ABSTRACT
Since the 1972 Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), there have been a growing number of international negotiations, conferences and agencies to deal with environmental issues. Concomitantly, as the economic conditions in many developing countries worsened, organisations and agencies were formed, and conferences were held, to generate solutions to problems related to economic and social development. The growing interaction among these fora is an indicator of the formation and development of a negotiating system. One of the goals of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro (the ‘Earth Summit’) was to evaluate the state of this international system and achieve greater coherence in the treatment of environment and development issues within it.
