United Nations Conference On Environment And Development Research Articles

‘Challenges and Regulatory Precautionary Approach of Flag States in Implementing Obligations Under the Ballast Water Management Convention’

Increasing shipping activities necessitated by an upsurge in international trading has a resultant impact on the marine ecosystem. Apart from the usual incidences of marine pollution and oil spillages, the introduction and transfer of invasive alien species (IAS), often known as harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens (HAOP), are increasing and impacting marine ecosystems and biological diversities. In realization of these threats, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the International Maritime Organization (IMO) was requested to consider the adoption of appropriate rules on ballast water discharge based on the understanding that ships’ ballast water serves as a pathway for such bio-invasion transfer. Responding to these challenges led to the adopting of several regulations, technical guidelines, and rules, including the Ballast Water Management Convention in 2004. Hence, implementing the Convention has several implications for the existing legal regimes on flag states. The Convention and its Guidelines are complex and technical, coupled with a differential approach to ballast water management (BWM) by non-state parties like the U.S. Therefore, this research paper analyses some of the challenges and precautionary regulatory approaches for flag states in implementing the Convention while carrying out their obligations under the Convention. It concluded by suggesting a reflection of universally acceptable and environmentally friendly standards for ballast water management and treatment for containing the increasing prevalence of bio-invasion in the marine ecosystem.

An Analysis of Conservation of Biodiversity Under Indian Constitution and Judicial Response

Biodiversity is part of our daily lives and livelihood and constitutes the resources upon which families, communities, nations and future generations depend. Biodiversity can be set in a time frame so that species extinctions, the disappearance of ecological associations, or the loss of genetic variants in an extant species can be classed as loss of biodiversity. Similarly, additions to biodiversity include addition of new elements of life by mutation, by artificial breeding, by biotechnology or by ecological manipulation. A large number of factors and forces are responsible for the steep decline in the earth’s biodiversity during the last century. Most of these are caused due to tremendous increase in human population and this in turn resulted in the over exploitation of certain plant and animal resources for food, medicine, skin, fur, tusks, musk, etc., habitat loss and fragmentation, land use change and pollution. Concerns have been raised about the loss of biodiversity especially after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where loss of biodiversity was recognized as one of the most important problem of this century. This article focuses on provisions of Indian constitution for conservation of biodiversity and also judicial response for the conservation of biodiversity.

Environment Problems and Sustainable Development: with Special Reference to Thoothukudi District of Tamil Nadu

Productive resources, which are vital for economic development of nations, are primarily scarce among nations. Capital being an important productive resource is abundant in industrialized economics. Structural adjustments in developing economics due to the introduction of globalization, since 1991, enabled Indian economy to attract these productive resources in a massive scale. Being the second largest populated nations of the world, India is unable to exploit its labour resources fully, due to the scarce availability of capital. This is one of the main reasons, why India had not achieved the desired level of economic growth, as expected. However the flow of capital movements to India during the post reform period is encouraging. As a result, India has achieved the growth rate of GDP at 7.2% per annum recently. But due to the uncontrolled growth of urbanization and industrialization, expansion and massive intensification of agriculture and the destruction of forests has created heavy pressure on land, forests, water and biodiversity. In the era of globalization, water has considered as an economic goods due to the higher demand. Water quality problem arises due to the extractive industries as well as from various manufacturing and agricultural production processes. Various pollutants are generated as the by product in the production of Pesticides, leather goods, detergent, plastic, pulp and paper. These pollutants have led to major environmental issues such as Forest and Agricultural land degradation, Resource depletion (water, mineral, forest, sand, rocks etc.,), Environmental degradation, Public Health, Loss of Biodiversity, Loss of resilience in ecosystems, Livelihood Security for the Poor. In recent years there has been growing concern about degradation and pollution of environment and climate change as they impact on future development of both the developing and developed countries. In 1992, representatives of over 150 countries met at Rio in Brazil to discuss the environmental issues and their implications for future development of the world. This meeting at Rio is called the ‘Earth summit’ or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF FIGURES OF SPEECH IN SEVERN SUZUKI’S PERSUASIVE SPEECH

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a frequently used method with the intent of serving a trustworthy evaluation of what is intended to mean when the language is used to define and commentate. It is therefore of capital importance to consider the social context, the manner and word selection while analysing a speech in order to avoid passively reporting upon since the speech is impregnated with its meaning and perspective. In this respect, the purpose of the current study was to search for the critical discourse analysis of the speech given by a then 12-year-old Canadian girl called Severn Suziki, an environmental activist, in United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 in order to draw the attention of 117 presidents and representatives of 178 nations to some crucial topics such as environment and global warming. The keyword analysis of the speech revealed that the most frequently used words were ordered as child, children, world and afraid confirming the main aim of the speech that the environment should be protected for the future generations. Critical discourse analysis of the speech demonstrated that Severn Suziki utilised 7 figures of speech such as alliteration, hyperbole, imagery, irony, parallelism, rhetorical questions and simile justifying that she had her own particularity and implemented various persuasive techniques and figures of speech.

