Monday, October 5, 2009

Seventeen Years Later

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Rio Summit, Earth Summit or, in Portuguese, Eco '92; was a major conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. An important achievement was an agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol. Another was agreement to "not carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or be culturally inappropriate". Teenage activist Severn Suzuki made an appeal that still shames the preceding generation.