonomic treatments (Catapano 2019) are cited more or less explicitly. In the pre-digital age, these links were meant for the human reader to be understood. For example, "L. 1758" is an established reference and links to both, Carolus Linnaeus and Linnaeus 1758, understandable at least by an expert human, and in the digital age, provides access to the respective digital representation. These data within the hundreds of millions of printed and now increasingly digitally published pages form a seamless, albeit implicit knowledge graph. Unfortunately, most of these publications are in print—the Biodiversity Heritage Library digitized about 50 million pages (Kalfatovic 2010)—or in many cases, closed access publications, and thus this knowledge is not readily accessible in the digital age. However, in today's digital age, each of these kinds of implicit links is an expensive stumbling block to access and reuse of the referenced data, its parent publications and the cited referenced data therein. Inadequate formats, language and access to taxonomic information were already recognized in 1992 at the Rio Summit (Taxonomic Impediment). The consequences of these impediments are only now obvious with the realization of the daunting amount of human resources needed to digitally catalogue and index this unknown (not discoverable and inaccessible) known knowledge, let alone making the data itself findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). This is a formidable and complex scientific challenge. Plazi is taking on this challenge. Its vision is to promote and enable the discovery and liberation of data to transform the unknown known data into digitally accessible knowledge, i.e., to build a digital knowledge base aimed at discovering all the species (and other taxa) we know, and what we know about them. Taxonomic publications with their highly standardized taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, treatment citations, material citations and illustrations are well suited to machine extraction. Together they include the entire catalogue of life with all the discovered species and their synonyms, often tens to hundreds of treatments, and figures that depict the myriad forms that comprise the world’s biodiversity. Once these data are FAIR, it allows bidirectional linking, for example of taxonomic names to the referenced taxonomic treatment, other digital resources such as gene sequences or digital specimens. At the same time, each datum is an entry point to the wealth of information that can be followed by the human user by clicking the links, but more importantly, analysed by machines. Here, digitally accessible knowledge will be defined in the context of discovering known biodiversity, including strategies of how to approach the challenge, which then will be detailed in subsequent talks in this symposium. This symposium is based on Plazi’s ongoing data liberation and discovery supported by the European Union (e.g. Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library BiCIKL), United States (e.g. NIH) and Swiss research funding (e.g. e-BioDiv and the Arcadia Fund), collaboration with publishers (e.g. Pensoft, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities Publications, the Zenodo repository, Biodiversity Heritage Library), and data reusers like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Ocellus, Synospecies and openBiodiv. Currently, over 500,000 taxonomic treatments and 300,000 illustrations have been liberated and are accessible through TreatmentBank and the Biodiversity Literature Repository.

The Chinese Approach to International Environmental Law

Modern international environmental law, shaped by the Stockholm Conference (1972), Rio Summit (1992), and Paris Climate Conference (2015), tackles global environmental challenges through its unique approach to the allocation of responsibilities, institution building, and compliance mechanisms. As the world’s biggest developing country and second largest economy, China’s position and practice of international environmental law are crucial to global environmental governance. This article examines the Chinese approach to international environmental law from a historical perspective and in the context of domestic socio-economic development through the Mao, Deng, and Xi regimes, with a special focus on China’s participation in the landmark UN conferences in Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, and Paris. It first reviews the profound impact of the Stockholm Conference (1972) on China’s awakening to environmental issues during the Mao regime (1966 – 1976) and explains the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ that has guided China’s interaction with the world. Secondly, it explores how Deng’s pragmatic leadership, focusing on economic reform and opening-up to the world, has transformed China from a passive participant at the periphery of the international legal order to an active member of established legal regimes by signing and ratifying environmental treaties and advocating the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities for fair allocation of legal obligations at the Rio Summit (1992). The article addresses how China under Xi responds to new greater expectations of a rising China in the construction of the post-2020 climate regime. Fourthly, it reflects on change and continuity of the Chinese approach to international environmental law over the fifty-year journey beginning in Stockholm and argues that while enhanced economic power has seen a more assertive and confident China making commitments under the Paris Agreement (2015), the unwavering adherence to sovereign equality and right to development has remained unshaken. The article concludes with the prospect that a politically stable and economically prosperous China will be more capable of delivering its climate commitments as a responsible great power in a world that is increasingly divided by intensifying nationalism, regional conflicts and ideological struggles.

