AS ORIGENS HISTÓRICAS DO CONCEITO DE DESENVOLVIMENTO SUSTENTÁVEL SEGUNDO AS CONFERÊNCIAS DA ONU PARA O MEIO AMBIENTE

Abstract

This study analyses the contribution of the United Nations Conferences for the Environment to the construction of the concept of sustainable development, with an emphasis on the Stockholm and Rio Conferences. The analysis of the historical formation of the sustainable development concept is based on the theoretical principles of the History of the Concepts, whose object of study is the investigation of changes on the usage and on the meaning of concepts that have political implications and whose dynamics demonstrate social changes. Because of the rise of the environmental crisis in the end of the twentieth century, the environment became a subject of international negotiations. The concept of sustainable development arose within those negotiations, derived from its original concept, the development. In the Rio Conference, the concept acquired a liberal economic approach, which conveys that economic tools that favor free market, along with technological progress, are more efficient at the promotion of the environmental sustainability. Social scientists have named this approach as ecological modernization.