June
1992, over 150 Heads of Government attended the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. This gathering is known as the
Earth Summit. It was the largest ever gathering of world leaders and appeared to signal that
environmental concerns had moved up the world's political agenda.
The
Convention on Biological Diversity was an important product of the Earth Summit. It
was signed in Rio by 153 countries, including the UK and the European Community.
Article 6A of the convention requires each contracting party to:
develop national strategies, plans or programmes for the
conservation and
sustainable use of biological diversity, or adapt for this purpose existing
strategies, plans or programmes which shall reflect, inter alia, the measures set
out in the convention relevant to the contracting party concerned'.
Other
important outputs from the Earth Summit were:
•
The Rio Declaration, a statement of principles, which addresses the need to integrate
protection of the environment with sustainable development
•
The Framework Convention on Climate Change which aims to stabilise atmospheric
'greenhouse gas' concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic
interference with global climate
•
A Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests
•
Agenda 21 - An Action Plan for the Next Century, which gives political commitment to
the integration of environmental concerns across a broad range of activities. These include
industry, agriculture, energy, transport, education and training, recreation and tourism, land-
use and fisheries.
The
UK undertook to produce documents setting out its position on all of the above
outputs.
The
central message of the Earth Summit was summarised succinctly in Article 4 of the Rio
Declaration:
'In
order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall
constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in
isolation from it'.
.
In
essence, one of the key tests of sustainability is the conservation of biodiversity;
development cannot be regarded as sustainable unless biodiversity is conserved.
Therefore,
biodiversity objectives must be central to the policies which drive the major
sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, transport, regional
development and energy. Conservation of the environment cannot be achieved as an 'after
thought' or be regarded as the responsibility of one sector of government.
One
clear outcome of the Earth Summit was the acceptance that states have
'...
responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not
cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of
national jurisdiction'.
As
a member of the European Union (EU), the UK can influence biodiversity conservation
in other EU countries through policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the
Common Fisheries Policy and EU Regional Development Policy. In the developing world,
the UK's actions also influence land-use in a wide variety of ways, and therefore affect
biodiversity. The most obvious influences are the UK's own aid programme and its
involvement in international aid and development institutions. The management of
international trade through, for example the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) and the International Tropical Timber Agreement, also exerts strong influences on
developing countries' economies and biodiversity.
