Sustainable Development Timeline

By Monica Perez Nevarez

"If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst."
-- Thomas Hardy

In an effort to highlight the importance of connecting business with environmental conservation, this third issue of Business Puerto Rico is dedicated to all things green: from a timeline charting its evolution, to the myriad opportunities it brings, to the exciting future it promises. In this Sustainable Development Timeline, we start with colonial Puerto Rico, through the Industrial Revolution, on through the development of multinational corporations; the worldwide backlash against uncontrolled development; the new integration of economics and environmental concerns and how they translate into political policies; and the growth of the sustainability movement to include population concerns, social justice and economic inequities; to better explain the current groundswell in corporate activism and the general acceptance of Sustainable Development.

World Population

10,000 BC 4 million

2,000 BC 27 million (6.75 times the population in 6,000 years; 3,833 average births per year)

1,000 BC 50 million (2 times the population in 1,000 years; 23,000 bpy)

1 AD 190 million (4 times the population in 1,000 years; 140,000 bpy)

1,000 AD 265 million (1.4 times the population in 1,000 years; 75,000 bpy)

1400 AD 350 million (1.3 times the population in 400 years; 212,500 bpy )

1800 AD 978 million (2.8 times the population in 400 years; 1.57 million bpy)

1950 AD 2.5 Billion (2.55 times the population in 150 years; 10 million bpy)

1987 AD 5 Billion (2 times the population in 37 years; 67 million bpy)

2000 AD 6.6 Billion (1.32 times the population in 13 years; 123 million bpy)

2030 AD 8.3 Billion

2050 AD 9.6 Billion

"...democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears."

-Isaac Asimov

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population for more information

Puerto Rico before the Industrial Revolution

2000 BC – Ortoroid peoples reach Puerto Rico

430 BC – Cedrosan Saladoid peoples reach Puerto Rico

1200 AD – Classic Tainos emerge as dominant Indian tribe in Puerto Rico

1493 - Christopher Columbus discovers Puerto Rico; 200,000 Tainos inhabit the island; gold mining begins.

1508 - Formal Spanish colonization begins.

1509 – “Repartimiento” begins (a system of using the indigenous population as indentured labor). This caused the demise of 80% of the Indian population within the next three years.

1513 - Spain brings first African slaves to the island as chattel.

1530 - Sugar becomes the most important agricultural product. Census reports 369 Spanish men, 57 Spanish women, 1,537 Taino Indians and 4,227 black slaves living on the island.

1553 – Puerto Rico exports 24,000 pounds of sugar to Spain.

1570 - Gold mines are depleted by the Spaniards.

1590’s – Sugar production in Puerto Rico amounted to nearly 400,000 pounds.

1598 - Ginger emerges as the primary cash crop.

1765 – Census states 39,846 Spanish settlers, 5,037 black slaves

1778 – Agriculture in Puerto Rico was greatly stimulated as the result of a Royal Decree issued by the King of Spain, allowing foreign Catholic laborers to immigrate to the Island, where lands were given to them.

The Beginning of the Environmental debate: the 18^th and 19^th centuries

The Industrial Revolution (1750 – 1850) caused a global shift away from an agrarian economy that relied on animals, back-breaking manual labor and simple tools to an industrial economy based on machinery and mass production by the introduction of the steam engine in 1769, the power loom in 1783, and the cotton gin in 1793.

The steam engine was a revolutionary technology that engendered mass transportation in Europe and North America in the form of railways and steamships, which allowed efficient movement of large quantities of people and merchandise to new markets, as well as giving birth to countless new manufacturing tools. The power loom and cotton gin created a textile industry that could, for the first time in history, address the need for affordable clothing of all of society’s strata, and the same steam engine supplied a reliable form of distribution, which allowed industry to flourish.

1800 – Census indicates 155,000 population in Puerto Rico

1815 – A “Decree of Grace” was issued by the King of Spain whereby all foreigners were admitted to Puerto Rico. For the first time in their colonial history, Puerto Ricans were allowed to trade with other nations and to import farm implements and machinery free of duty. Hundreds of Corsican, French, Lebanese, Chinese and Portuguese families arrived in Puerto Rico, along with large numbers of immigrants from Spain (mainly from Catalonia, Asturias, Galicia, the Balearic Islands, Andalucia and the Canary Islands) and numerous Spanish loyalists from Spain's former colonies in South America. Other settlers included Irish, Scots, Germans, and Italians who were granted land by Spain during the Real Cedula de Gracias de 1815.

In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature, and in 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden, which established the Transcendentalist Movement, espousing self-reliance and which considered nature a teacher and a precious resource which “mirrored the divine in all individuals” (Emerson).

1851 – International Expositions, or World's Fairs, were important business events in the 19th century, beginning with the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London. They provided major international opportunities to exhibit new trade goods and the most advanced technologies of the time.

1851 – Isaac Merritt Singer formed I.M. Singer & Company. By 1855, Singer had become the first truly multinational corporation manufacturing and mass-marketing sewing machines internationally.

1873 – The Spanish Crown abolished slavery in Puerto Rico.

1886 – The establishment of two experimental farms, one in Rio Piedras and the other in Mayagüez, inaugurated the scientific study of agriculture in Puerto Rico and led to systematized plant introduction.

1898 – 52,089 tons of sugarcane produced

1898 – After the Spanish American War, Puerto Rico becomes a possession of the United States of America.

1899, August 8 – Hurricane San Ciriaco hit Puerto Rico. One of the most destructive hurricanes in the history of the island, it resulted in several thousand deaths and provoked a major economic crisis.

1899 – The US Congress first addressed water pollution issues in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.

1899 – 953,243 inhabitants in Puerto Rico

The first half of the 20^th Century, and the rise of the Multinational Corporation

1900 – The South Porto Rico Sugar Company, a U.S. multinational corporation with sugar factories in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, is established. Within years after the Spanish-American war, several foreign companies bought most of the arable land on the island and began to grow sugar for export. This caused a concentration of land ownership and a mass migration away from rural areas and into the cities, and decades later, massive emigration to the continental US.

