In a few days, 2-3 of June, the Stockholm+50 conference will take place. It has the motto:
A healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity.
It sounds fine and certainly it is what we all need, but will the conference take us closer to it?
The event commemorates the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 5-16 June 1972, Stockholm. It was the first conference on the global environmental and marks the beginning of an era of increased concern for the environment. It promoted the creation of the UN organisation for environmental protection, UNEP, to be in Nairobi, Kenya, as well as environmental agencies in several countries in the world. It pushed more careful monitoring of environmental pollutants and legal protection of the environment in many places. June 5 is the World Environment Day to make us not forget.
Two important and famous speakers on the 1972 conference were Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India and Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden. Both reminded the delegates that questions of environment were much more than just that. They were of prime importance for people´s health and wellbeing and for the economy. By seeing the width of issues which together shape our future the conference thereby in fact initiated the concern for a sustainable development.
The intention was to organise a conference of similar magnitude in 1982, ten years after Stockholm, but it did not happen. In the early 1980s the Cold War was unusually chilly and intentional cooperation not easy. It was not until 1992 that next large global environmental conference could take place, then in a much more friendly international atmosphere.
In 1992 delegates convened in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, South America, for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED, the largest global conference probably ever held, with some 70 000 delegates and many heads of states taking part. The UNCED was a key event. It led up to the three global conventions - on climate, biodiversity, and desertification. It established the first global agenda, Agenda 21, and it made sustainable development a global concern. Stockholm+50 could as well be called Rio+30.
Today many of us are unhappy about how climate change, global warming and the biodiversity crisis are not taken seriously enough by many countries. Those concerns were on the table already in 1972. Soon after the conferfence, in the 1980s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, were formed and their first annual report issued. Just this year their 6th report with a very serious message has been published. Today we are in addition expecting a harsh report from the coming biodiversity meeting, this year in China.
The huge global conferences with thousand of delegates and heads of states present are of course of great importance. We could not do without them. But it is not there we see the action. Action is with us, and on the more local level. Local communities, municipalities, small and big companies, even schools. It is in these contexts where we find real change take place. We should not expect Stockholm+50 to be a break for the world environmental work. It is rather a two days’ gathering to remind us of what we need to do and what is dear to us. But it is up to us to make a difference. It is still true: Think globally and act locally.
Dr. Lars Rydén, Life Link board member.
