The United Nations' Impact on Sustainable Development

The United Nations (UN) has the ability to act on issues of global concern, in particular, sustainability. Their actions have lead to many meetings, events and the creation of the Brundtland Report in 1987. From this publication stems one of the most cited definitions of sustainable development. Namely that "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland et al. 1987). The United Nations have also been a driving force in the creation of intergovernmental laws and conventions (Evans, 2012). In addition, they are responsible for hosting the well-known Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and all of world summits on sustainable development thereafter (Rio+10, Rio+20). The United Nations have since continued their work on sustainable development though knowledge and data gathering paired with intergovernmental collaboration (Evans, 2012). The most current example of such work is the collaboration between the World Meteorological Organization and the UN on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The United Nations does an excellent job at creating an opportunity for governments to gather and discuss issues in sustainability and sustainable development. These meet-ups generally result in the creation of laws or conventions at mentioned above.

The struggle the United Nations has is not the creation of such documents, but rather the implementation and follow through at the individual governmental level. In their article, Evans mentions several possible methods the UN could undertake to increase their impact on sustainable development (2012). Most notably, they suggest a "Shift to thought leadership and strategic level capacity building rather than project development" (Evans, 2012). I believe this is the most important of points made, as focusing on thought leadership and assisting governments in making smarter sustainable development decisions is a long-term and proactive approach rather than the typical reactive project-based approach which focuses too greatly on current issues rather than acting in regards to the big-picture.

References

Brundtland, G., Khalid, M., Agnelli, S., Al-Athel, S., Chidzero, B., Fadika, L.,& Singh, M. (1987). Our common future. The Brundtland Report.

Evans, A. (2012). The UN's Role on Sustainable Development Centre on International Cooperation. New York University.