1900’s – Conservationist John Muir wrote Our National Parks (1901) and The Yosemite (1912), and influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to create Yosemite National Park, the first of its kind in America, and establish a series of conservation programs. He was also pivotal in the creation of the Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon National Parks. He went on to found the Sierra Club, the first group to be formed in order to save the precious and rapidly dwindling natural habitats of the west.

1902 - The opening of the United States Experiment Station in Mayagüez marked the beginning of a new era in scientific agricultural research in Puerto Rico.

1907 – The first comprehensive listing by the Union of International Associations named 185 international corporations in existence.

1910 – The Sugar Producers Association organized an experiment station in Rio Piedras which in 1914 became the Insular Experiment Station. The problem of the concentration of land ownership in Puerto Rico in foreign hands, in view of the limited area and dense population, continually raised the issue of absentee ownership. A large portion of farm land, particularly the most productive, was not available for use for local food production. This situation goes far toward explaining the social and economic extremes in Puerto Rico, the incidence of illiteracy, child labor, primitive living standards, and the wretched living conditions of farm labor families.

1913 – The Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce is formed.

1914 – The First World War caused destruction in Europe and a massive concentration of wealth, and produced many new opportunities for American enterprises to establish business operations outside the United States.

1917 – President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones Act. It gave Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship and a bill of rights and also established a locally elected Senate and House of Representatives. However, the Foraker Act still determined economic and fiscal aspects of government.

1920 – The International Chamber of Commerce was created as a confederation of national commercial associations and other business groups. It played an important consultative role in economic conferences in the interwar period and, after World War II, received consultative status with the UN.

1920’s - The development of the livestock industry in Puerto Rico had been handicapped by the use of pasture lands for sugar plantations. Several dairy farms were established in districts near cities and larger towns. But the local market could not supply the demand for fresh meat and milk, and so the island became dependent on imported foodstuffs.

1920’s – Individual industries in the US coordinated standards and activities through associations like the International Hotel Alliance (1921), the International Wool Textile Organization (1929), the International Broadcasting Union (1925), and the International Shipping Conference (1921). A large number of other associations reflected the increasing globalization of all significant areas of business activity.

1928 – The Puerto Rico Manufacturer’s Association is created

1928 – The Bureau of International Expositions was created to regulate the holding of World's Fairs.

1929 – NY Stock Exchange crash

1930’s – The Depression.

1930 – Census indicates 1,543,913 inhabitants in Puerto Rico

1930 – The U.S. enacted the very high Hawley-Smoot tariff, and rapidly countries throughout the world, even traditionally free-trade-oriented Great Britain, enacted similar protective tariffs.

1934 – 1,103,822 tons of sugar was produced in Puerto Rico and shipments valued at $70 million dollars were exported to the United States.

1936 – In Arroyo, the Central Lafayette, under French ownership for a century, was purchased by recently organized co-operatives, using funds borrowed from the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration. The land was divided among the agricultural laborers and new cane planters, and the debt paid with a portion of the income from cane brought to the grinding mill, owned co-operatively by the colonos (cane planters) and agricultural laborers. Concrete houses, small but comfortable and clean, with garden plots, were erected for the laborers.

1939 – The New York World's Fair was the last major fair before World War II

1940 – With 1.9 million inhabitants, overpopulation becomes a serious problem in Puerto Rico, having outpaced private sector growth and available jobs.

1941 – World War II is declared.

1942 –The Puerto Rico Industrial Development Co. was created.

1944 – The United States enters the war, and the Bretton Woods Conference established rules for trade and international economic relations in the postwar period.

1945 – End of the Second World War. The International Monetary Fund was created. The Marshall Plan is created to help reconstruct Europe.

1946 – The first native governor, Jesus T. Piñero, is appointed by the United States.

1946 – The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now the World Bank) began operations to stabilize currency and international financial relations.

1948 – The International Union for the Protection of Nature founded in Fontainebleau, France, later renamed The World Conservation Union, a unique partnership of governments and NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) that addressed conservation of natural resources.

1948 – Operation Bootstrap goes into effect in Puerto Rico and shifts economic priorities from agriculture to labor-intensive manufacturing industries producing export goods.

1949 – The United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources was held in Lake Success, New York. It was the first major UN meeting on natural resource problems.

Aldo Leopold introduced the concept that our environment was directly tied to our survival. He stated that conservation called for an ethical approach to life and business based on respect for the environment. He published “The Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac in 1949.

The 1950’s, and the proliferation of multinational corporations

1950’s – More than a thousand international organizations were in operation by the mid-fifties. In those industries involving production of mass consumer goods or new advanced technologies, there was a significant internationalization of enterprise. Ford and General Motors led in internationalizing the automobile industry. Philips Electrical (originally Dutch), Courtaulds in synthetic fibers, and the German I. G. Farben chemical trust were other emerging multinational corporations. In some major industries, Cartels, or groups of large companies that coordinated their efforts, emerged as an important form of multinational economic enterprise. Major cartels emerged in the chemical, steel, and synthetic fibers industries. The most successful was the oil cartel, in which the seven largest oil companies in the world, led by Standard Oil (New Jersey), Royal Dutch–Shell, and Anglo-Persian (now British Petroleum), set conditions of pricing and production for most of the world's oil industry. Cartels flourished in the first half of the 20th century but became less important as a result of the transformations of the global economy created by postwar political developments. However, by then, the large multinational corporation had emerged as a very important part of the global economy. See Corporate Watch http://www.corpwatch.org/ ,

the Directory of Transnational Corporations http://www.endgame.org/dtc/directory.html , The Elusive Saviors: Transnational Corporations and Sustainable Development, http://www.xs4all.nl/~contrast/elusive ,

The Global Policy Forum http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/index.htm ,

The Multinational Monitor Online http://multinationalmonitor.org/ ,

OneWord, http://www.oneworld.net/guides/TNCs/front.shtml ,

Transnational Corporations Observatory http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/ .

1950 – Census indicates 2,210,703 people live in Puerto Rico

1952 – Luis Muñoz Marin becomes the first locally elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico becomes a U.S. Commonwealth under a new constitution based upon the U.S. model.

1954 – Harrison Brown publishes The Challenge of Man’s Future in the US; the book develops the themes that 30 years later were to be thought of as “Sustainable Development”.

