ROUNDUP 96 NOVEMBER 2002
World Summit on Sustainable Development
| Introduction | |
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After two years of intense preparations
at the national, regional and global levels, the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD) took place in Johannesburg (South Africa) from
26 August-4 September 2002, seeking to assess the implementation of
the Rio Principles and Agenda 21—adopted ten years earlier in
Rio de Janeiro at the UN Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED, also known as the Earth Summit)—and to devise a plan
for their further implementation. Opening the WSSD,
Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa and also of the Summit, said,
“Ten years after the last gathering in Rio De Janeiro in 1992,
the time has come to reflect a new on the state of the world. None
of us cannot but be dismayed at what we see...” (see Box 1).
Approximately 22,000 people attended
the Johannesburg Summit, including 100 Heads of State and Government;
10,000 delegates from Member States, intergovernmental organizations,
official observers, specialized agencies and associate members of
regional commissions; some 8,000 representatives of major group organizations
(Women, Children and Youth, Indigenous People, NGOs, Local Authorities,
Workers and Trade Unions, Business and Industry, Scientific and Technological
Communities and Farmers); as well as 4,000 media representatives accredited
to the Summit.
A large number of NGO and civil
society representatives were also in Johannesburg at the same time
to attend parallel events organized in light of the Summit, such as
the Global People’s Forum.
Meeting over a period of ten days,
the WSSD produced
three main outcomes:
As is customary at UN World Conferences
and Summits, many governments, collectively or individually, announced
their own initiatives or reaffirmed initiatives they had already taken.
Principal among these in Johannesburg were the announcements by Russia
and China that they were preparing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and
that Canada would soon put the issue before its Parliament, which
means the treaty could come into force in the very near future.
The WSSD preparatory process encompassed
a wide range of activities. Many Member States convened their own
national preparatory arrangements, while regional meetings were held
from September 2001-November 2001 in Geneva, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro,
Cairo, and Phnom Penh in an attempt to gather information on regional
trends and policy findings.
At the international level, the
tenth session of the
UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-10) acted as the
first global substantive Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting.
Four PrepComs were held to determine the Summit’s agenda and
negotiate its outcomes. The final preparatory meeting, PrepCom IV,
was held at the ministerial level in Bali (Indonesia) from 27 May-7
June 2002.
In response to the challenge facing
the WSSD of adopting an action-oriented approach to sustainable development,
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in May 2002, launched the
WEHAB initiative, focusing on the five thematic areas he identified
as key to progress at the Summit: water, energy, health, agricultural
productivity and biodiversity. At the time of the launch, negotiations
among Member States on the Plan of Implementation were well advanced
and contained sections addressing these issues. The WEHAB initiative
aimed to provide focus and impetus to action in these five key areas
by enlisting the support of the organizations of the UN system in
developing framework papers and related areas of activity. Each of
the five papers identified the key issues and challenges, including
resource requirements; took into account the existing multilateral
frameworks and agreements; and proposed a number of targeted actions
and examples of related activities.
Many Member States followed the
lead of the Secretary-General and prepared and launched in Johannesburg
initiatives consistent with the WEHAB approach. This co-ordinated
effort of the UN system enabled the WSSD to “jump-start”
the follow-up and implementation process. The
WEHAB issues also provided the structure around which the partnership
plenaries, initiative announcements and high-level roundtables were
grouped in Johannesburg.
PrepCom IV in Bali drew upon the
Chairman’s text from PrepCom III to prepare a document that aimed
to: emphasize the need for a global partnership to achieve the objectives
of sustainable development; reconfirm the need for an integrated and
strategically focused approach to the implementation of Agenda 21;
and address the main challenges and opportunities faced by the international
community. Although the session was supposed to conclude negotiation
of the implementation plan, day and night negotiations by ministers
during the last three days of the session failed to produce consensus
on crucial areas of the plan, particularly trade, finance, globalization,
governance and the Rio Principles.
