Rio Declaration: The right to development

The Rio Declaration states that the only way to achieve long-term economic progress is to link it to environmental protection. Therefore, nations must establish a new and equitable global partnership involving governments, populations and key sectors of societies and build international agreements that protect the integrity of the global environmental and the developmental system. The Rio declaration reaffirms and builds upon the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, adopted in Stockholm 1972. World leaders from 179 countries attended.

A significant product from the United Nations “Conference on Environment and Development" (UNCED), also called the Earth Summit, was Agenda 21, often operating as Local Agenda 21 in cities around the world. Agenda 21 was a blueprint on how to make the future development of our world economically, socially and environmentally sound and sustainable.

The UNECD in Rio underlined that thinking of environmental, economic and social development as isolated fields is no longer possible. At the Earth Summit major international treaties and agreements was made on issues of global climate change, biological diversity, deforestation, and desertification. In addition the Rio Declaration contains fundamental principles on which nations can base their future decisions and policies, considering the environmental implications of socio-economic development.