ABSTRACT
A series of global summit meetings—the 1972 United States (UN) Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden; the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, South Africa. A clear change from Stockholm 1972 to Rio 2012 was the emergence of global public awareness and concern. The Stockholm conference took place in the wake of the first Earth Day and at a time of rising popular concern in the UN and Europe about environmental problems, particularly air and water pollution. Perhaps the most important continuity is that global environmental change has continued at an alarming rate. Many environmental advocates have grown dismayed or even cynical about what they see as an increasingly ritualized—and increasingly ineffectual—process of global environmental summitry. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