During the three months between
the last meeting of PrepCom IV in Bali and the Summit itself, it was
very unclear how governments—deadlocked on over 150 paragraphs
on key issues—would successfully conclude negotiations on a Plan
of Implementation and Political Declaration. A meeting of the “Friends
of the Chair” convened by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of
South Africa on 17 July 2002 in New York suggested that Johannesburg
might see protracted negotiations over issues such as finance and
trade, targets, renewable energy, the Rio Principles of common but
differentiated responsibilities and the precautionary approach, good
governance, and human rights.
Starting two days before the official
opening of the WSSD,
governments began negotiating these and other unresolved issues. This
required establishing multiple points of negotiations that included
the Main Committee, the “Vienna process,” which acted on
behalf of the Main Committee, contact groups on the Means of Implementation
and Governance, and flexible “bubble groups” that accommodated
informal discussions on specific paragraphs. A week into negotiations
it became clear that a set of issues would have to be referred to
the ministerial-level meetings in order to be resolved. The South
African Minister of Environment, Valli Moosa, then convened such meetings,
which came to be known as the “Johannesburg Setting” for
three days.
In the end, the WSSD resulted
in an agreed Plan of Implementation, which, while not ground-breaking
in the way that Agenda 21 established a completely new framework for
the environment and development, nonetheless takes on the difficult
task of translating political agreements into concrete actionable
outcomes. Although the POI does not contain a comprehensive timetable
for implementation as some had hoped for, it did add value to policy
development in a number of areas that had not been adequately addressed
in Agenda 21, such as energy, sanitation, corporate responsibility
and accountability, and ocean fisheries. The Summit also provided
renewed political impetus and mobilized the efforts of a wide variety
of development actors.
In addition to the intergovernmental
negotiations, the WSSD comprised a broad range of activities, which
included seven thematic “partnership plenaries,” on issues
such as health, biodiversity and regional implementation; statements
by non-State entities (namely international, regional and non-governmental
organizations); a three-day Summit of Heads of State and Government;
a high-level roundtable; a host of side events; and a series of presentations
of partnership initiatives, the Type 2 outcomes.
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| Background | |
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The
WSSD took place at a time of assessment of the meaning and practice
of multilateralism, and amid many calls for a “new multilateralism.”
In the past, multilateral negotiations with consensus outcomes had
provided a policy framework for global standard setting and a follow-up
mechanism for supporting and monitoring national, regional and international
implementation. During the ten years since UNCED and through the deliberations
and reporting on Agenda 21 implementation at the annual meetings of
the UN
Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), doubts were increasingly
expressed by governments and civil society about the effectiveness
of consensus-based negotiations among Member States to move forward
the sustainable development agenda, or capture and express the progress
that had been made.
Over the decade since
UNCED and as the process of follow-up fell short of providing
the means and resources for reaching the standards and targets set,
particularly in support of developing countries’ efforts, there
was increasing reluctance to agree to global targets and timeframes.
Some developing countries expressed scepticism about agreeing to targets
and timeframes that could not be reached without additional means
of implementation, yet could become the subject of future review and
possible sanction. A multilateral mechanism to encourage the attainment
of international standards became increasingly viewed as a tool of
conditionality within a donor/recipient relationship. This development
was accompanied by a growing scepticism among some parts of civil
society, especially those focusing on advocacy and policy work, concerning
the political will of Member States and international organizations
to carry out the commitments made at global UN conferences.
Agenda 21 had been subject to
a five-year review by the UN General Assembly at a Special Session
held in June 1997. The President of the Special Session, Ambassador
Razali Ismail (Malaysia), had underscored the need for a sober assessment
and honest acknowledgment that “progress to operationalize sustainable
development remains insufficient.” He had said that lack of agreement
in many areas points to “the enormous difficulties of overcoming
short-term and vested interests that would enable concrete commitments
to specific targets and to global programmes....Since Rio we have
seen a further continuation of North-South trench politics. Governments
and NGOs from the developed world vigorously promote environmental
protection, without shouldering the greater burden of adjustment on
consumption and production patterns....Developing countries continue
to emphasize their right to [economic] development, without placing
sufficient stress on social equity and transparent participatory decision-making.