1956 Mercury is released into Minimata Bay, Japan. One person dies, thousands are poisoned.

1958 The first UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva approves draft conventions on environmental protection.

1958 – The Brussels Exposition, first World’s Fair after the Second World War.

The 1960’s: A Growing Concern over the Environment

1961 The World Wildlife Fund is created in Morges, Switzerland. It will become a leading NGO in international conservation.

1962 – Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring”, which catalogued the devastating impact of toxins and pollutants on the environment and caused society to reevaluate their impressions of the limits of our ecosystems. Her descriptions of the dangers of agricultural pesticides made clear that the survival of all species on earth depends on the well-being of the environment in which they live. This one book created a widely dispersed grassroots movement known as the Environmental Movement throughout the Unites States.

1963 – Creation of the International Biological Program. This ten-year study analyzed environmental damage and the biological and ecological mechanisms through which it occurs. In creating a large body of data, it laid the foundation for the science of environmentalism. http://www7.nationalacademies.org/archives/International_Biological_Program.html

1963 – US Congress passes the first Clean Air Act to curb pollutant emmissions from smokestacks from endangering the surrounding habitat.

1966 The first photos of “Spaceship Earth” taken by the US Lunar Orbiter, revealing the finite nature of the biosphere. The pictures became a powerful symbol for the ecology movement.

1967 – The US Congress passes the Air Quality Act, with further protections and amendments to the Clean Air Act.

1967 The Torrey Canyon oil tanker runs aground and spills 117,000 tons of oil into the North Sea near Cornwall in the United Kingdom. The massive local pollution helps prompt legal changes to make ship owners liable for all spills.

1967 - The Environmental Defense Fund forms to pursue legal solutions to environmental damage. EDF's founders go to court to stop the Suffolk County Mosquito Control Commission from spraying DDT on the marshes of Long Island.http://www.edf.org

1968 - Paul Ehrlich publishes "Population Bomb" on the connection between human population, resource exploitation and the environment.

1968 - Experts from around the world meet for the first time at the UN Biosphere Conference in Paris, France, to discuss global environmental problems, including pollution, resource loss, and wetlands destruction.

1968 - The Club of Rome, led by Italian industrialist Aurrelio Peccei and Scottish scientist Alexander King, is established by 36 European economists and scientists. Its goal is to pursue a holistic understanding of and solutions to the world’s problems. It commissioned a study of global proportions to model and to analyze the dynamic interactions between industrial production, population, environmental damage, food consumption and natural resource usage. http://www.clubofrome.org/

1968 - Intergovernmental Conference for Rational Use and Conservation of the Biosphere (UNESCO) held a forum for early discussions of the concept of ecologically sustainable development.

1969 - Friends of the Earth forms as a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the planet from environmental degradation; preserving biological, cultural, and ethnic diversity; and empowering citizens to have an influential voice in decisions affecting the quality of their environment -- and their lives. www.foe.org/

1969 - USA passes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) creating the first national agency for environmental protection - the Environmental Protection Agency, whose purpose it was to monitor the environmental impact of industry on the environment. http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/Nepa/regs/nepa/nepaeqia.htm

The 1970’s, and the rise of the Environmental Movement

1970 - Natural Resources Defense Council forms with a professional staff of lawyers and scientists to push for comprehensive U.S. environmental policy. www.nrdc.org/

1970 – The US Congress passes the Clean Air Act Extension

1970 - Senator Gaylord Nelson (D., Wis) founded the first Earth Day to educate the public about the impact of industrial processes on the environment. An estimated twenty million people participated in peaceful demonstrations all across the USA.

1971 - Greenpeace is founded in Canada and launches an aggressive agenda to stop environmental damage through civil protests and non-violent interference. www.greenpeace.org/

1971 - International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is established in Britain with a mandate to seek ways to make economic progress without destroying the environmental resource base. www.iied.org/

1971 - Founex Report is prepared by a panel of experts meeting in Founex, Switzerland calling for the integration of environmental and development strategies. The report notes that while concern about the environment sprang from the production and consumption patterns of the industrialized world, many of the environmental problems in the world are a result of underdevelopment and poverty. This acknowledgement was a factor in persuading many developing countries to attend the 1972 Stockholm Conference. www.southcentre.org/publications/conundrum/conundrum-04.htm

1971 – The Polluter Pays Principle - OECD Council says that those causing pollution should pay the costs. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Polluter_pays_principle

1972 - Researchers report that three-quarters of the acid rain falling in Sweden is caused by pollution originating in other countries.

1972 - Rene Dubos and Barbara Ward write "Only One Earth". The book sounds an urgent alarm about the impact of human activity on the biosphere but also expresses optimism that a shared concern for the future of the planet could lead humankind to create a better common future.

1972 – The US Congress passes the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments, more commonly known as the Clean Water Act (CWA), significantly expanding and strengthening earlier legislation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act

1972 – The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, internationalized environmental concerns and focused on the acid rain problem of northern Europe. That was to be the first step in what we now know as the Sustainability Revolution. The Conference sought to establish links between environmental concerns and economic issues such as development, growth and employment for the first time. As a result, the UN created the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), whose mission, quoting from its Charter, is to “provide leadership and encourage partnerships in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and people to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.” http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=97

1972 - The Values Party was formed in New Zealand as the world's first national green party.

1972 - Environmental Liaison Centre International is founded to integrate NGO input into UNEP.

1972 - Environnement et Développement du Tiers-Monde (ENDA -- Environment and Development Action in the Third World) is established as a joint environmental training program between UNEP, IDEP, and SIDA to provide courses and training about environment and development in Africa. In 1978 it refocuses, becoming an international voluntary non-profit organization concerned with empowerment of local peoples, elimination of poverty, research and training for sustainable development at all levels, and engaging decision makers to define and implement development which benefits the most people. http://www.enda.sn/

1972 - Club of Rome publishes "Limits to Growth". The report is extremely controversial because it predicts dire consequences if growth is not slowed. Northern countries criticize the report for not including technological solutions while Southern countries are incensed because it advocates abandonment of economic development. The ensuing debate heightens awareness of the interconnections between several well-known global problems.

