Global Environmental Governance Forum: Reflecting on the past, moving into the future
June 28th –July 2nd 2009, Glion, Switzerland: The Global Environmental Governance Forum: Reflecting on the Past, Moving into the Future, hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the College of William and Mary brought together a range of leading thinkers in the field of environmental and sustainable development governance.
The Forum gathered several generations of environmental leaders from 26 countries to engage in dialogue on the future of global environmental governance and generate possible options for reform in the context of the emerging international architecture for climate change. Five successive UNEP Executive Directors attended the event: Maurice Strong, Mostafa Tolba, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Klaus Töpfer, and Achim Steiner.
Discussions focused on the opportunity presented by a possible Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012 to move forward on Global Environmental Governance. Dr Toepfer floated the idea of reconvening the Brundtland Commission to address the transition to a Green Economy. Lars Goren Engfelt, former Swedish liaison officer in the Secretariat for the Stockholm Conference 1972, and former Bureau member for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 1992, presented his new book ‘From Stockholm to Johannesburg and Beyond’.
The report from the Forum – Global Environmental Governance in the 21st Century: Way Ahead Wide Open – underscored that ‘the fortieth anniversary of the Stockholm Conference and the twentieth anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit in 2012 also present a rare opportunity for politicians and the public to make a reckoning of their environmental priorities.’ It called for the launching of a political process in preparation for 2012.
To download the full report click here.