Green economy: mobilization of international capital for financing projects of renewable energy sources

The aim of the paper is to analyze the sustainability of green economy financing, to determine how and to what extent green economy is financed in the Republic of Serbia, the countries of the ASEAN Association, and what the economic instruments for achieving green growth are. The emphasis will be placed on green bonds, modern securities, as well as the impact they have on international projects for using renewable energy sources. At the Earth Summit of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), a plan of action Agenda 21 was adopted. Some time after the adoption of the plan of action, some favorable changes occurred in the models of financing sustainable development and the amounts of international financial transfers were defined in less developed countries of 125 billion dollars a year. Due to international activities, projects of transferring international financial resources were created with the aim of directing them from the developed to underdeveloped countries to help development of green economy. Since Serbia is one of the less developed countries and in the process of transition for a very long time, a specific recommendation for its own green finance projects can be found, based on the practice from modern countries. As an example of an advanced country that is largely on the path of sustainable development and use of renewable energy sources, the authors have taken into consideration Singapore and compared it with Serbia. The paper gives a certain contribution in terms of analyzing the development of green economy in one of the countries of the ASEAN Association (Singapore) and in Serbia, which is only paving its way of sustainable development, the use of renewable energy sources and forms of green finance.

The 2010 Declaration of a Marine Protected Area around the Chagos Archipelago: Some Legal Reflections

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was adopted in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 1982 following negotiations that took place at the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea since 1973.1 UNCLOS, which is often described as the Constitution of the Oceans, provides an internationally agreed framework for navigation, the exploitation of resources, and the conservation of the oceans.2 Part VII, section 2 of the convention provides for the conservation and management of the living resources of the high seas,3 and Part XII sets out the obligations of states with regard to the protection and preservation of the environment.4 Various other international conventions and declarations also stress the need to protect and preserve the oceans. Agenda 21, adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, declared that the marine environment, including the oceans and all seas and adjacent coastal areas, forms an integrated whole that is an essential component of the global life support system and a positive asset that presents opportunities for sustainable development. The declaration called for new approaches to marine and coastal area management and development at the national, sub-regional, regional, and global levels—approaches that are integrated in content and are precautionary and anticipatory in ambit, as reflected in the following programme areas: ...

THE TRANSNATIONAL STATE, NEOLIBERALISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION POLICY: A NEW ZEALAND CASE STUDY

