News stories by Maurice Strong

The progress made since the 1972 UN Stockholm Conference in our understanding of environmental issues and our capacity to address them effectively is impressive. Unfortunately, the lack of sufficient progress in the implementation of the commitments made by governments at the 1992 Earth Summit have left us on a course that is unsustainable and indeed threatens the future of humankind, writes Maurice Strong, Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General of Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

A recent study by the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, postulates that the economic and human costs of climate change could now amount to some 125 billion dollars per year and the loss of 300,000 lives, writes Maurice Strong, who was the Secretary General of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.