1972 – The OPEC oil crisis fuels the Limits to Growth debate

1973 - European Environmental Action Programme was the first attempt to synthesize a single environmental policy for the European Economic Community (EEC). http://ec.europa.eu/environment/newprg/index.htm

1973 - USA enacts the Endangered Species Act to better safeguard, for the benefit of all citizens, the nation's heritage in fish, wildlife, and plants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_Species_Act

1973 - The Chipko Movement was begun by women living in Himalayan villages in Northern India to protect trees from commercial logging, which has begun to cause severe deforestation, soil erosion, and flooding in the region. The actions of the women of the community influenced both forestry and women's participation in environmental issues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipko_movement

1973 - The Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) is adopted to restrict the release of pollutants from ocean-going vessels. It regulates dumping and accidental spills of oil, garbage, plastics, and sewage. http://www.imo.org/Conventions/contents.asp?doc_id=678&topic_id=258

1974 - Rowland and Molina release seminal work on CFC’s in Nature magazine. They calculated that if human use of CFC gases was to continue at an unaltered rate the ozone layer would be depleted after some decades. Laws banning the use of CFC’s greatly reduced their use.

1974 – The Bariloche Foundation publishes "Limits to Poverty". It is the South's response to "Limits to Growth" and calls for growth and equity for the Third World. http://www.fundacionbariloche.org.ar/english/cambioclimatico.htm

1975 - Worldwatch Institute is established in the USA to raise public awareness of global environmental threats to the point where it will support effective policy responses. http://www.worldwatch.org/

1975 - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) comes into effect. http://www.cites.org/

1976 - Participants at the UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, agree that adequate shelter is a basic human right and draw up 65 recommendations for countries about how to provide it.First global meeting to link the environment and human settlement

1977 – Congress passes the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1977.

1977 - The Greenbelt Movement starts in Kenya. It is based on community tree-planting to prevent desertification.

1977 - UN Conference on Desertification is held, predicting the expansion of some desert areas around the world.

1977 - Indigenous protestors in the Philippines force the World Bank to withdraw its financial backing for the construction of four large dams along the Chico River. The effort to block the projects energizes a global movement to protect rivers and resist new dam building.

1978 – PRMA publishes EcoNews for the first time, publishing economic data for local manufacturers.

1978 – The oil tanker the Amoco Cadiz, transporting 227,000 tons of crude oil, ran aground on Portsall Rocks, on the Breton coast. The entire cargo spilled out as the breakers split the vessel in two, progressively polluting 218 miles of shoreline from Brest to Saint Brieuc, France.

1978 also saw the contamination of Love Canal (President Jimmy Carter declared a State of Emergency) and highlighted the problems of disposing of toxic wastes, and Congress went on to create the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund. The Superfund legislation identifies hazardous waste sites and allows individuals negatively affected by them to sue the federal government. Superfund created a new industry: waste clean-up and restoration services, and opened the debate on who should be accountable and responsible for toxic waste clean-up.

1979: Equipment malfunction and human error lead to a partial reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middleton, Pennsylvania. It is the most serious accident ever involving a U.S. commercial nuclear facility.

1979 – The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution is adopted. http://www.unece.org/env/lrtap/

1979 - Banking on the Biosphere - IIED report on practices of nine multilateral development agencies, including the World Bank, sets the stage for reforms which are still underway.

The 1980’s: Contemporary Environmentalism and the rise of Sustainability

1980 - World Conservation Strategy released by IUCN. The strategy defines development as "the modification of the biosphere and the application of human, financial, living and non-living resources to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of human life". The section "Towards Sustainable Development" identifies the main agents of habitat destruction as poverty, population pressure, social inequity and the terms of trade. It calls for a new International Development Strategy with the aims of redressing inequities, achieving a more dynamic and stable world economy, stimulating accelerating economic growth and countering the worst impacts of poverty. http://cms.iucn.org/

1980 - Independent Commission on International Development Issues publishes "North : South - A Programme for Survival" (the first Brandt Report). The Brandt Report is a broad-based analysis of the state of the world, with an emphasis on the failure of the world economic system to provide social and economic equality for humanity. It asks for a re-assessment of the notion of development and calls for a new economic relationship between North and South. http://www.stwr.net/content/view/43/83/

1980 - US President Jimmy Carter authorizes a study which led to the "Global 2000" Report. This report recognizes biodiversity for the first time as a critical characteristic in the proper functioning of the planetary ecosystem. It further asserts that the robust nature of ecosystems is weakened by species extinction.

1980 – Robert Allen published “How to Save the World” and a year later Lester Brown tackled the subject of economic development versus the earth’s ecological limits in his “Building a Sustainable Society”, stressing the need to integrate economic and ecological issues.

1981 - The AIDS virus is detected in clinical studies. In the following two decades, the virus rapidly spreads throughout the world, killing millions of people and undermining development efforts in many countries.

1981 - World Health Assembly unanimously adopts a Global Strategy for Health for All by the year 2000. It affirmed that the major social goal of governments and the World Health Organization should be the attainment of a level of health by all people of the world that would permit them to lead socially and economically productive lives. http://www.who.org/

1982 - The United Nations World Charter for Nature adopts the principle that every form of life is unique and should be respected irrespective of its value to humankind. It also calls for an understanding of our dependence on natural resources and the need to control of our exploitation of them. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm

1982 - World Resources Institute established in the U.S. Begins publishing annual assessments of World Resources in 1986. http://www.wri.org/

1982 - The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes material rules concerning environmental standards as well as enforcement provisions dealing with pollution of the marine environment.

1982 - Mexico, and later other developing and Eastern bloc countries, comes close to defaulting on $250 billion in international loans, sparking a debt crisis. Lenders extend additional loans to these countries to prevent default in a way that sets the stage for future debt disasters.

1983 - The United Nations created The World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/42/ares42-187.htm

1983 - Australia adopts a National Conservation Strategy to implement the objectives of the World Conservation Strategy.

1983 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences release reports concluding that the build-up of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" in the Earth's atmosphere will likely lead to global warming.

