Earth Summit 2002

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, WSSD or ONG Earth Summit 2002 took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss sustainable development by the United Nations. WSSD gathered a number of leaders from business and non-governmental organizations, 10 years after the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (It was therefore also informally nicknamed "Rio+10".)

The Johannesburg Declaration was the main outcome of the Summit; however, there were several other international agreements. [1]

It laid out the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation as an action plan. .

Johannesburg, 27 August: agreement was made to restore the world's depleted fisheries for 2015. It was agreed to by negotiators at the World Summit.

Instead of new agreements between governments, the Earth Summit was organized mostly around almost 300 "partnership initiatives" known as Type II, as opposed to Type I Partnerships which are the more classic outcome of international treaties. These were to be the key means to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. These are kept in a database of Partnerships for Sustainable Development. [3]

The absence of the United States rendered the summit partially impotent. George W. Bush boycotted the summit and did not attend. Except for a brief appearance by Colin Powell, who hurriedly addressed the closing stages of the conference while his airplane taxied on the runway of Johannesburg International, the US government did not send a delegation, earning Bush praise in a letter from conservative organizations such as Americans for Tax Reform, American Enterprise Institute, and Competitive Enterprise Institute.

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