Milestones in forging the contemporary perception of CSR. An overview

Acting in a socially responsible manner did not simply materialize in modern times. Social Responsibility has been of concern to mankind since antiquity, being intertwined with the need to help people whose economic and social circumstances may be dire. Adam Smith was the first to introduce the notion of ethics in economic theory while at the beginning of 1920s, the first samples of corporate social responsibility came as a result of social action by enterprises at the time. First, Howard Bowen highlighted CSR in the context of academic research in 1950 whereas in 1992, at the Rio Summit where the representatives of 178 nations gathered, the natural environment got associated, first time ever, with the notions of economic and social development, thus triggering an entire period of developments in the field of CSR. What followed, over the years leading up to date, were actions, decisions and formal initiatives that forged, to a great extent, the perception of CSR. This article points to the most important landmarks of the whole itinerary of CSR and its eventually becoming an institution. It, moreover, provides field researchers with a tool to describe, analyze and proceed with a comparative evaluation of different periods and events.

Eco Innovación y tecnología en el Sector de la Energía en la República Dominicana

La energía para el desarrollo y crecimiento de cualquier país juega un importante papel, en tanto que insumo de primera mano para lograr la transformación de bienes y servicios en el mundo actual. A partir de los hallazgos en la Cumbre de Río del 1992 el mundo se hizo eco de la necesidad de un cambio significativo en la forma de producir la energía, la cual, entre otros factores, influye de manera directa en la conservación del medio ambiente y consigo un arrastre de la calidad de vida y salud de las personas. En la década actual se ha logrado grandes avances en la producción energética de fuentes renovables y limpias, con lo que se persigue reducir la huella de carbono, la emisión de gases de efecto invernadero, además de tener un esquema de generación más eficiente y de menor costo a largo plazo, aportando de tal forma a una sostenibilidad en el tiempo y una sustentabilidad en el presente. Para los seres humanos el tener acceso a la energía repercute de forma directa e indirecta en su calidad de vida, pues se logra reevaluar el uso de los recursos naturales para las actividades cotidianas como el alumbrado, la cocción de los alimentos con leña, entre otros. Pero también a nivel general la gente se siente más cómoda y a gusto, a la misma vez que su nivel de resiliencia crece.

Green chemical engineering: challenges in chemical industrial processes for a better life

Almost thirty years away from sustainable development Rio summit, we still need to put a big effort in promoting and implementing industrial sustainable process. Green chemical engineering has been involved in industrial processes and chemical engineers are working to develop solutions for green and economic production of product using clean technologies, solving energy and raw materials shortage, sustainable water supply and wastewater treatment, carbon capture and utilization. This paper aims to highlight developments, challenges and best practices in green chemical engineering for both green product engineering and green process engineering. Incorporating the green engineering concept in the curriculum at university level to create a critical mass of engineers and scientists in green engineering is also included.

Agro-ecosystem based sustainability indicators for climate resilient agriculture in India: A conceptual framework

The impending threats of changing climate have been well documented across sectors. The climate risks are best addressed through increasing adaptive capacity and building resilience. Ever since the global call during the Rio Summit in 1992 for establishing sustainability indicators across sectors, there have been several studies across the world on developing indicators for sustainability, vulnerability and climate resilience. Agriculture, the most vulnerable system to changing climate, depends on the resilience of both social and ecological systems. This paper focuses on integrating the variability of climate into the agricultural sustainability measurement with a broad base of indicators and bringing in the localized factors for representing the agroecosystem specificities. The paper also aims at identifying indicators for measuring climate resilient agriculture in Indian sub-continent and developing a conceptual framework for profiling the spatial resilience across various agro-ecosystems for appropriate location-specific policy interventions. In the current study 1209 indicators used in various research studies were screened, grouped for similarity and purpose and classified based on the various dimensions viz., social, economic, ecological, etc. After a critical review based on their appropriateness as a measurable indicator, extent of overlap, relevance in Indian context and possible data availability, 41 indicators were shortlisted for validation through a comprehensive structured online survey among subject matter specialists (n = 225). The responses from the experts (n = 36) were analysed using weighted sum model (WSM) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The study identifies a list of 30 sustainability indicators for climate resilient agriculture in India, that are particularly suitable for different agro-ecosystems of the sub-continent. The authors advocate an action-oriented model called Climate Risk Management Package for Agriculture (CRiMPA) to aid in planning spatial/agro-ecosystem specific interventions, which in turn could strengthen the National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC) of Government of India.

