ABSTRACT

The international equity provisions of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) statements and agreements did not appear suddenly. The theme of UNCED, sustainable development, largely came from the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development, which grew out of the Stockholm Conference and was established by the UN General Assembly in 1983. International equity has been on the agenda of international politics for decades. International equity in environmental agreements "went global" with the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, but the developing countries' newfound voting power in the United Nations proved to be of limited utility. The Law of the Sea treaty (LOS), signed in 1982 by almost 160 countries after more than a decade of complicated negotiations, incorporated several provisions for international equity. The London amendments contained several provisions for international equity that were absent from the 1987 Protocol. International equity has grown in prominence in international environmental discourse and agreements.