Brundtland Commission 1983

Brundtland Commission or the World commission on Environment and development set up by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1983, brought in common use the phrases “Sustainable Development”. It defined sustainable development thus sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their own needs.
The brundtland report identifies two key concepts in sustainable development they are:
a) The concept of “needs” in particular the essentials needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given.
b) The idea of limitation imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.

The brundtland commission adopted the following general principles, rights and responsibilities for environmental protection and sustainable development.
• Everyone has the fundamental right to an environment adequate for his or her well being.
• It is the responsibilities of the state to conserve and use the environment and natural resources for the beneficial of the present and future generations.
• It is the responsibilities of the state to maintain ecosystem and ecological processes essential for the functioning of the biosphere. They shall also preserve biological diversity and observe the principle of optimum sustainable yield in the use of living natural resources and ecosystems.
• It is the responsibility of the state to establish adequate environmental protection standards and monitor changes in and publish relevant data on environmental quality and resource use.
• It is the responsibility of the states to inform in a timely manner all people likely to be significantly affected by a planned activity and to grant them equall access due process in administrative and judicial proceeding.
• It is the responsibility of the states to ensure that conservations is treated as integral part of the planning and implementation of the developmental activities and provide assistance to other states, especially to developing countries.



FIRST EARTH SUMMIT, 1992

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as Earth Summit, was held in 1992 in Rio De Janeiro city of Brazil for the protection of the earth and its environment, maintenance of ecological balance and to enrich biodiversity. The conference was attended by the representative of 178 developed and developing countries. The primary objective of the conference were to arrive at commonly acceptable, agreements and their implementation to tackle the problems of global warming, depletion of ozone layer and ozone hole, deforestation, biodiversity, weather and climate change, acid rain, sustainable development etc. The following were the important agenda of the conference.

• An attempt was made at the time of earth summit for an agreement to reduce the emission of green house gases at 1990 level by 2000 AD by the developed countries to tackle the problem of global rise in temperature and its consequential adverse effects in future but no concrete agreement could be arrived at. It was commonly agreed upon to cut the emission of green house gases but neither any concrete formula nor any time limit could be decided for this purpose.
• Forest Conservation: At the time of earth summit all the participants expressed deep concern and anger at the rapacious and reckless cutting of forests. It may be pointed out that according to an estimate about 8,000 years ago 8,000 million hectares of land were covered with forests which decreased to 3,000 million hectares by 1998. Thus the modern society has already consumed two third of world forest cover. It may be remembered that one third tropical rainforests were cleared by 1972 and the loss of remaining rain forest began at the annual rate of 0.5% (i.e 100,000 km2 forest areas per year). The annual rate of loss of rain forest reached the figure of 170,000 km2 by the year 1992. According to United Nations data (1989) forest area is being lost at the annual rate of 2,000,000 hectares in Asia and Pacific regions. Even in Brazil 620,000 km2 of forest area was cleared in the decade 1980-1990.
• Biodiversity: Biodiversity involves different species of plants and animals. It includes diversity within and between species and ecosystems. The richness or poorness of biodiversity of a region depends on the number of their species i.e. larger the number of species, richer the biodiversity and vice-versa. Ecological balance of a region is directly related to greater or richer biodiversity. According to the scientists the known species of the earth are 40,000,000 out of which 10,000 species are becoming extinct every year due to human economic activities9e.g. Extension in agricultural land, increase in agricultural productivity, construction of dams and reservoirs, accelerated soil erosion, industrial development, urbanization etc.). Similarly species of marine organisms are being destroyed due to pollution of sea water (mainly oil sink). Thus, in order to check the loss of biodiversity consequent upon human greedy economic activities a proposal for bio-conservation was presented at the Rio Summit where it was provided that if the developed countries use the biological wealth of the developing countries, then they would have to transfer bio-technologies free of cost to the concerned developing countries.
• Agenda 21: agenda 21 is a comprehensive document which included 1,145 action plans. These agenda include rights and duties related to the environment of the nations for the 21st century and thereafter. The major agenda cover the following items:
i. Aid Funds: Industrialized rich countries agreed to contribute 0.7% of their national income to aid fund. A target of expenditure of 600 billion $ out of the fund per was fixed to implement Agenda 21 between 1993 and 2000 AD. Out of this annual expenditure 475 billion $ were earmarked for developing countries.
ii. Poverty Eradication: It was agreed under Agenda 21 that all possible efforts would be made to increase per capita in the developing countries. It may be mentioned that at the time of Rio summit the number of people having one US $ per capita income per day in the world was 1.2 billion which according to the Human development report of UNO 1997, increased to 1.3 billion. It is evident that this action plan also confined to the proper work and remained in the file.
iii. Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development: This Agenda included the following programmed – review of the agricultural policy to ensure people participation, to diversify employment in agriculture, to provide information about land resource management, land conservation and rehabilitation. A target of 31.8 billion US $ per year was fixed for the implementation of this Agenda but this also proved futile due to lack of requisite fund.
iv. Forest Conservation: Though there was unanimous agreement for the management, conservation and sustainable development of forests but no definite law could be enacted for the purpose. In spite of Rio Summit reckless felling of trees continued. 15% more forests were cleared in 1996 in comparison to 1992 lever.
v. Biodiversity: Only 150 countries out of 178 participating countries in the Earth Summit in 1992, could sign the agreement to enrich the biodiversity. The agreement on biodiversity included three programmes i.e
a) To ensure conservation of biodiversity.
b) Sustainable use of biodiversity,
c) Rational and equitable shear of profit to accure from the use of genetic resources.
According to this agreement the country should have complete control over its biotic resources and full right over the profit accruing from them. If the biotic resources of a country are commercially used by another country, the country possessing the biotic resource can sign an agreement with the user country for sharing the profit occurring there from.