Facing the Challenges of Sustainable Development
(11/02, En, Es) See also Environment and Natural Resources
Latin America and the Caribbean are facing a critical challenge: how to achieve strong growth and investment in the medium and long term that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. Since the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio in 1992, the region has gone through a period of economic and social reform and established a more widespread capacity for environmental management. But there is still a long way to go before reaching that vision of sustainable development set forth 15 years ago in the seminal report Our Common Future.1 The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg offers not only a much-needed opportunity to review the record of the decade that has passed since the UNCED meeting in Rio, but also an occasion for defining concrete commitments to resolving those pressing social, economic and environmental issues that have emerged as the process of globalization has advanced around the world.
The Inter-American Development Bank has played a critical role on the environmental front in the region during this period, and is now shaping a new strategy to address more fully the environmental dimensions of poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth. This report reviews the IDB's record since Rio and lays out the elements of this new approach to achieving genuine sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
1. World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, ?Our Common Future,? Report of the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Sustainable Development, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, S.A.
Last updated: 05/08/07
