International agreements

Adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the Convention on biological diversity has now been ratified by over 160 countries and forms the backbone of many of the biodiversity activities that have taken place over the last five years. However, despite the unprecedented success of this major international convention, many questions still remain unanswered and many uncertainties prevail.

<p>In the mid-1980s, the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law, in consultation with leading experts from around the world, began to respond to a need later identified by Agenda 21 : the preparation of an integrated framework for international environmental law. It did so by elaborating a draft legally-binding global agreement on environmental conservation and sustainable development, in which both codification of existing rules as well as progressive development of the law play important roles. The result is this draft covenant.