Twenty years ago, I took a week off from my job at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources and attended the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development as a private citizen.
At this conference, also known as the Earth Summit, nations of the world, including the United States, endorsed a nonbinding plan for a new form of development: environmentally sustainable development.
The big question then was what sustainable development means. At one event, two World Bank officials provided a practical answer, describing projects that built local economies, created jobs and protected and restored the environment at the same time.
In June, national leaders from all over the world met again in Rio de Janeiro for the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (or Rio+20), along with about 50,000 other people representing corporations, nongovernmental organizations, local governments and other interests.
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John C. Dernbach is Professor of Law at Widener University Law School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has divided his career between teaching and government service. In his teaching role, Dernbach has focused on sustainable development in the United States. He has edited the only two comprehensive nongovernmental assessments of U.S. sustainable development efforts. He has written and lectured widely on sustainable development, climate change, environmental law, and legal writing.