A study of lifestyle changes in Xavier Institute of Development Action & Studies, India to mitigate global warming

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations as tools to transform the world by 2030, outline Goal 13 to “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by regulating emissions and promoting developments in renewable energy”. But the seventeen goals are all interrelated and it is our cumulative efforts that can make them achievable in the next 13 years.As a civilization we have thrived upon decades of denudation and degradation, gradually, but immensely, yet quite indifferently. This indifference might be debated upon as the recent times has seen ever-growing concerns to address the crisis at hand, but this is no more than burning the night oil for a saving grace. If we look back, then it will not be difficult to analyze that the exploitation of the resources and the processes of degradation accelerated from the era of Industrial Revolution, dating back to 1750, but it took us more than a century to feel the repercussions of our actions. The first time ever the terms “global warming” and “climate change” was addressed as an internal issue of concern was in the Rio Summit, held in Rio-de-Janeiro in Brazil in 1992. Since then, the world has witnessed a series of environmental protocols, treaties and summits, each one raising a doubt on the validity and effectiveness of the previous. Meanwhile, the ever-impending population surge has compounded the environmental stresses. To combat the changes we are introducing in our ecosystem, the research focuses on implementation of minor and doable actions in the mundane yet regular activities of our daily life, which have a direct impact on individual carbon footprint. The research establishes the success of these measures in Xavier Institute of Development Action and Studies (XIDAS) by comparing the scenarios before and after implementation of a “Green Lifestyle”, which will help us achieve sustainability beyond environment protocols and beyond international treaties.

Most finance to halt desertification also benefits multiple ecosystem services: A key to unlock investments in Land Degradation Neutrality?

Quantifying the demand for multiple ecosystem services is difficult because it is subjective and heterogeneous. Using land degradation as a case study, this paper explores land restoration finance as a proxy for global ecosystem service demand. Land degradation has been high on the UN agenda since the 1992 Rio Summit, together with climate change and biodiversity. The supply of many ecosystem services is declining due to land degradation and desertification, particularly in drylands. The inclusion of a Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) target in the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reaffirmed the commitment by the international community to tackle this global environmental challenge. If this vision adequately reflects society’s values, as expressed through demand for ecosystem services, we should see land restoration finance targeting areas where potential ecosystem service supply could be enhanced the most. To test this hypothesis, we used spatial analysis of key ecosystem services, as well as comparative analysis of synergistic values and other indicators of financial resources committed between 2008 and 2013 to address land degradation. These activities can generate multiple benefits for many ecosystem functions and services. Official activity-level environmental ratings – called Rio Markers – were used to identify those activities that were intended to produce multiple ecosystem services benefits in terms of land restoration, biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation. Our analysis concludes that many land restoration activities are synergistic and reveals other important aspects: (i) developing countries report, on average, higher synergistic values than developed countries and development finance organizations; (ii) donor countries report more conservatively than recipient countries; (iii) multi-purpose synergistic projects attract more funders than single-purpose ones. In some cases countries with high ecosystem service supply receive higher investment, but this finding is not strong, indicating that investment could be more strategically targeted. These findings suggest, in particular, that the synergistic features of multi-purpose land restoration activities could be harnessed to enhance investment effectiveness and impact. This, in turn, would make LDN finance more prominent in development aid portfolios and in public/private sustainable investment strategies.

