The Academic Council for the United Nations System (ACUNS) produced a "Guide to UNCED and its Documentation," which describes the negotiating process for the major agreements and highlights some of the most important documents produced during negotiations (Halpern 1993). In "Appraising the Earth Summit," Haas, Levy, and Parson (1992) evaluate UNCED as part of the broader policy process, in which the principle of sustainable development has become a central concept.
A collection of UNCED documents is available here, including those from the four PrepComs (1, 2, 3, 4); speeches by the secretary general of UNCED, Maurice Strong; versions of the major UNCED documents; and some of the national reports submitted by more than 100 countries as part of the preparatory process. UNCED took place on the 20th anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. That meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, was the first contemporary, global diplomatic gathering to address human activities in relationship to the environment. The Human Environment Conference produced a set of principles in the Stockholm Declaration and led to the founding of the United Nations Environment Programme. The report of the conference includes the Stockholm Declaration, recommendations for action, an action plan, a set of resolutions on follow-up to the conference, and a list of acronyms used .