1983 - Development Alternatives is established in India as a non-profit research, development and consultancy organization. It fosters a new relationship between people, technology and the environment in the South in order to attain the goal of sustainable development. http://www.dai.com/

1984 - An estimated 10,000 people are killed and 300,000 injured when Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, leaks 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas into the air and sends a cloud of poison into the surrounding city of 1 million. http://www.bhopal.net/

1984 - Worldwatch Institute published its first “State of the World” report, which provided a global perspective on the relation between the world’s resource base and the dynamics of economic development. The report monitors changes in the global resource base, focusing particularly on how the changes affect the economy. It concludes that "we are living beyond our means, largely by borrowing against the future." http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1043 (2004 edition)

1984 - Drought in Ethiopia Between 250,000 and 1 million people die from starvation.

1984 - Third World Network is founded during an international conference "The Third World: Development or Crisis?" which was organized by the Consumer's Association of Penang. TWN's role is to be the activist voice of the South on issues of economics, development, and environment. http://www.twnside.org.sg/

1985 - Responsible Care®, an initiative of the Canadian Chemical Producers, provides a code of conduct for chemical producers, which is now adopted in many countries. http://www.ccpa.ca/

1985 - Antarctic ozone hole discovered by British and American scientists.

1985 – In Villach, Austria, a meeting called by World Meteorological Society, UNEP and International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) reports on the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They predict global warming.

1986 - IUCN Conference on Environment and Development held in Ottawa. Meeting participants define sustainable development as the emerging paradigm derived from two closely related paradigms of conservation 1) one reacting against the laissez-faire economic theory which considers living resources as externalities and free goods and 2) one based on the concept of resource stewardship.

1986 - Accident at nuclear station in Chernobyl generates a massive toxic radioactive explosion. One of the four reactors at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes and completely melts down. The explosion sends radioactive particles as far away as Western Europe, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to high levels of radiation.

1987 - "Our Common Future" (the second Brundtland Report) is published. It ties problems together and, for the first time, gives some direction for comprehensive global solutions. It also popularizes the term "Sustainable Development". Strategic imperatives include reviving growth, changing the quality of growth, meeting essential human needs, ensuring a sustainable level of population, conserving and enhancing the resource base, reorienting technology and managing risk, and merging environment and economics in decision making. http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm

1987 - The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is designed to reduce depletion of the ozone layer. It sets limits on production and consumption of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) and halons. It was the first global treaty to protect every single human being on the planet.

1987 – World population reaches 5 billion

1988 - Chico Mendes, Brazilian rubber tapper fighting the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is assassinated. Representing 70,000 rubber tappers, Mendes had advocated the sustainable use of Brazil's forests as extractive reserves rather than clearing them for timber and grazing. Scientists use satellite photos to document what the Amazon fires are doing to the rainforest. http://www.chicomendes.com/

1988 - Biologist E.O. Wilson publishes Biodiversity, a collection of reports from the National Forum on Biodiversity in the United States. The book details how humans are rapidly undermining the Earth's ability to support its diversity of species.

1988 - The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is established with three working groups to assess the most up-to-date scientific, technical and socio-economic research in the field of climate change. http://www.ipcc.ch/

1988 - Centre for Our Common Future is founded in Geneva to act as a focal point for follow-up activities to the Brundtland Report. http://www.worldinbalance.net/agreements/1987-brundtland.html

1989 - Stockholm Environment Institute is established as an independent foundation for carrying out global and regional environmental research.

1989 - The Exxon Valdez tanker runs onto a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, dumping 76,000 tons of crude oil. The spill, the largest ever in the United States, covers more than 3,200 miles of pristine coastline with oil and kills more than 250,000 birds. The aftermath of the spill highlights the inefficiency of rescue and salvage planning for oil spills, and generates better future strategies from the oil companies and stronger community participation. After the spill, the Alaska state government set up a trust fund that pays dividends to each resident, as well as saves part of the money for future use.

1989 - The Basel Convention, which controls movement of hazardous wastes across international borders, is adopted to prevent "toxic traders" from shipping hazardous waste from industrial to developing countries.

The 1990’s: the Beginnings of Corporate Involvement in “Green Business”

1990 - The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe is established as an independent, non-profit organization to assist environmental nongovernmental organizations, governments, businesses, and other environmental stakeholders to fulfill their role in a democratic, sustainable society.

1990 - International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) established

in Canada. Begins publishing the Earth Negotiations Bulletin in 1992. http://www.iisd.org/

1990 – Congress passes the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990. It proposed emissions trading, added provisions for addressing acid rain, ozone depletion and toxic air pollution, and established a national permits program.

1991 – WWF, UNEP and IUCN publish Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living, setting forth 132 actions required to increase human well-being and halt the Earth’s declining capacity to support life.

1991- The Canadian east coast cod fishery collapses when only 2,700 tons of spawning biomass is left after a harvest of 190,000 tons. The government imposes a ten year moratorium on fishing, and all Canadian fishermen of the Maritime Provinces are given monthly salaries to stop fishing.

http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/cbio/cancod.html

1991- Hundreds of oil fires burn out of control in Kuwait for months following the first Gulf War. The Iraqi army, retreating from its occupation of Kuwait, destroys tankers, oil terminals, and oil wells, setting many on fire. The fighting and sabotage leak approximately 1.25 million tons of oil, the worst oil spill in history.

1992 - U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) otherwise known as the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. It results in the publication of Agenda 21, a blueprint for sustainable development that calls for improving the quality of life on Earth; also the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Rio Declaration, and a statement of non-binding Forest Principles.

1992 - The Business Council for Sustainable Development publishes Changing Course which establishes business interests in promoting Sustainable Development (SD) practices.

http://www.wbcsd.ch/

1992 - The Convention on Climate Change sets non-binding carbon dioxide reduction goals for industrial countries (to 1990 levels by 2000). The final treaty calls for avoiding human alteration of the climate, but falls far short of expectations, largely due to lack of support from the United States.

1992 IISD releases its first publication, Business Strategy for Sustainable Development: Leadership and Accountability for the '90s. The work develops into a comprehensive program aimed at corporate decision-makers, with analysis of corporate SD reporting, and initiatives on green standards and eco-labeling.

1992 IISD introduces a focus on poverty eradication and its relationship to SD as an underlying theme in its research. Community-based research emerges as an approach to understanding poverty, environmental change and other related issues. The Community Adaptation and Sustainable Livelihoods program addresses rural people's livelihoods, and tools needed to build a sustainable future in poverty-ridden areas.

