At the UN Conference on Humanity and Environment in Stockholm in 1972, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was born and the environment became an international issue.

Ten years ago "The Earth Summit" was hosted by the UN in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Summit focused international attention on the growing environmental and development problems facing our planet. This landmark event put the issue of sustainable development on the international agenda for the first time.

And since the Earth Summit, we know more about the state of the world and on our unsustainable impact on the globe. For example:

Population: in the last 50 years more people have been added to the world’s population than during the preceding 4 million years since man first stood upright. The earth’s present population of 6 billion is projected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Just think what that means with our current production and consumption patterns!

Bio-diversity: in 1996, 25% of the world’s 4,600 mammal species and 11% of the 9,700 bird species were at significant risk of extinction. More than 20% of the world’s 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct, threatened or endangered in recent decades.

Forests: between 1990 and 2000, around 140 million hectares of forests were lost, an area larger than the combined size of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and The Netherlands.

Water: water tables are falling, and water resources are being consumed faster than they can be replenished. At least 1.1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water and about 2.4 billion do not have adequate sanitation.

Desertification and soil degradation: continue to be major problems. Nigeria is losing over 500 square kilometres of productive land to desert every year. Southern parts of Europe are also severely affected. The loss of topsoil from wind and water erosion now exceeds natural formation of new soil. In Africa, the annual loss of livestock production from the cumulative degradation of rangeland is estimated at around $7 billion, a sum almost equivalent to the entire GDP of Ethiopia.

A decade on, it is clear that the vision and commitment shown at the Rio Summit did not last. While some real progress was made - for instance with the convention on climate change and other national and regional initiatives - many of the actions agreed have still not been implemented.

One reason for this is that the financial resources have never been available at the required level. Official development assistance actually declined from 0.35% of donor countries GDP in 1992 to 0.22% in 2000. Another reason is that the industrialised world’s unsustainable patterns of consumption and production have remained largely unchanged. The level of political commitment has generally been insufficient. The US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is clearly a matter of concern.

In December 2000, the UN General Assembly decided to hold a World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, to reinvigorate at the highest political levels the global commitment to sustainable development agreed upon ten years ago at the Rio Earth Summit.

From 26 August to 5 September 2002, the international community meets in Johannesburg, South Africa to once again take up the challenge of sustainable development. The World Summit on Sustainable Development promises to be one of the largest and most important international gatherings ever held on the subject. It will bring over 60,000 world delegates including heads of state and government, business leaders and representatives of all sectors of society. It represents an historic opportunity to build commitment at the highest levels of government and society.

WSSD should provide a further significant step forward on the road to achieving international development targets, notably the UN-agreed Millennium Development Goals, which include halving the proportion of people in extreme poverty, as well as targets in areas such as health and education, gender equality and sustainable development.

All areas, where, if a real difference is to be made, significant additional annual funding is needed. The question is, though, how to find that funding, and how to ensure it reaches effectively those who need it most.

http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/agenda21.htm

http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/wssd/funding_en.html