In 1992 the largest environmental conference of the UN, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also called “Earth Summit”, was held in Rio de Janeiro. The focus of the conference was the need for a new paradigm for sustainable social development, to stop the unabated overstraining of natural resources. As a result, the concept of sustainability gained worldwide popularity, and a flood of new ideas and approaches from various scientific disciplines penetrated the global society.