1992 - The Earth Council is established in Costa Rica as a focal point for facilitating follow-up and implementation of the agreements reached at the Earth Summit, and linking national SD councils. http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/

1992 - Bringing together 1,700 scientists from 69 countries, the Union of Concerned Scientists issues its World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, which states that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course."

1992 - The Convention on Biological Diversity mandates that countries formulate strategies to protect biodiversity and that industrialized countries help implement these strategies in developing countries.

1993 - EarthEnterprise is launched to encourage entrepreneurs, innovators and investors to create wealth by meeting sustainable development needs. The first IISD Partnership Conference brings together about 100 entrepreneurs and investors in Winnipeg. http://www.iisd.org/pdf/eetoolkit.pdf

1993 - The Great Plains Program convenes stakeholders across the Canadian and American prairies to articulate their needs on community and livelihood sustainability issues. An initial study looks at sustainability from a scientific, historical and economic perspective. Later work produces an SD policy framework tool that is successfully applied in several cases in Canada and the USA.

1993 - The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) provides SD advice to the State Council. Within a year IISD begins cooperation on Trade and Environment, with a decade-long period of policy support as China prepares to enter the WTO.

1993 – The President’s Council for Sustainable Development is announced by President Bill Clinton. They publish Sustainable America: A New Consensus for Prosperity, Opportunity, and a Healthy Environment for the Future in 1996. http://clinton2.nara.gov/PCSD/

1993 – First meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development established to ensure effective follow-up to UNCED, enhance international cooperation and rationalize intergovernmental decision-making capacity. http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/

1993 – World Conference on Human Rights: Governments re-affirmed their international commitments to all human rights and appoint the first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

http://www.unhchr.ch/

1994 - Global Environment Facility. Billions of aid dollars restructured to give more decision-making power to developing countries. The GEF affirms its commitment to fund projects that are country-driven, based on national priorities and reflect the incremental costs of meeting international commitments that achieve global environmental benefits. http://www.gefweb.org/

1994 - North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enters into force. A side agreement – the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation – establishes the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). http://www.cec.org/ Many environmental activists oppose the trade agreements because they do not include environmental and social justice concerns in their agreements, and actually pose more of a threat to indigenous peoples in the third world.

1994 – The Foreign Trade Board is established in Puerto Rico to promote foreign business and investment.

1994 The Arid-Semi-arid Land Project, a Sustainable Livelihoods Project, focuses on nine communities in five sub-Saharan African countries. Within each country, field researchers work with the communities to identify ways in which livelihood systems have changed and can be improved.

1994 IISD forms a new Business Advisory Group, and continues efforts started at the Rio Earth Summit to form links with the new World Business Council on Sustainable Development. Website http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?MenuID=1 and case studies http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=ODY

1994 - The World Conservation Union (IUCN) publishes a revised Red List of endangered and threatened species, creating a world standard for gauging threats to biodiversity. Later versions report that one in four mammal species and one in eight bird species faces a high risk of extinction in the near future.

1994 - IISD publishes Action Plan: Protecting the Environment and Reducing Canada's Deficit. It details the need to increase taxes for polluters, reduce taxes that undermine employment rates, and eliminate the subsidies that create environmental harm.

1994 - The Winnipeg Principles, a set of guidelines to promote trade policies and practices that serve sustainable development needs, are published. The principles are: efficiency and cost internalization; equity; environmental integrity; importance of a local value-chain; international cooperation; science and precaution; and openness.

1994 - The new EarthEnterprise Tool Kit, containing contact information and practical information to help businesses achieve sustainability, is released as a book, and the intense interest in the program leads to the second EarthEnterprise Forum in Ontario. http://www.iisd.org/pdf/eetoolkit.pdf

1994 – The UN holds the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, which recommends actions for improving reproductive health services and the position of women in society that go far beyond previous population meetings.

1995 - The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria brings international attention to the linkages between human rights, environmental justice, security and economic growth. Writer and activist Saro-Wiwa was hanged for leading the Ogoni people's protests against environmental destruction of their lands by Royal Dutch/Shell, Chevron, and other international oil companies.

http://www.mosopcanada.org/text/ken.html

1995 - The World Trade Organization is established, and formally recognizes trade, environment and development linkages. http://www.wto.org/

1995 World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen, Denmark, clearly sets out an agenda for social reforms focusing on hitherto neglected issues like participation, inclusion and empowerment of poor and disadvantaged groups.

1996 - Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and Pete Myers publish Our Stolen Future, which warns of reproductive threats to animals—including humans—due to the release of billions of pounds of synthetic chemicals into the environment, many of which mimic and disrupt natural hormones.

1996 - Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China highlights the plight of women worldwide, and sets out a policy agenda for addressing the main problems. The resolution includes calls for taking action to reduce soil erosion, deforestation, and other forms of environmental degradation that often leave women and their families impoverished.

1996 - The International Organization for Standards releases the new comprehensive ISO 14001 environmental management standards. Organizations that adopt these standards commit to minimizing harmful effects on the environment caused by their activities, and to achieving continual improvement of their environmental performance. http://www.iso14000-iso14001-environmental-management.com/ , and a summary http://www.praxiom.com/iso-14001-2004.htm

1996 - The Summit of the Americas on Sustainable Development held in Santa Cruz,

Bolivia. This Summit identified the joint efforts needed to reach SD in the hemisphere. http://www.summit-americas.org/boliviaplan.htm

1997 - The Kyoto Protocol strengthens the 1992 Climate Change Convention by mandating that industrial countries cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 6 to 8 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But the protocol's controversial emissions-trading scheme, as well as debates over the role of developing countries, clouds its results.

1997 - Forest fires around the world burn more than 5 million hectares of forests and other land. More tropical forests are burned in 1997 than in any other year in recorded history.

