Sustainable Development

The history of sustainable development

Sustainable development after 1990

Sustainable development before 1990|

1990

The ideas in Sustaining Our Common Future were taken up in the UK's first comprehensive strategy, the White Paper on the Environment 'This Common Inheritance'.

1992

Nearly 180 countries met at the 'Earth Summit' (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro to discuss how to achieve sustainable development.

The summit agreed the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development which sets out 27 principles supporting sustainable development.

An action plan, Agenda 21, was agreed and it was recommended that all countries should produce national sustainable development strategies.

The Earth Summit also set up the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, which meets every year, as well as important United Nations organisations - the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Towards Sustainability, the fifth Environmental Action Programme of the European Union, was adopted. The programme aims to include environmental concerns into other policy areas to achieve sustainable development.

1994

The UK became one of the first countries to produce a sustainable development strategy in response to the call made at Rio, Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy.

1997

The Labour Party won the General Election and the new government announced their plan to prepare a new strategy for sustainable development.

A special United Nations conference was held to review Agenda 21 (Rio+5). This repeated the call for all countries to have sustainable development strategies in place - in particular by the time of the next review of Agenda 21 in 2002 (Rio+10).

In Europe, changes to Articles 2 to 6 of the Treaty setting up the European Community were agreed in the Treaty of Amsterdam. This gave sustainable development a much greater prominence.

1999

In May, the government launched their new strategy, 'A better quality of life - A strategy for sustainable development for the UK.'

In December,' Quality of life counts - Indicators for a strategy for sustainable development for the United Kingdom: a baseline assessment' was published.

This looks in more detail at the measures of sustainable development shown in the strategy and provides a way in which future progress can be measured.

2001

In January 2001, the government published their first review of progress towards sustainable development, 'Achieving a better quality of life', Government annual report 2000.

We went to all local community forums and asked for ideas on how to improve our environment and gave away energy-efficient light bulbs free, to help residents save money on energy bills.

We also signed up to the Nottingham Climate Change Declaration agreeing to reduce the energy that we waste and to reduce gases pumped into the atmosphere as a result.

2002

We appointed our first Environmental Sustainable Coordinator, and signed our Environmental Policy, making a positive commitment to the borough's future.

In August, the Johannesburg Summit 2002 - the World Summit on Sustainable Development - promises to be one of the largest and most important international meetings ever held on economic, environmental and social decision-making.

The summit will focus on building commitment at the highest levels of government and society for further action to put Agenda 21, a plan for achieving sustainable development adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, into practice.

Useful web links

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)|

Sustainable Development

The history of sustainable development