The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio

de Janeiro Earth Summit, Rio Summit, Rio Conference, and Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was
a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) from 3 to 14 June 1992. 172
governments participated, with 116 sending their heads of state or government.

Rio Summit
Some 2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attended, with
17,000 people at the parallel NGO “Global Forum” (also called Forum Global), who
had Consultative Status. A significant accomplishment of the summit was an agreement on
the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris
Agreement. Another agreement was “not to carry out any activities on the lands
of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or that would be culturally
inappropriate”.

Rio Summit 1992 – Important Outcomes

The Rio Summit 1992 is also called the Earth Summit. This summit led to the development
of the following documents:

1. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development

2. Agenda 21
3. Forest Principles

The first document called the Rio Declaration, in short, contained 27 principles that were
supposed to guide countries in future sustainable development. Agenda 21 is an action plan
concerning sustainable development, but it is non-binding. The Forest Principles is formally
called ‘Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on
the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests’. It
makes many recommendations for conservation and sustainable development forestry and is
non-binding.