Communities and UNCED
Most delegates at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 signed up to four strategic documents:
Agenda
21; the Biodiversity Convention; the 'Climate Change Convention'; and the 'Forest Principles'.
All these documents stressed the importance of local action. Yet there has been a
low level of
national support for the role of neighbourhood action in taking forward the Rio wish-lists, and in
delivering locally on the Government's headline indicators for sustainable development. Ten years
on, the secretariat organising the UK forums in preparation for the 2002 Summit estimated that
only about 200,000 British people know what Agenda 21 is about. Even
less are actually applying it
in their every day lives. This generally summarises the lack of progress, which has been high on
strategies, but low on implementing education and grassroots operations.
As a concept, 'People in Ecosystems' runs through all four elements of
Agenda 21 agreed at the
Earth Summit at Rio in 1992. These elements are:-
- Social and economic dimensions to
development
- Conservation management of natural
resources
- Strengthening role of major groups
- Means of implementation
Regarding the means of implementation, we have moved little from the following strategic
viewpoint,
one of the few to mention 'management', which appeared in 1992.
"Acting locally
is not enough. We must act globally too. No nation today is self-sufficient.
Global and regional resources, especially the atmosphere, oceans and shared freshwater
systems, can be managed only if the ethic of care is applied at the international, national,
and individual levels. All nations stand to gain from worldwide sustainability. All nations are
threatened if we fail to attain it. Since levels of development in the world are unequal, lower
income countries must be helped to develop sustainably and protect their environments"
The need is for a generally applicable practical platform for exploring the problems
of establishing
global alliances of citizen's environmental networks. These networks would ideally involve local
clusters of families, schools and businesses to boost practical knowledge of how to turn strategic
thinking into local action-plans. There is also an important supportive role for a complementary
cross-curricular education framework for education for sustainability to support local environmental
management plans and address 'public awareness', 'capacity building', 'education', and the need for
'institutional frameworks'.
