Québec at Rio+20
Background
For some 40 years, the United Nations has played a leading role in
sustainable development, organizing, in 1972, the first world summit on this
issue, the
United Nations Conference on the Human Environment that sparked the
international community into awareness of Earth’s limited capacity to
support human activities. Heads of State and government leaders in
attendance acknowledged that economic development could not continue absent
the consideration of its harmful effects on the environment. One of the
important achievements of that conference was to create the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), whose mandate was to “provide
leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment.”
In
1983, the United Nations established the United Nations World Commission on
Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro
Harlem Brundtland. The General Assembly resolution establishing the
commission tasked it with proposing long-term environmental strategies for
achieving sustainable development and with recommending ways and means to
meet environmental challenges based on North-South cooperation. In 1987, the
WCED submitted its report, entitled Our Common Future, also known
as
The Brundtland Report, which provided a universal definition of the
notion of sustainable development and served as the basis for the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development that was held in Rio de
Janeiro, five years later.
Québec’s path to sustainable development
Québec has taken many initiatives to raise awareness of the nature and
principles of sustainable development and to foster the emergence of
behaviour that is compatible with it. You can learn more about events that
have placed Québec on the road to sustainable
development.
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