IntroductionSustainable development (SD) originated in third world politics and is based on radical deep green and red-green (Marxist) environmental thought (Carruthers, 2005; Tulloch & Neilson, 2014). However, SD has been wrenched from its location in radical anti-globalization third world politics and redefined through a series of international summits as part of a broader developmental agenda. It promises to address a multitude of problems including environmental degradation, uneven development, poverty, disempowerment of indigenous peoples, and war. While there are diverse interpretations of SD, the dominant reading is that which has been shaped by Agenda 21 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 1992). Agenda 21 was the document that arose from the 1992 Rio de Janeiro (UNCED), 1992) conference (also called the Earth Summit). Paradoxically, the economic agenda underpinning Agenda 21 is based on the expansion of global markets and insists on continued economic growth (Doyle, 1998). The integration of environmental concerns with economic and social aspects has been critiqued at various levels, not least of which is the push for redesigning the economy in line with neoliberal logic and free market globalization (Tulloch & Neilson, 2014).The United Nations (UN) has been particularly instrumental in the development of Sustainable Development Discourse (SDD), and its dissemination in policy at various levels from global through to local. In its current form, SDD stresses the integration of social and economic global capitalist development goals with environmental concerns. Sustainable development discourse (SDD) is now a neoliberalized explanatory framework by which all dominant forms of environmental discourse are produced and reproduced (Dryzek, 2005). It applies neoliberal principles of privatization, commodification and marketization to the environment, broadly conceived in anthropocentric terms as natural resources and ecosystem services.The anti-capitalist agenda and limits-to-growth logic of earlier SD proponents originating in third world politics of the 1970s has been pushed to the margins by this pro-neoliberal reworking of the concept. The primary focus is now on decontextualized behaviors and values of individuals and social groups. People's values and behaviors are, of course, important in the transition to a genuinely sustainable world. This is why environmental education (EE) and education for sustainability (EfS) both stress citizenship education involving values development and advocate for intergenerational behavioral change. However, this paper argues that SDD fails to address two important points: a) the historical materialist dialectic between the capitalist economy and the formation of particular behavioral and value orientations and b) an analysis of the genesis of environmental/social and economic crises as lying within globalized neoliberal capitalism itself. Conversely, the neoliberal goals of economic growth and open markets have been promoted since the Rio Summit in 1992 as the solution to rather than the cause of our environmental crisis (Tulloch & Neilson, 2014).It should be evident from the above discussion that an analysis of local EE policy needs to be situated within a critical understanding of its embeddedness in wider global processes of capitalist expansion. Thus, the neo-Gramscian perspective of this paper considers the emergence of SDD in relation to a historically specific configuration of the capitalism-state-society complex (Cox, 1981). The current age of globalization of capital is integrally connected with the transnationalization of the state (Robinson, 2001). Accordingly, the state is not a form of immutable geo-political dynamics or in Weberian terms a relatively independent national actor driven by geo-political competition with other states (Robinson, 2001, p. 190). Rather, boundaries are transcended as a new economic order of global rather than national circuits of accumulation emerges. …

The Feedback Control Cycle of Mineral Supply, Increase of Raw Material Efficiency, and Sustainable Development

Sustainable development with regard to non-renewable resources can best be defined in terms of the inter-generational challenge of the Brundtland commission and the intra-generational challenge worked out in Agenda 21 of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro conference of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). In meeting these challenges, the trilemma of security of supply under conditions of economic viability and environmental sustainability also needs to be addressed in order to achieve sustainable development. To fulfil the natural resources needs of future generations we have three resources at our disposal: (1) the geosphere or primary resources; (2) the technosphere or secondary resources and (3) human ingenuity and creativity driving innovation. Man does not need natural resources as such, only the intrinsic property of a material that enables the fulfilment of a function is required. Any material that can perform the same function more efficiently or cheaply can replace any other material. In our constant drive to secure the supply of efficient raw materials, the feedback control cycle plays an indispensable role by virtue of it reacting to price signals on both the supply and demand sides. The feedback cycle of course goes hand in hand with a continuous learning process. On the supply side, the learning effects are in technology development around primary resources and the increased use of secondary resources; on the demand side with thriftier use of raw materials.

Sustainability - Six Dimensions of a Holistic Principle

Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, sustainability has become a key concept for the political and academic discussion of a common vision for the future development of a world-society. The authors of the following article focus on sustainability as a holistic principle in six different dimensions: ecological as the base of the system of all living beings, economic, political, social and pedagogic as areas of human acting, and a spiritual-ethical dimension as a fundamental attitude. The fundamental insights are based on the Earth Charter, which was elaborated with contributions from Paulo Freire (2000, p. 66–67) and Moacir Gadotti (2010, p.13–27). The article was written in a German academic context and aims to inspire interdisciplinary discussion from an international perspective.

Rio+20: What‟s the point?

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit in 1992 was meant to create positive impacts for the future. When the first Rio conference on environmental sustainability took place in 1992, issues such as environmental sustainability, and global development without excessive environmental harm, let alone establishing treaties on climate change, desertification and biodiversity were not on my mind. I had just turned 5 years old, with few cares for anything but Barbie dolls and ice-cream. I had no idea what was taking place in the world at that time. Did this big event change something to the positive?

Mathematical optimization ideas for biodiversity conservation

Several major environmental issues like biodiversity loss and climate change currently concern the international community. These topics that are related to the development of human societies have become increasingly important since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In this article, we are interested in the first issue. We present here many examples of the help that using mathematical programming can provide to decision-makers in the protection of biodiversity. The examples we have chosen concern the selection of nature reserves, the control of adverse effects caused by landscape fragmentation, including the creation or restoration of biological corridors, the ecological exploitation of forests, the control of invasive species, and the maintenance of genetic diversity. Most of the presented models are – or can be approximated with – linear-, quadratic- or fractional-integer formulations and emphasize spatial aspects of conservation planning. Many of them represent decisions taken in a static context but temporal dimension is also considered. The problems presented are generally difficult combinatorial optimization problems, some are well solved and others less well. Research is still needed to progress in solving them in order to deal with real instances satisfactorily. Moreover, relations between researchers and practitioners have to be strengthened. Furthermore, many recent achievements in the field of robust optimization could probably be successfully used for biodiversity protection, a domain in which many data are uncertain.

