a varietyof committed and generous civic responses. Politics and business have been slow to react in a
way commensurate with the urgency of the challenges facing our world. Although the post-industrial
periodmaywell be remembered as one of themost irresponsible in history, nonetheless there is reason
to hope that humanity at the dawn of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having
generously shouldered its grave responsibilities.
166. Worldwide, the ecological movement has made significant advances, thanks also to the efforts
of many organizations of civil society. It is impossible here to mention them all, or to review the
history of their contributions. But thanks to their efforts, environmental questions have increasingly
found a place on public agendas and encouraged more far-sighted approaches. This notwithstanding,
recent World Summits on the environment have not lived up to expectations because, due to lack of
political will, they were unable to reach truly meaningful and effective global agreements on the
environment.
167. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro is worth mentioning. It proclaimed that “human
beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development”.
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Echoing the 1972 Stockholm
Declaration, it enshrined international cooperation to care for the ecosystem of the entire earth, the
obligation of those who cause pollution to assume its costs, and the duty to assess the environmental
impact of given projects and works. It set the goal of limiting greenhouse gas concentration in the
atmosphere, in an effort to reverse the trend of global warming. It also drew up an agenda with an
action plan and a convention on biodiversity, and stated principles regarding forests. Although the
summit was a real step forward, and prophetic for its time, its accords have been poorly implemented,
due to the lack of suitable mechanisms for oversight, periodic review and penalties in cases of non-
compliance. The principles which it proclaimed still await an efficient and flexible means of practical
implementation.
168. Among positive experiences in this regard, we might mention, for example, the Basel
Convention on hazardouswastes, with its systemof reporting, standards and controls. There is also the
binding Convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, which
includes on-site visits for verifying effective compliance. Thanks to the Vienna Convention for the
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RioDeclarationon Environment andDevelopment
(14 June1992), Principle1.
