In 1992, more than one hundred heads of state met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or International Earth Summit. This meeting was convened to address problems of environmental protection and socio-economic development. The assembled leaders discussed global issues ranging from an increase in population, global warming, protecting biodiversity, and the distribution of resources and power among different countries. They created organizations to study global warming and the extinction of plant and animal species. They also endorsed the Rio Declaration and the Forest Principles, which called for sustainable development, equitable distribution of resources, and more-thoughtful exploitation of forest resources. Still, the Earth Summit met with mixed success, with critics charging that the most advanced countries, including the United States, were trying to regulate the development of poorer countries while they themselves were the...