Environmental summits

Global conferences involving world leaders have also played a part in outlining the environmental scenario. The first world environmental summit took place in Stockholm in 1972, and from this emerged the now famous Bruntland definition of sustainable development (section 5.4). This was followed some twenty years later by the United Nations Summit Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de... 

The political and social context also requires vehicles to become greener. We can see emerging urban use rates like in London, bonus/penalty systems depending on the level of CO2 production and an environmental summit in France. Moreover urban mobility is evolving to become greener, we see emerging opportunities to cycle in urban areas (Velib in Paris). 

One of the conclusions from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (the Earth Summit) was the urgent need to find a more sustainable way of life, based on careful use of resources and a reduction in environmental emissions. There was also a call to move towards a model in which environmental enhancement is fully integrated with economic development. The consequences of this summit have been far-reaching not least by the fact that, in Europe and elsewhere, environmental protection requirements are now integrated into many policies rather than being separate pieces of legislation. Indeed Article 2 of the EC treaty states that the Community shall. .. promote throughout the Community harmonious, balanced and sustainable development of economic activities This may be viewed as the first step towards... 

During the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the U S. National Academies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Chemistry Council announced a new initiative to facilitate better communication among scientists, policymakers, and other decisionmakers so that scientific knowledge more effectively informs public policy and private sector decisions relating to sustainability in developing countries. More specifically, the goals of the initiative are ... 

POL.ll. I. Prigogine, Environmental Ethics in a time of Bounded Rationality, 6th CEC Summit Conference on Bioethics, Brussels, 1989 (CEC Luxembourg 1990). 

Recently the protection of the environment has become increasingly important for industry with the requirement that the potential impact on the environment is considered for all aspects of industrial processes. Such considerations are supported by environmental legislation that controls all types of emissions as well as the treatment of wastes. Such legislation is based on global standards that have largely resulted from developments within the European Union, Japan, and the United States in collaboration with international conventions. Of these, the Basel Convention (1989) and the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) were significant in the control and prevention of wastes. In the case of liquid wastes that are most appropriate for treatment by liquid liquid extraction, limits for discharge into the aqueous environment have been established by the three countries already mentioned. These limits depend on the particular country and sometimes on the industry. (See section 14.6.)... 

Apodaca, L.E., Driver, N.E. and Bails, J.B. (2000) Occurrence, transport, and fate of trace elements, blue river basin, Summit County, Colorado an integrated approach. Environmental Geology, 39(8), 901-13. 

McKnight, D. M., K. E. Bencala, G. W. Zellweger, G. R. Aiken, G. L. Feder, and K. A. Thorn. 1992. Sorption of dissolved organic carbon by hydrous aluminum and iron oxides occurring at the confluence of Deer Creek with the Snake River, Summit County, Colorado. Environmental Science Technology 26 1388-1396. 

The Harmonization of Environmental Measurement (HEM) center was established in 1989 by UNEP with financial support from the German Ministry of the Environment (BMU) as part of the Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS). The initiative to establish HEM was taken by the Economic Summit... 

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) declared that the health of children is more severely affected by unhealthy environments than that of any other population group, that children are highly vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation, and that their special susceptibilities need to be fully taken into account. 

Aerosol concentrations and size distributions can be investigated remotely using sun-photometry. Characterization of volcanic aerosol is important in smdies of plume chemistry, atmospheric radiation, and the environmental and health impacts of particle emissions. Watson and Oppenheimer (2000, 2001) used a portable sun-photometer to observe tropospheric aerosol emitted by Mt. Etna. They found distinct aerosol optical signatures for the several plumes emitted from Etna s different summit craters, and apparent coagulation of particles as the plume aged. More recently. Porter et al. (2002) have obtained sun-photometer and pulsed lidar data for the plume from Pu u O o vent on Kilauea, Hawaii, from a moving vehicle in order to build profiles of sulfate concentration. 

As the 1980s evolved, environmental justice groups developed in many different racial and ethnic communities African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Pacific groups, and the indigenous people of North America. By 1991, the EJ movement had a clear national identify and philosophy, expressed in the Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, DC, which was attended by more than a thousand community activists. 

Major areas of harmonization work arose from the United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in 1992, and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. Agenda 21, Chapter 19, the blueprint for the environmentally sound management of toxic chemicals under the principles of sustainable development, has guided most international and national chemical-related activities. Chapter 19 is the agreed upon, endorsed international program of... 

As Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, put it at the Business Day of the Summit Business leaders now understand that companies can only succeed long-term if they put values at the heart of their business and address social and environmental issues in a sustainable way . He added, the corporate sector need not wait for governments to take decisions. It is only by mobilising the private sector that we can make progress. ... 

The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro laid the foundation for an Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) and Chapter 19 of Agenda 21 dealt with the environmentally sound management of toxic chemicals. The IFCS oversees the implementation of six programme areas ... 

European directive on freedom of access to environmental information ACCA starts environmental report award scheme PIRC adopts UK environmental investor code Rio Summit Agenda 21... 

An action plan for sustainable development, Agenda 21 , was adopted at the Rio Summit, and it is interesting to note that some of the wording is specifically directed at the subject of environmental reporting. Agenda 21 states, inter alia, that The business community, including transnational corporations, should recognise that envi-... 

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) that took place at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 tried to help redress the balance (with mixed results) by encouraging states to take responsibility for policing their own environmental issues. This proved very effective in industrialised countries, which continue to tighten their control, and chemical industry associations played their part through initiatives such as the Voluntary Energy Efficiency Programme (VEEP). Even so, economic considerations have perpetuated the concept of pollution havens elsewhere, and the export of low added value processes to less effectively policed economies continues. 

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