It’s almost 20 years since the first Earth Summit in Rio, an unprecedented event attended by most world leaders. It was a moment in history that propelled sustainability onto the popular agenda, and there were two significant outcomes.
The first was the Kyoto Protocol, which was about reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases. The result? Climate change is now a topic everyone recognises and there is a significant, ongoing effort to work out the corporate and political response.
The other major development from Rio is much less well-known – the Convention on Biodiversity. What has that achieved? Few people recognise, and even fewer understand, the issues it addressed. Until recently, there’s been little hard evidence of government or company action. This is a problem.
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