The One World vision is the ultimate stage of a conceptual
evolution that started decades ago. This evolution produced
several paradigm shifts that combine how we comprehend our
world, and, as a result, how we try to deal with it. Through the
70s and 80s, a technical understanding of impacts like
acidification, eutrophication or stratospheric ozone loss
prompted command and control approaches at the local and
multilateral level, in the form of substance bans and compliance
controls. In its 1987 report - Our Common Future- the World
Commission on Environment and Developmentproclaimed the
interdependency of human development and environmental progress,
captured in the notion of sustainable development, and nurtured
the elaboration of the 1992 Rio Summit’s Agenda 21. It
encouraged a system and life-cycle understanding of waste,
carbon dioxide and other emissions and of overconsumption of
water, fuels and other non-renewable resources. Environmental
progress could be achieved, despite society’s development and ec