Neither approach bodes well for the future.”
A few years later, the very difficult
deliberations at the global preparatory committee meetings for the
WSSD continued to raise questions in the minds of many governments
and among civil society about the quality and value of the outcomes
being negotiated. The fragile political consensus that was crafted
in Rio in 1992 was seriously challenged by a radically changed geo-political
environment, and the failure of governments, since Rio, to fully honour
their commitments. But in the end—and despite very divergent
policy objectives being pursued in the negotiations where in many
areas consensus agreement could only be reached in very general terms—a
number of action-oriented commitments of the international community
were made in areas such as the new sanitation target and the restoration
of ocean fish stocks.
At the same time, many Member
States continued to express in their policy statements and negotiating
positions the intent and capacity to do more than what was agreed
in the official document. Illustrating this, more than three dozen
States, referred to by EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstroem
as the “coalition of the willing,” unveiled an initiative
to promote renewable energy, declaring they wanted to go beyond the
more limited commitments of the POI. Similar initiatives and agreements
in areas including water, biodiversity, and agriculture were also
announced in Johannesburg by Member States and others. The status
and significance of these agreements was not clear. Some viewed these
commitments and initiatives as the beginnings of new forms of multilateralism,
others as manifestations of its weakening.
In addition to being a Summit
to combat poverty and environmental degradation, the WSSD was also
held to address the “crisis of implementation” of the UNCED
agreements, and was charged to agree to measures to move forward with
implementation and action. “The purpose of this Summit is to
tackle what has stood in the way of us making progress, and what we
can do in order to get action, to get results,” said Nitin Desai,
WSSD Secretary-General, on 26 August 2002.
During the preparations for the
WSSD, government representatives, UN officials and NGOs had readily
agreed that the ten-year record since 1992 for implementing Agenda
21 was poor.
UNCED had launched a completely new framework for achieving sustainable
development and had developed a detailed blueprint for making significant
progress. The approach adopted for the WSSD was built on ten years
of experience in the implementation of Agenda 21, which had demonstrated
that much had been achieved at local levels around the world with
the establishment of local Agenda 21 policies and programmes, and
with the enactment of environmental legislation and follow-up at local
and national levels. Yet the overall assessment was of little global
progress towards sustainable development.
The follow-up to
UNCED through the CSD had witnessed the development of different
forms of engagement with various sectors or major groups of society,
defined in Agenda 21 as business and industry, trade unions, indigenous
peoples, farmers, NGOs, science and technology, women, youth, and
local authorities. The preparatory process of the Summit, as well
as its programme, emphasized these activities and approaches, and
also built on CSD practices, including multistakeholder dialogues,
panel presentations with experts, and the use of facilitators. More
strikingly, it moved away from the more traditional UN pattern of
a series of speeches from representatives of Member States, international
organizations and NGOs, to one structured around contributions based
on longer-term work commitments and engagement with the further implementation
of Agenda 21.
WSSD Secretary-General Desai and
his Secretariat were committed to bringing into the Summit process
a broad canvas of commitments and actions, of participants and allies,
new and old, and having a multiplicity of Summit outcomes more reflective
of what had been happening on the ground in the ten years since UNCED.
To achieve this, considerable emphasis was placed on developing partnership
initiatives and on broadening the possible Summit outcomes to include
what became known as “Type 2” outcomes that included as
potential partners with governments and the UN system the nine major
groups and others.
However, by the time the WSSD
met in Johannesburg so much emphasis had been placed on partnership
initiatives that some major groups, NGOs, women and indigenous peoples
in particular, cautioned against this development as a potential distraction
from the central role of governments and the increased power and influence
they felt that this approach might accord to corporations and the
private sector. Some Member States too expressed concern about the
meaning and implications of this radically new departure in conducting
UN business.
Some of the difficulties faced
by the WSSD process in promoting the partnership initiatives were
related to the newness of these approaches, some to the lack of understanding
of the objectives, some to the fact that while allies of the UN, a
number of the proposed partners could not be allies with each other.
