Promises Kept

This WRI working paper analyzes the proposed "Compendium of Commitments" for the Rio +20 conference. It warns that without robust monitoring and review processes—citing the failure of many 2002 WSSD partnerships—voluntary "pledge-and-review" models risk producing business-as-usual results rather than the ambitious action required for sustainable development.

• There is growing support among governments and stakeholders to use the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) to announce specific, time-bound commitments, which would be tracked via a "Compendium of Commitments" to ensure accountability.
• Critics argue that the "Compendium of Commitments" represents a "bottom up", "pledge-and-review" approach that may fail to meet sustainable development challenges and instead result in outcomes that reflect business-as-usual.
• The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) serves as a cautionary example; while it launched over 300 "public private partnerships" negotiated from the bottom up, most did not survive or create significant change because they lacked a meaningful process for monitoring and reviewing performance.
• International climate negotiations have shown a trend moving away from the "top down" treaty obligations of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol toward the "pledges" introduced in the 2010 Cancun Agreements, although the 2011 Durban agreement suggests a continuing interest in legal instruments or outcomes with legal force.
• The WRI identifies four primary design challenges for a voluntary commitment process: ensuring commitments are specific, time-bound, measurable, and ambitious; ensuring aggregate ambition for collective actions (such as transboundary pollution); ensuring commitments regarding basic needs and human rights are sufficient; and establishing a robust accountability framework in the absence of law.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Promises Kept. https://www.wri.org/research/promises-kept

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Promises Kept. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/promises-kept.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Promises Kept |url=https://www.wri.org/research/promises-kept |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendpromises, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Promises Kept}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/promises-kept}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }