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Sustainable Development in International Environmental Law

conference (Skalar 2015:28). On December 22, 1989, after the United Nations
General Assembly warned of an “ecological disaster” and Brazil proposed
to host the conference, it was decided to organize a UN Conference aimed
at developing international environmental law, taking into account the
requirements of developing countries on environment and development.
Although the interests of developed and developing countries should be
harmonized, discussions continued after the Brundtland Report that the
principle of sustainable development is an instrument of domination over
developing countries and that sustainable development does not appeal to
every state (Cordonier Segger and Khalfan 2004:19; Boyar 2020:1929). As a
consequence of the searches for reconciliation to this dilemma and the above-
mentioned Resolution of December 22, 1989, the United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development was held in Rio, Brazil in 1992,and World
Summit on Sustainable Development was organized in Johannesburg,
Republic of South Africa in 2002 (Skalar 2015:29).

c. Rio Declaration
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992 and also called the Rio Conference or the
Earth Summit, distinguishes significantly from previous conferences in terms
of content and participation (Sun 2021:333). The Conference hosted 116 state
and government heads as well as various environmentalist organisations,
businessmen and scientists, with the official representation of 179 countries,
and ended up with Rio Declaration Agenda 21, Forestry Principles, the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity (Güneş 2021:334; Gedik 2020:200). The
most important outcomes of the conference defined in the above-mentioned
documents are the emphasis that development policies should be based
on sustainable development, accepting the common but differentiated
responsibilities in order to harmonize discussions between developed and
developing countries, and promising the financial and technological support
to developing countries to alleviate the financial burden they will face due to
environmental protection (Güneş 2021:334).
In the Rio Declaration, which is a follow-up of the Stockholm Declaration
and, similarly, not legally binding, 27 principles were set out, which are
partly international practice and partly contribute to the formation of
international practices (Güneş 2021:334). With these principles, political
obligations were imposed on states regarding sustainable development.
However, the Declaration is criticized for not making an explicit or indirect
definition of sustainable development and for giving the impression that it
puts development ahead of the environment in some of its principles (Skalar

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