NGOs in particular warned of inequality within and between the “partner
groups,” emphasizing the important role and responsibilities
of Member States in creating enabling policy environments and investing
the necessary resources in making progress on the sustainable development
agenda.
As the ten-year follow-up to the
path-breaking Rio Earth Summit, the
WSSD created political expectations that proved impossible to
entirely fulfil in a consensus-driven negotiating process among UN
Member States with widely different, and sometimes conflicting, policy
priorities. In the many Summit assessments, it is not surprising that
many commentaries cite as one of its successes that weaker outcomes
had been averted, and that some backtracking from the agreements reached
in Rio had been avoided. Some Summit participants and observers were
disappointed by this, while others thought the political reaffirmation
of the global sustainable development agenda a considerable achievement
in the current geo-political climate.
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Plan of Implementation
Poverty Eradication
The POI also establishes a voluntary
“world solidarity fund” to help eliminate poverty and promote
social and human development in the developing countries. It calls
for improving access to environmentally sound energy services and
resources, and an increased use of “renewables, cleaner liquid
and gaseous fuels and enhanced energy efficiency.”
Health
The final three elements are as
follows: The POI calls for enhancing
health education with targets on achieving improved health literacy
globally by 2010; reducing HIV prevalence among young men and women
aged 15-24 by 25% in the most affected countries by 2005 and globally
by 2010, as well as combating malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases;
and calls for the World Trade Organization (WTO)
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs)
to “be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of
WTO members’ right to protect public health and in particular
to promote access to medicines for all.” Changing Unsustainable
Patterns of Consumption and Production: Energy
Negotiating groups had varied
and complex positions that became clear during a frank discussion
at the ministerial level. The EU made well known its commitment to
securing global targets. The Group of 77 developing countries and
China (G-77/China) had to craft a fine balance among its large oil
producing and exporting members, large industrializing members and
some of its smaller members, in particular Small Island Developing
States. In the end, the G-77/China aligned with the US, which was
also opposed to targets, and argued that oil revenues helped many
of its members drive their own development efforts and that targets
on renewable energy would unduly penalize them.
The final language on this issue,
which does not include a specific target, does nonetheless stress
the urgency of increasing the global share of renewables and calls
for the following:
“Substantially increase the
global share of renewable energy sources with the objective of increasing
its contribution to total energy supply….” The paragraph
also calls upon governments to “diversify energy supply by developing
advanced, cleaner, more efficient, affordable and cost-effective energy
technologies, including fossil fuel technologies and renewable energy
technologies, hydro included, and their transfer to developing countries
on concessional terms….” (20e)
After accepting the compromise,
the EU reiterated its commitment to renewable energy as an important
way to reduce pollution, diversify and secure energy supplies and
help provide access to energy in support of poverty eradication. It
also announced that it would be putting together what it called a
“coalition of the willing;” a coalition of countries including
the EU, some other European countries as well as some Small Island
Developing States of the G-77/China that intended to go beyond the
agreement reached in the area of renewable energy. The Danish Minister
indicated that members of the coalition had adopted or would be adopting
“clear and ambitious” time-bound targets. Other action falling under
the consumption and production chapeau include: promoting the development
of a ten-year framework of programmes to accelerate the shift towards
sustainable consumption and production; identifying specific activities,
policies and other tools for measuring progress; and taking action
to phase out energy subsidies that inhibit sustainable development,
paying particular attention to the “different levels of development
of individual countries and considering their adverse effect, particularly
on developing countries.” Protecting and Managing
the Natural Resources Base Biodiversity
Governments were able to agree
on establishing a target date of 2010 for the achievement of a “significant
reduction” in the current rate of loss of biological diversity.
It was suggested that although governments were willing to agree that
“biodiversity is presently being lost at unprecedented rates,”
developing countries were only willing to accept the target date of
2010 because the text only called for a “significant reduction”
in the current rate of loss of biological diversity rather than the
stronger language from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
that makes no allowance for further loss and speaks of “attacking
the causes of loss of biodiversity.” A proposal for a target
date to have instruments in place by 2010 to stop the loss of biodiversity
was deleted.