1997 – The UN General Assembly review of Earth Summit progress acts as a sober reminder that little progress has been made in implementing the Earth Summit’s Agenda 21 and ends without significant new commitments.http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/csd/ungass.html

1998 – Controversy over genetically modified organisms. Global environmental and food security concerns raised over genetically modified (GM) food products. The European Union blocks import of GM crops from North America and farmers in developing countries rebel against “terminator technology,” a seed that will only germinate once. http://scope.educ.washington.edu/gmfood/

1998 - Unusually severe weather. China experiences worst floods in decades; two-thirds

of Bangladesh underwater for several months from torrential monsoons; Hurricane Mitch destroys parts of Central America; 54 countries hit by floods and 45 by drought; Earth hits highest global temperature ever recorded. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/1998/ann/extremes98.html

1998 –Environmental groups, social activists and concerned citizens effectively lobby against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). That, along with disagreement by governments over the scope of the exceptions being sought, led to the demise of the negotiations.

http://www.citizen.org/trade/issues/mai/articles.cfm?ID=1021

1998 - The ozone hole over Antarctica grows to 25 million square kilometers. (The previous record, set in 1993, was 3 million square kilometers.)

1999 - The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development releases its report “Our Forests...Our Future”. This independent Commission, after extensive hearings with stakeholders worldwide, concluded that the world’s material needs from forests can be satisfied without jeopardizing them by changing the way we value and manage forests. http://www.iisd.org/wcfsd/default.htm

1999 - Launch of the first global Sustainability Index tracking leading corporate sustainability practices worldwide. Called the Dow Jones Sustainability Group

Indexes, this financial analysis tool provides a bridge between those companies implementing sustainability principles and investors looking for trustworthy information to guide sustainability-focused investment decisions. http://www.sustainabilityindex.com/

1999 -Third World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference held in Seattle,

Washington, U.S. Thousands of demonstrators take to the streets to protest the negative effects of globalization and growth of global corporations, and along with deep conflicts among delegates inside scuttle the negotiations. The first of many such anti-globalization protests, they signal a new era of confrontation between disaffected stakeholders and those in power. http://www.iisd.org/trade/wto/seattleandsd.htm

1999 – World population reaches 6 billion people

The New Millenium

“History will be our judge, but what is written is up to us: who we are, who we’ve been, what we want to be remembered for. We can’t say our generation didn’t know how to do it. We can’t say our generation couldn’t afford to do it. And we can’t say our generation didn’t have reason to do it. It’s up to us. We can choose to shift the paradigm.”

--Bono, foreword in The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

2000 – Census indicates 3,808,610 people living in Puerto Rico, 250 million in the US and 6.6 billion in the world

2000 – George W. Bush becomes President of the United States

2000 – Increasing urbanization. Almost half of the world’s population now lives in cities that occupy less than two per cent of the Earth’s land surface, but use 75 per cent of Earth’s resources. http://www.aaas.org/international/atlas/contents/pages/population06.html

2000- The Second World Water Forum and Ministerial is held in The Netherlands and attended by 5,700 participants from all parts of the world and 120 ministers. It results in the Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the 21st Century. The World Commission on Water for the 21st Century also releases its “World Water Vision” for the sustainable use and management of water resources. http://www.worldwaterforum.net/

2000 - The UN Biosafety Protocol implements a more precautionary approach to trading genetically altered crops and organisms, and requires exporters to receive prior consent from destination countries before shipping genetically altered crops.

2000 - The Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) requires the complete phaseout of nine persistent, highly toxic pesticides and limits the use of several other chemicals, including dioxins, furans, and PCBs.

2000 – The Millennium Summit of the United Nations is held to assess the role of the United Nations in the twenty-first century. Over 150 of heads of state ratify the UN Millennium Declaration. Leaders also resolve to meet a number of “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs), which include halving the proportion of people living in poverty and hunger by 2015, ensuring primary schooling for all children, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.

2000 - Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus Monkey declared extinct. It is the first extinction in several centuries of a member of the Primate Order, to which human beings belong. According to the IUCN Red Book, 11,046 species are threatened with extinction. http://wcs.org/news/wcsreports/6989/#story4

2001 – EPA measures Air Pollution for the Municipality of San Juan as follows: 1,851 tons of carbon dioxide, 4,550 tons of nitrogen oxide, 253 tons of volatile organic compounds, 639 tons of sulfur dioxide, 8 tons of ammonia, 166 tons of PM2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, and 184 tons of PM 10, or particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometers, for a total emissions into the San Juan air of 7,486 tons. This amount is small compared to other more industrialized counties, but it does account for the black soot people find in their living rooms if they leave their windows open. Without the benefit of the trade winds, San Juan would be covered in smog. http://www.epa.gov/air/data/emisdist.html?st~PR~Puerto%20Rico

2001– 9/11 – Terrorists bomb the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the first serious attack on U.S. soil since 1814, thus marking the end of an era of unhindered economic expansion. Repercussions are felt throughout the world, as stock markets and economies stumble and the United States gears up for a war on terrorism with its first target being terrorists’ networks in Afghanistan.

2001 – Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held in Doha, recognizes the importance of environment-development linkages via trade, and resolves to address them.

2001 - The IPCC releases a report citing "new and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." The study projects that at current rates, temperatures will increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.

2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush announces that the United States will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saying that the country cannot afford to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He also begins a massive rollback of environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, with direct benefits to industries in the energy sector.

2001 - The $3 billion Human Genome Project reports that the human gene count is only about 30,000—about the same as that of a weed or a mouse—not 100,000 as expected. The finding adds to the concerns about the wisdom of genetic manipulation, including inserting genes into food crops and re-engineering animals or humans.

2001 - Study links nearly 2,000 cases of thyroid cancer to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident—the largest group of human cancers associated with a known cause and date.

2001 - UN reports that tropical countries lose more than 15 million hectares of forests a year to agriculture, logging, and other threats.

2001 - 116 countries vote for a new International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, which gives farmers the right to save, trade, and sell seeds and limits biotech patents on plant genes.

2001 - Scientists warn that native maize in Mexico has suffered genetic pollution through contact with US bioengineered corn.

2001 - UN warns that the world’s reservoirs are losing storage capacity as deforestation causes erosion and sedimentation behind dams.

2001 - Pathbreaking UN Agreement for the Conservation and Management of Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks enters into force, laying the ground rules for fisheries in international waters.

