In 2022, Stockholm Conference “Stockholm+50: A healthy planet for the prosperity of all — our responsibility, our opportunity” was held in the Swedish capital. World leaders gathered to discuss how the next 50 years would be treated with emergency actions.
The year 2022 marked 50 years of the Stockholm Declaration, when 122 countries — 70 of them developing and poor countries — essentially committed to 26 principles and an action plan that set in a multilateral environmental regime.
Key Points About Stockholm Conference
- The Stockholm+50 opened with a call to accelerate urgent climate action for a healthy planet for the prosperity of all.
- Heads of the governments, Environment Ministers, think-tanks, NGOs, researchers, students, activists, the entire gamut of stakeholders in the environmental movement attended the prestigious event.
- Stockholm+50 featured four plenary sessions in which leaders made calls for bold environmental action to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.
- Three leadership dialogues, hundreds of side events – including several youth-led sessions – and webinars, as well as series of regional multi-stakeholder consultations in the run-up to the meeting enabled thousands of people around the world to engage in discussions and put forward their views.
- The two-day international meeting concluded with a statement from co-hosts Sweden and Kenya, drawn from Member States and stakeholders through the meeting’s plenaries and leadership dialogues.
- The statement contains several recommendations for an actionable agenda, including, among others, placing human well-being at the centre of a healthy planet and prosperity for all; recognizing and implementing the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; adopting systemwide changes in the way our current economic system works, and accelerate transformations of high impact sectors
What is Stockholm+50?
Stockholm Declaration
Key Principles
- Earth’s natural resources, including air, water, land, flora and fauna, especially representative samples of natural ecosystems, must be safeguarded for the benefit of the present and future generations through careful planning or management.
- The discharge of toxic substances or of other substances and the release of heat, in such quantities or concentrations as to exceed the capacity of the environment to render them harmless, must be halted in order to ensure that serious or irreversible damage is not inflicted upon ecosystems. The just struggle of the peoples of ill countries against pollution should be supported.
- States shall take all steps to prevent pollution of the seas by substances that are liable to create hazards to human health, to harm living resources and marine life, to damage amenities or to interfere with other legitimate uses of the sea.
- The environmental policies of all States should enhance and not adversely affect the present or future development potential of developing countries, nor should they hamper the attainment of better living conditions for all, and appropriate steps should be taken by States and international organizations with a view to reaching agreement on meeting the possible national and international economic consequences resulting from the application of environmental measures.
- States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.
The 1972 Stockholm Conference
Effects Of The Convention
- The Stockholm convention paved the way for other international conventions on the preservation of the environment such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, 1973.
- In the same line, the Parliament of India passed the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 to give effect to the Stockholm convention.
- The Stockholm convention was the first convention to discuss environmental issues on a global scale. The declaration proclaims truths relating to man and the environment such as man is the creator and moulder of his surroundings.
- Previously, the UN charter never contained the domain of environment to deal with.
- No country had an environment ministry until 1972.
- Afterwards, countries like Norway and Sweden set up their ministries for the environment.
- In 1985, India set up its ministry of environment and forest.
- The declaration also reiterates the importance of preservation of the environment.
- The declaration discusses in detail the role of underdeveloped nations in environmental problems and urges them to reduce their negative impact on the environment.
- The significance of humans and their contributions to the environment are also discussed in detail.
- Governments are directed to control their internal actions by enacting and enforcing environmental laws and to coordinate with other nations and international agencies to mitigate the damage caused by pollution
Concerns
- Since the “environmental era” started, there are no signs of a restrain on our relationship with nature.
- As per UN data circulated as part of its Stockholm+50 commemoration, trade has gone up 10 times, the global economy by five times and the world population has doubled.
- Human development is largely fueled by a tripling in the extraction of natural resources, food production, and energy production and consumption over the past 50 years.
- As per the unep’s “Inclusive Wealth Report 2018”, “During 1990-2014, produced capital grew at an average annual rate of 3.8%, while health and education induced human capital grew at 2.1%. Meanwhile, natural capital decreased at an annual rate of 0.7%.”
- The world is on track to warm at least 3 ̊Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100— despite a temporary decline in emissions due to the pandemic.
- That is double the 1.5 warming mandated in the Paris targets, which would require a 45% global emission reduction by 2030.
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