ABSTRACT
The nations of the world came together in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)—dubbed the Earth Summit-to try to reach consensus on the best way to slow down, halt and eventually reverse ongoing environmental deterioration. The Summit represented the culmination of two decades of development in the study of environmental issues, initiated at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. Stockholm was the first conference to draw worldwide public attention to the immensity of environmental problems, and because of that it has been credited with ushering in the modern era in environmental studies (Haas et al. 1992).
