Conferências das Nações Unidas e política ambiental global: o protagonismo brasileiro

Abstract

This essay is focused on the study of the United Nations Conference on Environment, understanding them as international policy-making mechanisms for confrontation of global environmental crisis. Although environmental discussions have emerged internationally in the early twentieth century, this problem arose with the European expansion to the Americas, resulting of the natural resources exploitation´s in the colonies to meet the needs of the core countries, which was subsequently deepened with the industrial revolutions. Despite the high degree of pollution caused by these factors, the first treaties were about regulating the exploitation of natural resources in the colonies. Only with the announcement of the impending environmental crisis report The Limits of Growth that occurred linking the model development with natural resource degradation. This association was institutionalized with the realization of the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (1972), whose objective was to evaluate the actions at the national and international levels to suppress the degradation of the human environment through the creation of a model that harmonizing the management of natural resources and economy, giving rise to the postulates of ecological development. In that event, Brazil played an important leadership role in the defense and approval of this model in the final documents of the Conference, through the principle of absolute sovereignty. By following the "improvement" of ecological development postulates’ occurred during the meeting of the World Commission on Environment and Development which reinforced the need to think about this "new" model for balancing economic and environmental management, rising to the postulates of sustainable development. In this context, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro (1992), that objective of assessing strategies, programs, actions and achievements in the national and international levels that ensured environmental preservation in harmony with the development. At that time, Brazil has also served as a leader and facilitator of discussions to defend these postulates, considered as an environmental power for its mega diversity and its power decision-making in the definition of global environmental policy. Therefore, the present essay studies, from the premises (neo) liberal, the United Nations Conference on Environment as the locus of global environmental policy, understanding Brazil as key in the dissemination and formulation of these premises. The methodology used in this study is qualitative, from a documentary and bibliographic analysis of the Brazilian Environmental Conferences and positioning.