2. Sustainable Development

Since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, the reach of sustainable development governance has expanded considerably at all levels. The need for integration of economic development, natural resources management and protection, and social equity and inclusion was introduced for the first time by the Brundtland Commission’s 1987 report Our Common Future, and it has become central in framing the discussions at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit. In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) established the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) as the UN’s high-level political body entrusted with monitoring and promoting the implementation of the Rio outcomes, including Agenda 21. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development advanced the mainstreaming of the three dimensions of sustainable development in development policies at all levels through the adoption of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI). In...

Discovering the Future Canadians Want: Insights from the We Canada Cross-Country Tour

In 1972, the first United Nations Conference on Human Environment (UNCED) was held in Stockholm, Sweden. At the conference, government officials from industrialized and developing nations met alongside civil society organizations to create the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “This conference put environmental issues on the international agenda for the first time, and marked a turning point in the development of international environmental politics. It has also been recognized as the beginning of modern political and public awareness of global environmental issues” (Baylis & Smith, 2005, pp. 454-455). Twenty years later, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Earth Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro. One hundred and seventy two government officials participated, of which 108 were heads of state (United Nations, 1992, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, para. 1). This conference was one of the largest gatherings of heads of state, civil society organizations, and individuals in human history to date. Stakeholders met with the purpose of charting a course for a more sustainable future. From the conference emerged agreements, most notably Agenda 21, which created a framework for developing global, national, and regional plans for sustainability. The Rio Earth Summit has since stood as an example of what is possible when governments and citizens work together. The outcomes of this conference still affect human lives today, mainly through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings, which led to the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding agreement to cut down carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Earth Summit 2012 or Rio+20, is regarded as one of the most crucial events in United Nations history and has been referred to by the Secretary General of the United Nations (2011), Ban Ki-moon, as “the most important global meeting on sustainable development in our time" (The Future We Want, p 2).

Addressing Land Degradation in Tanzania: Contemporary Issues Related to Policies and Strategies

Several attempts have been made since the early years of independence of Tanzania to address land degradation. Policies and strategies were formulated that emphasized on the importance of land conservation in achieving economic growth. However, the context in which the earlier strategies were designed and implemented led to further land degradation. Failure of these interventions was partly because policies which backed them remained sectoral and most of them adopted the top-down approach with very little involvement of communities. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro created a new chapter in the country by insisting on the importance of sustainable development. The new policies and strategies were formulated with intentions to correct the past mistakes. This paper has assessed the extent to which Tanzania’s post-UNCED policies and strategies address the recent challenges of climate change on land degradation as reported by the IPCC in 2007. It involved review of selected policies, strategies and related literature on land degradation and climate change. The National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (NSGRP) and two other sectoral strategies were reviewed in addition to the environmental, agricultural and water policies. The study finds that significant short and long-term measures to combat the negative effects of land use practices on the land resource are addressed. However, constant review of the policies and strategies is required to ensure that emerging challenges are addressed as part of the overall efforts to combat impacts of global climate change.

"Rio +20: what we can learn from the process and what is missing"

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) took place in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and put the concept of Sustainable Development definitively on policy agendas at all levels from global to local. Twenty years later, even though important progress has been made in several areas, the world still struggles to implement the decisions following up the UNCED and to steer humanity towards a more sustainable path. The UN has set two broad themes for the Earth Summit in 2012, or Rio+20: institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD) and green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. This article makes an overall analysis of the discussions generated by Rio+20. The article starts with a short overview of the debates on sustainable development since the UNCED, until the recent debates on green economy and institutional frameworks for sustainable development. It then highlights some lessons from the discussions catalyzed by Rio+20 analysing why and how progress has been achieved in certain areas and what the obstacles are to move the agenda of green economy and good environmental governance forward to achieve a more sustainable development. It concludes that, besides the tremendous obstacles to implement the agenda on green economy and IFSD, these themes brought about in Rio+20 are still lacking conceptually in the discussions on important topics such as equity and need to changes in values, as well as the debates on governance beyond the international level.

