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The Earth Summit

The problem of climate change was first addressed internationally at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development – the Earth Summit – in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. One of the major themes of the conference was the promotion of sustainable economic development in the face of global climate change. Another was that industrial nations who contributed the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions should assume the burden of leadership.

In the Rio Declaration Climate Treaty, the international community agreed to adopt measures to prevent the harmful effects of climate change. The declaration included measures to promote technologies such as renewable energy, which would help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. The signatories, especially developed countries, agreed to roll back their emission of greenhouse gases to the levels they were in 1990 by the year 2000. However, the declaration was not legally binding.