
By Kiotaka Akasaka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information
At every fork in the road, there is a road not taken. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was one of those defining moments when the world had a choice of paths to pursue. The Earth Summit marked a milestone with agreement by more than 178 countries on Agenda 21, the visionary blueprint for sustainable development. The path taken since then, regrettably, has not followed that vision of sustainability.
There has certainly been progress — but it has come at a price. Since 1992, the average life expectancy for the world’s seven billion people has increased by three and a half years. And despite adding 1.5 billion people since the Earth Summit, the world now produces enough food to feed everyone — although not everyone has access to that food. Today, 27 percent of the world’s population lives in absolute poverty, down from 46 percent in 1990.
At the same time, carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 38 percent since 1990. In the oceans, about 85 percent of all fish stocks are now overexploited, depleted, recovering or fully depleted. And close to two-thirds of the services provided by nature for human benefit are in decline, mostly due to habitat loss.
What all this suggests is that more people in the world are living better, but that the natural world that underpins this prosperity is constantly being eroded. There is, however, an alternative, and that brings us back to Agenda 21, which provided the general directions to balance our pursuit of prosperity and improved well-being with the protection of our environment.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put it this way: “For most of the last century, economic growth was fuelled by what seemed to be a certain truth: the abundance of natural resources. We mined our way to growth. We burned our way to prosperity. We believed in consumption without consequences. Those days are gone.” Read the rest of this entry »
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