Nature, green economy and sustainable development: The outcomes of UN Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD / Rio+20) took place 20 – 22 June 2012, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The conference was the third global high-level event on sustainable development, marking the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg. The objective of the Rio+20 conference was to secure renewed global political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and identify remaining gaps in the implementation of existing commitments (e.g. Millennium Development Goals – MDGs – agreed in 2000) (UNCSD 2012a). In addition, the conference also aimed to address new and emerging global challenges for sustainable development. In this context, the conference focused on two themes: the role of a green economy Nature Conservation 2:1–6 (2012) doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.2.3704 http://www.pensoft.net/natureconservation

From Rio 1992 to Rio 2012 and Beyond

The 20th anniversary of the Journal of Environment and Development (JED) not coincidentally lines up with the anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. The JED was launched as one of many thousands of initiatives during the preparatory phase of the Rio conference around the world encouraged by a cautious optimism that this event would help launch a new era of bringing economic development and care for the environment closer together. Coming 20 years after the 1972 Stockholm conference on the Human Environment it was hoped that the Rio conference of 1992 would be able to reap a peace dividend and profit from a greatly improved international political situation to focus on global environmental challenges. The cold-war years had receded into the history books and some of the North–South antagonism had softened after military regimes had given way to democratic systems in many large developing countries. World trade was expanding more rapidly again after a decade of economic stagnation in many parts of the world. This editorial looks back at the achievements of the Rio 1992 conference and highlights one of its perhaps most consequential failures: to launch a process that could find an appropriate balance between government regulation and faith in free markets and private sector initiatives to address environmental and development challenges in a comprehensive way. This would require an integration of trade rules and sustainable development objectives and a serious debate about raising financial resources for a global eco-services compensation system that does not primarily rely on fickle, voluntary, private sector investments into carbon-crediting systems. Rio plus 20 is an opportunity to review experience with 20 years of far-reaching reliance on free market solutions to public goods problems of global magnitude. It is a chance to learn important lessons that can guide the search for better policies to meet critical global Editorial

The Global Trend of Energy Saving and Carbon Reducing in Post-Kyoto Protocol Era

In recent years, with increased focus on extreme global climates, the drastic population growth, and the exhaustion of resources, humanity has a greater need for and reliance on intelligent, technology-enhanced living, as well as more effective means of production. Being sustainable, green, and environmentally friendly is becoming more and more a global priority. Energy saving and carbon reduction are the keys to achieving intelligent living, clean production, and environmental responsibility. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) convened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. One hundred and fifty five countries jointly signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). This treaty and the Conference of the Parties are the origins of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol became effective in February, 2005, and required 38 industrially developed countries in the European Union and the United States to reduce emissions of six kinds of greenhouse gases, including CO 2 , from their 1990 levels by a further 5.2%, which equates to about 12.86 billion tons between 2008 and 2012. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) [1], issued in 2007, that global warming resulted from anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In addition, AGW further caused extreme climates, melting icecaps, and rising sea levels. Although the causes and effects have been debated among nations, it is undeniable that global warming resulted in the wheat-producing areas of the world moving north, as well as the clear opening of the Northwest Passage, which has facilitated the exploitation of the resources in the polar region. Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Norway have all longed to benefit from the resources in the polar region. Sustainability and development are now not only environmental issues, but also political and economic battlefields for nations. In 2012, with the expiration date of Kyoto Protocol approaching, how should people set goals toward energy saving and carbon reduction in the post-Kyoto Protocol era? The future is full of uncertainties because of the scrambling for benefits between countries and groups. The intelligent living and the developments of automation and energy saving technologies based on the theory of energy saving and carbon reduction are also turbulent. The COP17 of UNFCCC will be held in Durban, South Africa in November, where it is possible to end the present dissent.

Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes

Norms, Institutions and Social Learning: An Explanation for Weak Policy Integration in the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) recognized that sustainable development can only be actualized if environmental norms are integrated into other areas of policy across levels of governance. This article examines the Committee on Trade and Environment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to answer the question of why actors' efforts to enhance the mutual supportiveness of trade and environmental norms have resulted in minimalist policy outcomes. I first introduce a framework for analyzing norms and their levels of compatibility and a social learning explanation for policy integration emphasizing the importance of normative and institutional conditions. Second, I show that low levels of both norm compatibility between UNCED and WTO and institutional capacity in the WTO for learning have contributed to weak integration. The approach contributes to constructivist theory development and the findings provide insights to policy-makers grappling with how to support the integration of norms and institutions in global governance.