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AGENDA 21
In 1992, at the Rio "Earth" Summit, leaders from around the world agreed that the quality of life for future generations was being compromised by our present unsustainable lifestyles.
They launched Agenda 21 - a far reaching plan
encouraging co-operation and action, at both global and local levels, towards a
sustainable future.
Agenda 21 says that all human concerns are
interdependent. Health, poverty, education, social justice, the exploitation of
natural resources, environmental quality and many others all underpin our
quality of life. If one is neglected, everything will fall apart.
So Agenda 21 is not about development versus
environment, because people need jobs and a decent standard of living. It is
about shifting to ways of development which do not
overburden our natural life-support systems: the atmosphere, the oceans, the
forests and global biodiversity.
We must start to make that shift now, for the sake
of people today and in the 21st Century. In short, we must develop sustainably. The widely quoted definition of sustainable
development is:
"development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their needs".
Agenda 21 offers a real opportunity to get things on the right track. For all our futures.