2002 – President George W. Bush announced the Clear Skies Initiative, a market-based cap-and-trade approach to conservation which intended to legislate power plant emissions caps without specifying the specific methods used to reach those caps. The Initiative would reduce the cost and complexity of compliance and lessen the need for litigation. The law would reduce air pollution controls, including those of the original Clean Air Act, including caps on toxins in the air and budget cuts for enforcement. It did not make it out of Committee, but President Bush went ahead and gave the EPA instructions to follow the parameters set by the Act. Among them, the presidential orders ordered the EPA to lower their benchmarks to allow 42 million more tons of pollution than the original EPA proposal; weaken controls on mercury pollution levels compared to what would be achieved by enforcing the Clean Air Act stringently; weaken the current cap on nitrogen oxide pollution levels from 1.25 million tons to 2.1 million tons, allowing 68 % more NOx pollution; delayed the improvement of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) pollution levels compared to the Clean Air Act requirements; and delayed enforcement of smog-and-soot pollution standards until 2015. Many environmentalists opposed the initiative and describe its “Clear Skies” title as cynical propaganda.

2002 - Study says half of North America’s most biodiverse regions are degraded, and 235 mammal, reptile, bird, and amphibian species are now threatened.

2002 - Report says up to 80 percent of U.S. computers and electronics collected for recycling are sent to Asia, where they threaten worker health and the environment.

2002 - Germany sets a goal of meeting at least a quarter of its domestic electricity needs with wind power by 2025.

2002 - Some 3,250 square kilometers of Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf collapse as regional temperatures warm.

2002 – Desertification - Schools in Seoul, South Korea, are closed as a huge dust cloud blows in from China’s fast-spreading deserts, some 1,200 kilometers away.

2002 - Survey finds that coral bleaching at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2002 may be the worst on record, affecting up to 60 percent of reefs.

2002 - Study says habitat conversion to agriculture and other uses costs the planet roughly $250 billion each year.

2002 - European Union ratifies the Kyoto Protocol, bringing industrial countries closer to binding reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

2002 - UN warns that a 3-kilometer-deep smog layer stretching across South Asia is modifying weather patterns, damaging agriculture, and endangering health.

2002 The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Major targets for sustainable development are agreed on, covering poverty and water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity (WEHAB). The sustainable development triangle is now widely accepted as a basic reference framework.

2002 - Oil tanker Prestige carrying 77,000 tons of oil splits apart, contaminating Spain’s Galicia coastline and unleashing public anger worldwide.

2002 - Report says the global acreage of genetically modified crops increased by 12 percent worldwide, reaching 145 million acres.

2003 - UN reports that 30 million women and children throughout Asia and Pacific have been trafficked over the past 30 years in “largest slave trade in history.”

2003 - Report says the death toll from malaria remains “outrageously high,” with more than 3,000 African children dying daily.

2003 - Scientists report industrial fishing has killed off 90 percent of the world’s biggest and most economically important fish species.

2003 – The US invades Iraq in the second Gulf War.

2003 - Gates at Three Gorges Dam are shut and China's Yangtze River starts filling the reservoir--flooding towns, farmlands, and archaeological sites, and forcing the relocation of nearly 2 million people.

2003 - Relief agencies report AIDS is fueling famine in southern Africa, where 7 million farmers have died from the epidemic.

2003 - 15 of the world’s largest mining and metal-producing companies pledge not to explore or mine in existing World Heritage sites.

2003 - Report says Amazon deforestation increased 40 percent compared with 2001, and Brazil registers second-highest figure in 15 years.

2003 - Europe adopts first Climate Emissions Trading Law, giving carbon dioxide a market value across the EU.

2003 - Scientists report Earth’s northern hemisphere has been hotter since 1980 than at any time during the past 2,000 years.

2003 - WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, collapses in disputes over trade barriers and farm subsidies, as a coalition of developing nations shifts the power balance in negotiations.

2004 - The European Union issues it’s first-ever Pollution Register—containing a wealth of data on industrial emissions and representing a “landmark event” in public provision of environmental information.

2004 - Study reports that within the past decade, war, hunting, mining, and other human pressures have wiped out 70 percent of the global population of eastern lowland gorillas—leaving fewer than 5,000 worldwide.

2004 - More than 2,000 people are killed during a week of torrential rains and flooding in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Environmentalists blame hillside deforestation for massive landslides that bury crops, animals, homes, and people.

2004 – Four hurricanes strike the state of Florida, strengthening the argument that global warming leads to more catastrophic weather events, as well as bigger individual events.

2005 – The Kyoto Protocol finally enters into force on February 16, thus marking the beginning of a new era in global efforts to combat climate change. The Protocol sets binding targets for developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels.

2005 – The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) assesses the consequences of changes in ecosystem services for human well-being, and the scientific basis for action needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to human well-being.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina strikes the Gulf Coast of the United States leaving a devastated coastline in Louisiana and Mississippi; New Orleans floods.

2006 – Census indicates 3,941,459 people live in Puerto Rico

2006 – The Millennium Development Summit is held at the UN in New York to assess progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Progress has been modest and modified targets are proposed.

2007 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases from new motor vehicles to control pollutants believed to contribute to global warming. This decision reversed a 2005 ruling that the EPA had not violated the Clean Air Act in refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and on remand the EPA must explain its reasoning either for action or inaction on the question of regulating greenhouse gases. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf

2007 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its fourth assessment report (AR4) on climate change. The Sustainomics Principle of making development more sustainable (MDMS) is clearly recognized. The report confirms that climate change policies are best addressed by integrating them within the broader framework of sustainable development strategy. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Basic_concepts_and_principles_of_sustainomics

2008 – 700 Billion dollars spent on the Iraq war so far.

Epilogue

The Knowledge Economy demands more of us, as individuals and as businesses. It demands we process more information, and be more connected to our local community as well as to our cyber-communities. Now the environment is demanding we pay attention to it as well. The connection between our environment and our economy is essential to our society’s growth. It is no longer enough to figure out a way to sell a good product. It’s imperative that we, as individuals and as business owners, begin to think of ourselves as a part of a wider, more mature society, and work in ways that allows for all of us to thrive. To do that we must broaden our horizons: not just of business possibilities and technological breakthroughs, but of consciousness for the environment and every living being in it. It will not be easy, but it must be done. To quote Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore us; then they laugh at us; then they fight us, and then we win.”

“Either we build real community -- with mass transit and local food -- or we will go down clinging to the wreckage of our privatized society.” Bill McKibben