Governments also agreed to negotiate
an “international regime” to promote and safeguard the fair
and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of
genetic resources. While some delegations, particularly those of the
megadiverse group (the biologically richest countries of the world),
had hoped to have language on a legally binding international regime,
others suggested that international regimes by their very nature are
legally binding and should not weaken the intent of the paragraph.
Some anticipate that such negotiations will carry on for years to
come as governments decide if and how to go beyond the voluntary Bonn
Guidelines on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, adopted
by the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6) to the CBD at The Hague
(the Netherlands) in April 2002. In this section, governments
also agreed to promote discussions on the “relationship”
between the CBD and the WTO and its related provisions. When this
paragraph was originally under consideration at PrepCom IV, some
delegations favoured focusing on the “relationship between
the obligations” of the two entities while others were concerned
that this might allow trade-related agreements, including the TRIPs
agreement, to take precedence over the CBD. In the end, the paragraph
in the POI reads: “With a view to enhancing synergy and mutual
supportiveness, taking into account the decisions under the relevant
agreements, promote the discussions, without prejudging their outcome,
with regard to the relationships between the Convention [on Bio-Diversity]
and agreements related to international trade and intellectual property
rights, as outlined in the Doha [WTO]
Ministerial Declaration.” (44r) Ocean and Fisheries — Maintain or restore stocks to levels that can produce the
maximum sustainable yield with the aim of achieving these goals
for depleted stocks on an urgent basis and where possible not later
than 2015. (31a) Atmosphere and Climate Change
The full text on the Kyoto Protocol
reads as follows:
Another action point on atmosphere
includes: Other action points on Protecting
and Managing the Natural Resource Base include: Rio Principles The Precautionary Approach
A drawn out negotiation was also
needed before governments agreed to establish the target of 2020 for
the production of chemicals that leads to the “minimization”
of significant adverse effects on human health and the environment.
Negotiations involved Norway advocating for strong language calling
for the end to the production of chemicals with harmful effects. This
was countered by the US and the
G-77/China who were in favour of more general language.
The final language reads as follows:
The precautionary principle/approach
was included in full in paragraph 109 (f) related to promoting and
improving science-based decision making. It states: “In order
to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely
applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are
threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific
certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective
measure to prevent environmental degradation.”
However, it was agreed that no
mention would be made of the principle having been “further developed
in international law,” (through the work of the numerous multilateral
environmental agreements). Some delegations argued that by invoking
multilateral environmental agreements, to which not all Member States
adhered, the principle would be weakened. Other action points on chemicals include: Globalization Many governments, in most cases being represented by environment,
development cooperation or foreign ministry personnel, preferred
to defer trade-related issues to ongoing negotiations at the WTO. Corporate Accountability However, this became one of the last paragraphs to be resolved
owing to differences of opinion over what happened in negotiations
conducted by the contact group on the Means of Implementation and
whether or not the group had agreed that the paragraph would relate
to existing agreements and measures only. An interpretive statement
to this effect was eventually disallowed by the Chair after several
delegations questioned the consistency of the statement in light
of the provisions in the paragraph calling for the “full development”
as well as “effective implementation” of agreements, measures,
initiatives, etc. At the closing plenary and after formal adoption
of the POI, the US delegation said that it interpreted paragraph
49 as referring to “existing” agreements only. Other action under this section
calls for encouraging international financial and trade institutions
to ensure that decision-making processes and institutional structures
are open and transparent. Means of Implementation
The principle/approach was included
in full in paragraph 81 and reads as follows: “In view of the
different contributions to global environmental degradation, States
have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries
acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international
pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their
societies place on the global environment and of the technologies
and financial resources they command.” Trade, Environment and Development The draft text proposed: “Continue to enhance the mutual supportiveness
of trade, environment and development in a manner consistent with
WTO rights and obligations, with a view to achieving sustainable
development, including through actions at all levels ….”
