How The International Community Attempted to Tackle Environmental Issues

How The International Community Attempted to Tackle Environmental Issues, And What Has Been The Failures or Successes of Such Efforts?
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In the current 21st century, people are encountering environmental challenges like resource scarcity, land and water pollutions, global warming and others. These are indications of environmental degradations. The global society as a whole has implemented many measures to counter these challenges (Werksman, Cameron and Roderick, 2014). Efforts to address the major issues of environmental degradations have been formed mainly by the international community. It is important to note that certain issues cannot be addressed by any one nation, regardless how powerful or rich such a nation may be. This implies that international effort is crucial in tackling certain issues. Environmental degradations are challenges that continue confronting the world. Formation of international community has been vital to look for ways to overcome environmental concerns. This paper aims to examine ways in which the international community attempted to address environmental issues, and also to evaluate the bases of the successes or failures of such efforts.
International community, since the 1960s, has been gathering momentum actions to solve global environmental challenges (Ghai and Vivian, 2014). Several significant global conferences have been formed which have led to the creation of conventions and protocols that have attempted to tackle specific environmental issues. First, the international community identified the degradation of environment as a matter of concern at the UNCHE (United Nations Conference in the Human Environment) in 1972 at Stockholm, Sweden. The conference offered a catalyst for the establishment of multilateral environmental treaties, and developed a new era of international environmental governance. For the first time, this conference also initiated issues of how to address the environment, development and poverty in a combined approach.
After the Stockholm conference was initiated, several national governments formed departments to deal with environment issues and created environmental legislation. Moreover, the UNCHE also led the formation of the UNEP. The UNCED (United Nations Conference on the Environment Development) in 1992 followed the UNCHE (Hoffmann, 2011). The UNCED took place in RIO de Janiero, Brazil, and it created an international plan to develop sustainable development known as Agenda 21. After that, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was formed during 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa (Hoffmann, 2011). In 2012, the United Nations Conference Sustainable Development was formed in Rio de Janeiro. These are some of the important ways in which several developments initiated by international actions have led to the establishment of institutions and policy at international and national level.
International organizations like United Nations and others have been coordinating and advocating common efforts to address global environmental challenges at the multilateral level. For example, UNEP was formed to serve as a foundation for comprehensive coordinated action and focus within the UN framework on the challe...