Conferenza ONU Ambiente Umano di Stoccolma 1972 | eatparade
The beginning of the cultural and political path on sustainable development on a global scale may coincide with the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972.
The Conference, attended by 113 countries, has produced a Declaration containing 26 principles on human rights and responsibilities in relation to the global environment, including: freedom, equality and the right to adequate living conditions; the protection of natural resources, appropriately maintained; nature conservation which must play an important role in the legislative process of States. These important principles paved the way for a rich debate and the increasing attention from the scientific community and civil society.
The first conference convened by the UN to discuss environmental problems and the subsequent Stockholm Declaration was the first step towards the creation of an environmental sensitivity in the world and has remained the benchmark up to Rio ’92.
The results obtained in Stockholm are important because they constitute the first example of a comprehensive political and diplomatic reasoning on issues of human development. Among the main achievements, there is the birth of UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme), the United Nations program on environmental issues, created with the aim of coordinating and promoting the UN initiatives on environmental issues. The Action Plan developed in Stockholm also provided a series of actions for monitoring the state of the environment, to be followed by the planning of assistance needed. Such monitoring should be accompanied by initiatives in the field of research. In less generic terms, the conference promoted the adoption of measures to support the activities of environmental policy in different countries. In the 70s, it follows the realization that the Earth’s natural resources must be protected through strategic plans and that nature has a fundamental role in the economy.
