DSS5101 Chap.3 From Stockholm to the 2030 Agenda
From Stockholm to the 2030 Agenda
The events that produced the goals
The Week 2 lecture compresses fifty years into one slide, and the first graded project asks your group to rebuild and extend it as a diagram. The trunk begins with Sweden’s 1968 proposal to the UN Economic and Social Council for a conference on human interaction with the environment.
The Stockholm conference of 1972 followed, adopting a declaration of 26 principles and creating the UN Environment Programme, based in Nairobi.
A UN commission on environment and development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, was set up in 1983 and published Our Common Future in 1987.
Rio as the branching point
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro adopted Agenda 21 and opened the conventions on climate change and on biological diversity.
The climate convention entered into force in March 1994, its first Conference of the Parties met in Berlin in 1995, and the Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third in 1997, entering into force only in 2005. The biodiversity convention came into force in 1993. On the development trunk, the Millennium Summit of 2000 set eight goals for 2015, Johannesburg hosted Rio+10 in 2002, and Rio+20 in 2012 proposed new goals to replace them.
In 2015 the General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda with its 17 goals, and the Paris conference agreed a new climate treaty, signed by 174 countries in April 2016.
What each framework fixed
The lecture traces one aim, eradicating poverty, through three frameworks. Agenda 21 set out broad objectives and activities.
The Millennium Development Goals made the aim time-bound and measurable, supported by an indicator handbook, but concentrated on developing countries. The Sustainable Development Goals kept measurement, widened the scope to economic, social and environmental questions, and applied the goals to every country.
Seeing what each step corrected is what turns a timeline into an explanation of how the goals were derived, which is the final rubric point for the project.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Stockholm 1972, UNEP and the first declaration
- 02
The Brundtland Commission and its 1987 report
- 03
Rio 1992 as the fork into climate and biodiversity branches
- 04
Kyoto adopted in 1997 and in force in 2005
- 05
From eight Millennium goals to seventeen SDGs
- 06
Designing the CA1 timeline against its rubric
Worked example · free
Writing one annotated node for the timeline
- 2State what the meeting adopted or opened.
- 2Link it backwards to the event that made it possible.
- 2Link it forwards to the branches it started.
Key terms
- Agenda 21
- The broad blueprint for sustainable development adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, covering environmental protection, social equity and economic growth.
- Millennium Development Goals
- Eight time-bound, measurable goals set in 2000 for 2015, addressing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women.
- Earth Summit
- The name given to the major UN conferences on environment and development, including Rio in 1992, Johannesburg in 2002 and Rio+20 in 2012.
- Conference of the Parties
- The annual decision-making meeting of the countries that have joined a convention, first held for the climate convention in Berlin in 1995.
- UN Environment Programme
- The UN body for the environment created after the 1972 Stockholm conference, headquartered in Nairobi.
From Stockholm to the 2030 Agenda FAQ
What should a sustainable development timeline start with?
The CA1 brief suggests the Brundtland Commission as a good place to begin, and the Week 2 lecture's summary starts earlier with Sweden's 1968 proposal and the 1972 Stockholm conference. Starting at Stockholm lets the diagram show why the commission was needed.
Why does the timeline branch at Rio in 1992?
Rio opened both the climate convention and the biodiversity convention while also adopting Agenda 21. Each of the three then followed its own path, so showing them as branches from one node makes their shared origin and later separation clear.
When did the Kyoto Protocol take effect?
It was adopted at the third Conference of the Parties in 1997 but entered into force on 16 February 2005, once enough countries had ratified. Its second commitment period ended in 2020, according to the lecture.
How did the MDGs differ from the SDGs?
The eight Millennium goals were time-bound and measurable but focused mainly on developing countries. The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals keep measurement, cover economic, social and environmental questions together, and apply to every country, rich and poor.
Can the timeline be written as paragraphs?
No. The brief asks for a graphical depiction and rules out paragraphs or an essay, suggesting a tool such as Miro. References go in APA style in a space near the timeline.
Assessment move
Build the timeline from memory once before researching it, then compare. The gaps you find are the events you do not yet understand. Keep one line per node on what it changed, because those lines are both your revision notes and the annotations the rubric asks for.
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