Communities and UNCED
Most delegates at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992
signed up to four strategic documents: Agenda 21; the Biodiversity
Convention; the 'Climate Change Convention'; and the 'Forest
Principles'.
All these documents stressed the importance of
local action. Yet there has been a low level of national support
for the role of neighbourhood action in taking forward the Rio
wish-lists, and in delivering locally on the Government's headline
indicators for sustainable development. Ten years on, the
secretariat organising the UK forums in preparation for the 2002
Summit estimated that only about 200,000 British people know what
Agenda 21 is about.Even less are actually applying it in their
every day lives. This generally summarises the lack of progress,
which has been high on strategies, but low on implementing
education and grassroots operations.
As a concept, 'People in Ecosystems' runs
through all four elements of Agenda 21 agreed at the Earth Summit
at Rio in 1992. These elements are:-
- Social
and economic dimensions to development
-
Conservation management of natural resources
-
Strengthening role of major groups
- Means of
implementation
Regarding the means of implementation, we have
moved little from the following strategic viewpoint, one of the few
to mention 'management', which appeared in 1992.
"Acting locally is not enough. We must act globally too. No
nation today is self-sufficient. Global and regional resources,
especially the atmosphere, oceans and shared freshwater systems,
can be managed only if the ethic of care is applied at the
international, national, and individual levels. All nations stand
to gain from worldwide sustainability. All nations are threatened
if we fail to attain it. Since levels of development in the world
are unequal, lower income countries must be helped to develop
sustainably and protect their environments"
The need is for a generally applicable practical
platform for exploring the problems of establishing global
alliances of citizen's environmental networks. These networks would
ideally involve local clusters of families, schools and businesses
to boost practical knowledge of how to turn strategic thinking into
local action-plans. There is also an important supportive role for
a complementary cross-curricular education framework for education
for sustainability to support local environmental management plans
and address 'public awareness', 'capacity building', 'education',
and the need for 'institutional frameworks'.
