among its member countries, the United States played an important part even if it was because of its more conservative stances; and the western European countries, outstanding among them recently re-unified Germany, the United Kingdom and France. Among the Latin American countries, the Amazonian countries deserve mention, united, as they were, under the aegis of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty [Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela], and who, at that moment, had common interests to represent. Costa Rica, Chile and Argentina were able to count on their own experienced negotiators and their traditions of active diplomacy in the sphere of the United Nations.What have been the main legacies of the Earth Summit?The Rio Declaration is masterful document because of the precision of its concepts. Its 27 principles actually consolidated the concept of Sustainable Development. Among them I would highlight the most incisive of all because of the ethical and economic dimensions it embraces, namely, Principle Five, which declares that:All states and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world.From it have stemmed the efforts to combat hunger and to formulate the right to nutrition, which, years later, has achieved significant legal-political evolution. Brazil has a praiseworthy history of progress in those directions and has served as a parameter for many developing countries, especially African and Central American countries.The Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change were important steps towards environmental protection. The Kyoto Protocol and its sub-product, the Climate Change Convention, have not evolved satisfactorily because adherence to them has not been universal, with the United States heading the resistance to the protocol and to the control over emissions that the protocol established in the form of commitments to reduce gas emissions that aggravate greenhouse effects which are the anthropogenic cause of global warming. The most recent Conference of the Parts failed to provide continuity for the commitments that expire in 2012, but did foresee a re-opening of negotiations on reduction goals and or emissions control in a defined timeframe.The Agenda 21 was the most far-reaching document to come out of the Rio 92, constituting an action programme and a working method to materialize the ideal of sustainable development. The Agenda 21 was not universally developed or universally applied, but there can be no doubt that it is one of the most complete repositories of methods for environmental protection, social justice and economic efficiency in a spirit of much needed and conscious citizenship and participation.Its economic and social aspects encompass international policy and national policies for the application of the new concepts of sustainable development, especially in developing countries in regard to strategies for combating extreme poverty, while at the same time involving both developed and developing countries in fostering changes in production and consumption patterns. The suggestions made in regard to public health and the quality of human settlements