Expert Response to Climate Change, An Unwelcome Legacy: The Need to Support Children's Rights to Participate in Global Conversations

 2018 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 28(1), 2018 Expert Response to Climate Change, An Unwelcome Legacy: The Need to Support Children’s Rights to Participate in Global Conversations Pravin Bhiwapurkar College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning University of Cincinnati Citation: Bhiwapurkar, P. (2018). Expert response to Climate change, an unwelcome legacy: The need to support children’s rights to participate in global conversations. Children, Youth and Environments, 28(1), 115-118. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=chilyoutenvi “Climate Change, an Unwelcome Legacy” highlights the lack of child representation in climate change-related policies and decision-making since the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was established in 1989. The CRC treats as core principles children’s right to participate and to be heard. It is one of the most rapidly and widely ratified international human rights treaties in history. The CRC depicts children as agents with independent minds and ideas; they are subjects, not objects, of rights. Child participation is an important step towards climate justice, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable age group, and emphasizing the need for intergenerational and international equity. As children are at a defenseless stage of human development, they are at a higher risk of being negatively impacted by climate change. Important negative impacts resulting from climate change include malnutrition, health hazards, health, violence, migration and exploitation. These impacts are interconnected and CRC Article 6 acknowledges how climate change threatens children’s rights to life and survival. The paper highlights effective efforts to improve child engagement and participation that are centered on the four conditions of Space, Voice, Audience, and Influence as suggested by the Lundy Model to fully implement Article 12 of the CRC. Successful models of child participation described in the paper include national-level children’s parliaments and youth councils, such as the National Congress of Children and Young People in Bolivia, as well as local-level decision-making processes, such as children’s ability to officially vote in a school-relocation referendum in the Philippines. Child participation can clearly impact climate change-related policies from the local to the global scale. Further, children are able to engage families, Expert Response to Climate Change, An Unwelcome Legacy… 116 schools, and societies and connect them with regional, national and global authorities to help minimize the effects of climate change. Nonetheless, child participation in ratifying countries is still limited. The paper emphasized that there was little to no mention of or participation by young people in three major climate-change related global events, namely the 1992 Rio Summit; the 2008 UN Joint Framework Initiative on Children, Youth, and Climate Change; or the 2013 Conference of Parties that ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). Consequently, the paper argues that the authorities responding to global climate crises are violating children’s rights by not acknowledging their right to express their opinion (CRC Article 13), not hearing them, and not including them in decision making (CRC Article 12). Collins (2016) points out that the important question to be answered is: how is children’s participation understood? Shedding light onto the ways that young people’s participation is interpreted and incorporated into decision making will help explain—among other things—why the UN Joint Framework Initiative on Children, Youth, and Climate Change and other efforts have consistently failed to influence the Conference of Parties. To make significant progress toward honoring children’s rights and meaningfully involving them in climate-change policy, it is essential to more fully understand the variations in children’s participatory opportunities, as well as the causes of those disparities. First, it is important to understand the variation in participation between countries. For example, in some countries, long-standing practices and attitudes (e.g., it is adults’ responsibility to make decisions on children’s behalf), as well as political and economic realities, create major barriers to child participation in government decision making. Moreover, in some countries more than others, a lack of funding and staffing, lack of recognition, and adult-dominated forums are cited as common concerns. Further, structuring an analysis of participation disparities in terms of developed versus developing...

A Sustentabilidade Integral como força motriz para a mudança paradigmática no estilo de vida humano

Desde a Cúpula da Terra do Rio de Janeiro (Cúpula do Rio, Conferência do Rio ou Cúpula da Terra- Português: ECO92), o termo sustentabilidade passou a ser utilizado em praticamente todas asreuniões internacionais e adentrou definitivamente na agenda de compromisso de diversas entidadese empresas. Contudo, aparentemente, o conceito de sustentabilidade permanece uma incógnita emtermos de limites e abrangência. O objetivo do presente artigo científico é introduzir uma discussãosobre o conceito de sustentabilidade. Dessa forma, a partir de um resgate de seu significado e daverificação da fluidez de seu conteúdo, apontou-se a ausência de uma clara sistematização conceitual.Se por um lado esse cenário permite uma contínua expansão de seu conteúdo e o não engessamentode seu conceito, por outro lado, esse discurso figurado pode acobertar problemas que a sociedadee seus agentes não querem tratar, mas apaziguar. Portanto, o presente artigo adota o conceito desustentabilidade enquanto o despertar do ser humano para o seu potencial e para expansão do seu “euinterior”. É a assunção da responsabilidade individual, a partir da percepção do agir localmente, atéo comprometimento social que se expande para atitude perante o outro, o entorno e o planeta Terra.