UN Conference on Environment and Development: Earth Summit puts future of rich and poor alike 'in our hands.' (includes related article on drift-net fishing)

Earth Summit puts future of rich and poor alike 'in our hands'

Industrialized countries degrade the environment by insatiable consumption of resources and intense production of wastes, while high fertility and rapid population growth in many developing countries put damaging pressure on the planet. Combined, such human demands are undermining the world's natural resource base--land, water and air--upon which all development depends. The issues are, therefore, not only environmental but also economic.

To highlight these crucial links, the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the "Earth Summit", will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1 to 12 June 1992.

Marketing the twentieth anniversary of the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment--the first global meeting on the subject--UNCED will strive to fashion integrated strategies to prevent further degradation of the global environment and encourage sustainable development.

Funded jointly by the UN and voluntary contributions, the Conference is expected to be the largest meeting ever of world leaders. The importance of participation by developing countries has been stressed in particular by the fortysixty Assembly. In addition, up to 20,000 representatives of nongovernmental organizations will take part in the Global Forum to be held in Rio at the time as the Summit.

UNCED is to provide an "unprecedented opportunity to move from reactive policies born of crisis management to forwardlooking, deliberate and cooperative strategies based on costed commitments to action", said the UN Environment Programme Deputy Executive Secretary William Mansfield III on 20 Novemver, in opening the Assembly's Second Committee (Economic and Financial) debate on issues related to the environment.

As such, a notable outcome expected from the Conference is "Agenda 21", a plan of action for global progress in environment and development. Also on the agenda is the signing of international instruments on climate change and biodiversity.

Action areas to be included in Agenda 21 relate to: the atmosphere, forests and land resources; occeans and freshwater resources; wastes; biodiversity; and a number of cross-cutting issues, such as poverty, health, energy, consumption patterns and demographic pressures, intended to make the Conference's developmental dimension stand out clearly.