This book provides an overview of the most important issues as they are dealt with in the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development’s Plan of Implementation. It addresses the science behind the discussions on poverty, production and consumption patterns, water, energy, Small Island Developing States, sustainability issues in Central/Eastern Europe and Latin America, and the role of the financial world in the sustainable development of education, science and research.

A muckraking expose of corporate greenwashing and of the disturbing trend toward U.N.-corporate "partnerships" that give corporations good PR without requiring them to improve their behavior. In the decade between the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, transnational corporations have increasingly used their resources to deter regulation, suppress opposing voices, and try to buy civil society's acquiescence with slick PR. But we don't have to acquiesce, and neither should the U.N. The United Nations may not be perfect, argue Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, but in its principles and structure it has the potential to counter the WTO-a potential it is squandering, say the authors. earthsummit.biz exposes the current state of corporate rhetoric vs. corporate reality and debunks the paradigm of transnational "responsibility" and self-regulation. It contains 18 corporate case studies, as well as the complete texts of the U.N.'s toothless Global Compact with corporations, and the Global Compact's civil society counterpart, the Citizens Compact on the United Nations and Corporations.

'As we start the preparations for the Earth Summit in 2002, 10 years from Rio and 30 years from Stockholm, we need to set targets and dates that are realistic to deliver the change that is needed. There will also need to be a debate on the international machinery to achieve what we want, and 2002 will be significant in setting out the direction. This book has drawn in some of the key people who are working to make 2002 a significant event' FROM THE FOREWORD BY KLAUS TOPFER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME AND CENTRE FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTS At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, world leaders adopted a comprehensive programme of action for implementing sustainable development worldwide. As preparations for Earth Summit 2002 proceed, leading players from around the world present a frank assessment of progress to date. They set goals and describe mechanisms that will enable the international community to complete the tasks set in Rio and prepare for new challenges and opportunities. This book will be a catalyst for the public and political momentum required to push forward the global sustainable development agenda.

In June 1997, heads of government and senior representatives from over 130 countries met in New York to consider what progress had been made since the first Earth Summit in 1992, and la decide upon priorities for the future. Earth Summit II presents the principal official documents agreed al the Summit alongside an authoritative analysis of where progress is and is not being made, the reasons for this, and the priorities of the parties involved. Finally, the authors look forward to the ten-year follow-up in 2002, and propose methods for ensuring that that event is both effective and participatory. Insightful and comprehensive, this will be essential reading for policy makers, lobbyists and students on environment and development courses.

Report by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Forty years after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the goal of sustainable development continues via the Rio+20 conference in 2012. This book will enable a broad readership to understand what has been achieved in the past forty years and what hasn’t. It shows the continuing threat of our present way of living to the planet. It looks to the challenges that we face twenty years from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, "The Earth Summit," in Rio, in particular in the areas of economics and governance and the role of stakeholders. It puts forward a set of recommendations that the international community must address now and in the the future. It reminds us of the planetary boundaries we must all live within and and what needs to be addressed in the next twenty years for democracy, equity and fairness to survive. Finally it proposes through the survival agenda a bare minimum of what needs to be done, arguing for a series of absolute minimum policy changes we need to move forward.

Agenda 21 is a non-binding, voluntarily implemented action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development. It is a product of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Its purpose is an action agenda for the UN, other multilateral organizations, and individual governments around the world that can be executed at local, national, and global levels. The "21" in Agenda 21 refers to the 21st century.