UNEP Regional Office for Africa Newsletter

The UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were amongst the first international agreements to frame the notion of \"universality\". Since then the term has been used in various fora and processes, for example in the context of common principles and standards, of global public goods, and in the notion of leaving no one behind. Sustainable development is a universal aspiration, requiring international cooperation and joint responsibility for a greater common good.

This paper on the Rio Principle 10 and the Guidelines on the Development of National Legislation, Access to Information and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (hereafter referred to as the Bali Guidelines) describes the importance of the Principle 10 and the Bali Guidelines in the context of Africa, as well as the progress made in its implementation and existing gaps.

On September 25th 2015, the Heads of States of the UN’s 193 member states adopted the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and its 17 “Sustainable Development Goals. This is the result of two policy processes that have merged, namely the sustainable development process, which was developed following the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, and the development process, with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at its core. One of the main outcomes of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”), which was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2012, was the launch of a process to develop a set of universal goals and targets to address economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, and to merge the Rio process with the “MDG” process.