Wondering how long the international community has had the language and the will to talk about sustainability (both environmental and human cultural)? A lot longer than you might think!

List of World Conferences convened by the UN on environment and development:  http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/intro.html 

Key conferences:

1) Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=97&articleid=1503 

• Resulted in declaration

2) Earth Summit, Conference on Environment and Development, Rio, 1992:  http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78&articleid=1163 

• Resulted in declaration

3) World Summit for Social Development,  Copenhagen, 1995:  http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/wssd/text-version/index.html

• Resulted in  consensus on the need to put people at the centre of development (largest to date)

4) Special Session to assess the achievements since Copenhagen, 2000:   http://undesadspd.org/Home/Geneva2000.aspx

• Resulted in agreement on a range of new initiatives for social development

5) Conference on Sustainability (Rio +20), 2012:  http://www.uncsd2012.org/about.html

• Resulted in adoption of "The Future We Want": http://www.un.org/en/sustainablefuture/