Monitoring The UN > The UN and Sustainable Development

A Word About UNCED
UNA-Canada's "On the Road to Brazil" Series

-Introduction-

On December 22, 1989, in the closing moments of the 44th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Assembly passed resolution 44/228, by which it decided to convene the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The conference that will be held in Brazil will be of two weeks’ duration, its opening to coincide with World Environment Day on June 5, 1992. The Conference was called because of the Assembly’s deep concern about "the continuing deterioration of the state of the environment and the serious degradation of the global life-support systems, as well as by trends that, if allowed to continue, could disrupt the global ecological balance, jeopardize the life-sustaining qualities of the Earth and lead to an ecological catastrophe..."

Because of the enormous difficulties of organizing an event involving virtually every national government in the world, any UN conference is a remarkably complex undertaking which includes a lengthy and highly important preparatory process. In many cases, these preparations are more significant that the final conference itself since it is during this period that government officials are obliged to shape their own national policies and positions and to being the process of negotiating with their counterparts in foreign countries. The UNCED is no exception to this rule, although it is possible that the process leading to the Brazil conference may be still more complex than usual, owing both to the broad scope of the conference agenda and to the high expectations felt by much of the public concerning environmental questions.

The UNCED is the first UN conference covering the entire sweep of environmental issues since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Thus, one of the objectives will be to review the current state of the environment and the changes that have occurred since Stockholm. Among the most significant differences between the Brazil preparations and Stockholm is the new emphasis that is being laid on the linkages between environmental degradation and socio-economic development. The initial General Assembly resolution establishing UNCED noted: "that the major cause of the continuing deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of production and consumption, particularly in industrialized countries." It also stressed "that poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated and that environmental protection in developing countries must, in this context, be viewed as an integral part of the development process..."