The meeting agreed upon a
Declaration containing 26 principles concerning the environment and development, an Action Plan with 109 recommendations, and a Resolution. Principles of the Stockholm Declaration: •
Natural resources must be safeguarded • The Earth's capacity to
produce renewable resources must be maintained •
Wildlife must be safeguarded •
Non-renewable resources must be shared and not exhausted •
Pollution must not exceed the environment's capacity to clean itself • Damaging
oceanic pollution must be prevented • Development is needed to improve the environment •
Developing countries therefore need assistance • Developing countries need reasonable prices for exports to carry out
environmental management •
Environment policy must not hamper development • Developing countries need money to develop environmental safeguards • Integrated development planning is needed • Rational planning should resolve conflicts between environment and development • Human settlements must be planned to eliminate
environmental problems • Governments should plan their own appropriate
population policies • National institutions must plan development of states' natural resources • Science and technology must be used to improve the environment •
Environmental education is essential • Environmental research must be promoted, particularly in developing countries • States may exploit their resources as they wish but must not endanger others • Compensation is due to states thus endangered • Each nation must establish its own standards • There must be cooperation on international issues •
International organizations should help to improve the environment •
Weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated One of the seminal issues that emerged from the conference is the recognition for poverty alleviation for protecting the environment. The Indian Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi in her seminal speech in the conference brought forward the connection between ecological management and
poverty alleviation. The Stockholm Conference motivated countries around the world to monitor environmental conditions as well as to create environmental ministries and agencies. Despite these institutional accomplishments, including the establishment of UNEP, the failure to implement most of its action programme has prompted the UN to have follow-up conferences. The succeeding United Nations Conference on Environment and Development convened in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (the Rio Earth Summit), the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) all take their starting point in the declaration of the Stockholm Conference. Some argue that this conference, and more importantly the scientific conferences preceding it, had a real impact on the environmental policies of the
European Community (that later became the
European Union). For example, in 1973, the EU created the Environmental and Consumer Protection Directorate, and composed the first Environmental Action Program. Such increased interest and research collaboration arguably paved the way for further understanding of global warming, which has led to such agreements as the
Kyoto Protocol and the
Paris Agreement, and has given a foundation of modern environmentalism. == 50 years after ==