Johannesburg Summit

World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In the 1960s, people around the world began to confront critical environmental issues in their communities: forests were being destroyed by acid rain, rivers poisoned beyond use by industrial wastes, cities choked by pollution from automobiles and industry, and rural farmers hit by famines.

Scientists began to speak out about the global interconnectedness of these problems, warning that we were quickly becoming victims of our own success-that we now had the ability to entirely despoil the Earth that sustains us.

Over the last forty years, the scientific warnings have continued to grow in severity and urgency, but progress on making change has remained painstakingly slow. And new international challenges--terrorist attacks, military responses, and mounting tensions around the world--threaten to derail any momentum to address chronic environmental problems.

World leaders will meet from August 26 to September 4, 2002 for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, to address, once again, the multitude of environmental threats destabilizing the planet. The question at the top of the agenda: what progress have countries made in the past 40 years to halt environmental destruction, and where will we go from here?

As part of the Commonwealth Women Network Activities, there will be a Women's Tent held between August 26th to September 4th. The women's tent will be a space to share experiences, network, strategize, and ensure that the vision of sustainable development that emerges from the Summit integrates a gender perspective and reflects the voices of all the world's women.

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