I still remember the first day that I’ve heard about climate change. I was 13 years old and I was in my science lesson paying attention to my teacher words as they were coming out. In that day I understood that, due to the emissions of greenhouse gases, we were increasing the average temperature of our planet.
Probably that was the day that I felt in love with environmental sciences. However, to be honest, the teacher didnt’t waste much time speaking about the causes or the consequences of the climate change. Maybe because this reason, I never thought that the size of the problem were so big and complex.
When I was 2 years older, I’ve heard again about it in the chemistry lesson. Until that day, if my love for this topic was asleep, then that was the day of his awakening and it’s burning until today.
Nowadays, I know the problem it’s more complex than I ever thought. It’s not just about the pollution and the climate change, it’s also about the exhaustion of some resources, such as fossil fuels, and how are we going to do the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable or nuclear energy.
More than ever, I’m aware of the seriousness of this challenge and the fact that I just woke up for it 7 years ago it’s scaring me, mainly because there are already several of old documents, which goals are to alert the people about this problem, that I just knew about 4 or 5 years ago. If this is happening to me, and I’m interested in this topic, then what are happening to the other people, mainly the one that is older than me?
I’m writting this article to speak about some of this documents. I’m going to do a brief summary of some of them.
1st. Declaration of Stockolm (1972), also known by Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Link)
This document speaks how the human race have evolved and how created tecnhology strong enough to change the shape of the world. It alerts also for the preservation of the nature and the resources. Due to population increase, it’s our obligation to take care and use our resources in a rational waw, in order to ensure their use by the next generations.
2nd. Our Common Future (1987), also know by Bruntland Report (Link)
The concept of sustainable development was spoken for the first time in this document. It is described as “the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It says that the economic and social goals should be determined in terms of sustainability in all the countries, and all the generations, between and each, should be threated with equity.
3rd. Rio 92 (1992), Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Link)
After the Declaration of Stockolm, this report reinforce the need to follow a path of sustainable development, eliminating unsustainable practices and preservating the resources. Main attention to the 20th article that presents the women as vital for the environmental management and development.
4th. Kyoto Protocol (1997)
This protocol had the goal to reunite the maximum number of countries, where they pledged to decrease their greenhouse gases emissions. The goal was to reduce the emissions of each country by 5% related to the levels of 1990. This objetive should be accomplished between 2008 and 2012.
5th. Rio+20 (2012) The Future that We Want (Link)
Like it happened in the Rio92, institutions and governments were reunited one more time to discuss the future of the societies and how to achieve a sustainable development, tracing new goals to finish with poverty and fight the destruction of the environment.
There are more documents, I just wrote about 4 of them, probably the most known. I leave some more links below.
