Rio+20 – United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

I would sooo love to attend this.Rio+20 – United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

I would love to be an observer there. That would be enough. A fly on the wall – well, a bum on a seat. It’d be fascinating. I’d be enthralled. It’d be about direction, development and environment and all that good stuff. Especially given that the definition of sustainability that emerged as a result of the Rio Declaration of 1992, continues to to drive my own conception of what is sustaianble and what is not. If one is acquainted with principle from its building blocks – like this one, that has subsequently formed the foundational definition of sustainability in many other international instruments like Agenda 21  – one will be able to avoid the politically positioning and emotive rhetoric that too often surrounds issues of Social equity, Economic Development and Environmental Interaction that are the domain of the sustainability principle.

Actually the definition of sustainability emerged from the premise that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” At the 2005 World Summit it was noted that this requires the reconciliation of environmental, social equity and economic demands – the “three pillars” of sustainability or (the 3 E’s).This view has been expressed as a Venn diagram of three overlapping ellipses indicating that the three pillars of sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually reinforcing. Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of stewardship (or in New Zealand Kaitiakitanga) and the responsible management of resource use.

What I like most about this principle is that it is a simple one – all good principles are!!

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