Earth Summit

International meetings aiming at drawing up measures for the environmental protection of the world. The first summit took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. Treaties were made to combat global warming and protect biodiversity (the latter was not signed by the USA). The second Earth Summit was held in New York in June 1997 to review progress. The meeting agreed to work towards a global forest convention with the aim of halting the destruction of tropical and old-growth forests. The last Earth Summit took place on 17 March 2004 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Russia backed the Kyoto treaty on global warming, ensuring that it would still go ahead despite US non-participation.

By 1996, most wealthy nations estimated that they would exceed their emissions targets set at the first Earth Summit, including Spain by 24%, Australia by 25%, and the USA by 3%. The UK and Germany were expected to meet their targets.

The second summit, in 1997, failed to agree a new deal to address the world's growing environmental crisis. Dramatic falls in aid to countries of the developing world, which the 1992 Earth Summit promised to increase, were at the heart of the breakdown. UK prime minister Tony Blair condemned the USA, Japan, Canada, and Australia for failing to deliver on commitments to stabilize rising emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases. The European Community as a whole was on target to meet its stabilization commitment because of cuts in emissions in Germany and the UK.

Deforestation was the main problem tackled at the second summit. The World Bank and the World Wide Fund for Nature signed an agreement aimed at protecting 250 million hectares/617 million acres of forest (10% of the world's forests). The importance of the issue was highlighted by the fact that deforestation had increased rapidly in developing countries since the first summit.

In June 2001, US president George W Bush announced that the USA would not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which committed the world's industrialized countries to cutting their annual emissions of harmful gases.

The last Earth Summit, in 2004, was marred by controversy over the number of compromises that were reached on environmental issues. The main agreements were: to reduce by half the number of people in Africa lacking basic sanitation by 2015; to ‘substantially increase’ renewable energy, but without setting any limits or completion dates; to ‘significantly reduce’ the loss of species by 2015, again without any specific targets; and to increase links between trade, environment, and development.