Held in Stockholm in 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was the first global environmental conference and the precursor to the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The purpose of the conference was not to discuss scientific or technological approaches to environmental problems but to coordinate international policy. A 27-nation committee held four meetings in the two years preceding the conference, and in the months leading up to it they issued a report calling for "a major reorientation of man's values and redeployment of his energies and resources." In their preliminary report, the committee emphasized their political priorities: "The very nature of environmental problems—that is to say, their intricate interdependence—is such as to require political choices."

There was a remarkable lack of divisiveness, once the conference began, on most...