Tens of millions still suffer in poverty, their lives blighted by hunger, drought, disease, water contamination, and air pollution. Meeting these challenges is proving elusive for the international community – as has progress in protecting the planet’s biodiversity, its marine fish stocks, and its climate. Internationally, the community of nations still struggles to find an effective means to improve living standards through resource development, trade, and energy use – while protecting our environment.
Governments, international institutions, business, policy, and environmental advocates meet once again – this time in Johannesburg, South Africa (August 26 - September 4) – to review progress since the 1992 Rio summit. How far have we come, and what lessons have we learned? What must be done to strengthen progress towards sustainable development? Discussions in Johannesburg will focus on specific natural resource and environmental issues from climate change and water scarcity to energy and food, crosscutting such issues as technological development, financial markets, trade, and globalization.
In time for this upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, RFF experts and scholars from other research institutions have come together to produce a series of issue briefs. The papers summarize current knowledge on the various challenges to the world community in meeting goals of sustainable development, and suggest some solutions.
RFF has long played a part in international discussions about sustainable development. Then-RFF board member Maurice Strong was the secretary general of the very first such conference – 1972’s UN Conference on Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden. His advisor was the late Hans Landsberg, an RFF senior fellow. This year in Johannesburg, RFF Senior Fellow Richard Morgenstern will sponsor a workshop on the use of market mechanisms to combat industrial air pollution in the developing world, and Fellow Ramanan Laxminarayan will talk about the economics of antibiotic resistance. Prior to the summit, Morganstern and Laxminarayan spoke about these issues.
Read Michael Toman's essay, A Perspective on the Johannesburg Summit. |
