From Rio 1992 to Rio+20: a multi-indicator analysis of the sustainable development efforts

Since 1972, governments around the world have signed a number of important declarations on sustainable development (among the others: the Stockholm Declaration in 1972, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992 and the Johannesburg Declaration in 2002) and they have adopted some important policy documents (i.e. agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro 1992, the Action Plan of Johannesburg 2002). These declarations and documents have traced an important path for governments to define policy options towards sustainable development, but not without a debate. The adoption, for example, of the "Millennium Development Goals" prepared in 2002 by the Commission for Sustainable Development of the United Nations has raised serious issues connected to the supposed lack of analysis and justification behind the chosen objectives and to a lack of appropriate measures for some of them. In 2012, the Rio+20 conference, after two years of intense and difficult negotiations, gave rise to a document of a mainly programmatic nature, titled "The Future We Want" launching numerous international and national processes on issues considered crucial for the future the Planet. One of the most important results achieved at Rio+20 is an indication to proceed to the redefinition of the current policies of sustainable development through the identification of targets defined “universal” by the Sustainable Development Goals. In this work, we analyse available data on the Rio 1992 indicators studying their evolution in a multi-indicator framework. In particular, we study the evolution of these indicators over time, identifying the countries that obtained the best results and the ones that progressed the most toward the set objectives.