Negotiations produced a number of alternatives including “while
ensuring WTO consistency” and the Norwegian proposal “Striving
to avoid WTO inconsistency.” The G-77/China finally agreed to support the deletion of reference
to the WTO and allowed the paragraph to be adopted as follows: “Continue
to enhance the mutual supportiveness of trade, environment and development
with a view to achieving sustainable development through actions
at all levels….” Other action points on Means of Implementation include: Sustanable Development of Small
Island States (SIDS) Governments agreed that instead of assisting SIDS to “define”
their coastal areas and exclusive economic zones (the area of sea
that belongs to a coastal State and which it can exploit for economic
benefit), they would assist to “delimit” such areas that
could include continental shelf areas beyond 200 miles from coastal
baselines. They also agreed to a target of 2004 to undertake initiatives
to reduce, prevent and control waste and pollution and their health-related
impacts for the protection of the marine environment. Sustainable Development in Africa Governments also agreed to assist Africa with technical support
in the areas of environmental legislation, institutional reform,
environmental impact assessments, negotiating and implementing multilateral
environmental agreements, as well as afforestation and reforestation. Another action point on Africa states a commitment
to:
Institutional Framework and
Follow-up The chapeau of this section states that an effective institutional
framework for sustainable development at all levels is key to the
full implementation of Agenda 21, the follow-up to the outcomes
of the WSSD and meeting emerging sustainable development challenges.
Measures to strengthen this framework, the chapeau says, should
build on the provisions of Agenda 21 as well as the 1997 Programme
for its further implementation and the Rio Principles. After much
discussion, it was agreed that a reference highlighting the principle
of common but differentiated responsibilities would be deleted. This section also opens by stating that good governance is essential
for sustainable development. Governments agreed that sound economic
policies, solid democratic institutions responsive to the needs
of people, and improved infrastructure are the basis for sustained
economic growth, poverty eradication and employment creation. Additional
essential factors identified include: freedom, peace and security,
domestic stability, respect for human rights, including the right
to development, and the rule of law, gender equality, market-oriented
policies, and an overall commitment to just and democratic societies. Other action points include: In the section on the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD),
the UN body responsible for monitoring the implementation of the
UNCED agreements, the action points for the future include: Johannesburg Declaration The Johannesburg Declaration lists numerous conditions that are
posing severe threats to sustainable development, including: chronic
hunger; malnutrition; foreign occupation; armed conflicts; illicit
drug problems; organized crime; corruption; natural disasters; illicit
arms trafficking; trafficking in persons; terrorism; intolerance
and incitement to racial, ethnic, religious and other hatreds; xenophobia;
and endemic, communicable and chronic diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS,
malaria and tuberculosis. In order to counter these problems, governments call for a number
of actions including reaching internationally agreed levels of ODA,
supporting NEPAD, continuing to work with major groups, as well
as the need for the private sector to enforce corporate accountability. The Plan of Implementation and the Johannesburg Declaration are
available online (www.johannesburgsummit.org).
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| Partnership Plenaries |
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A key innovative feature of the Summit
was the holding of a series of “partnership plenaries” during
the first five days of the conference. Instead of a conventional series
of speeches by dignitaries, partnership plenaries were organized in
the form of interactive dialogues among governments, UN agencies,
experts, and major group representatives on the five WEHAB themes
proposed by the Secretary-General, as well as on cross-sectoral issues
and regional implementation. The sessions, which were moderated by
the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to the Summit Jan Pronk,
focused on challenges of implementation in these five strategic areas. Water and Sanitation A number of speakers emphasized that access to water for basic
human needs was a fundamental human right and, along with improved
sanitation, was a key component of any effective poverty-reduction
strategy. The NGO representative insisted that partnership initiatives
in the area of water and sanitation must: be developed in response
to locally articulated needs through a democratic process; be in
keeping with Type 1 outcomes; include mechanisms for democratic
accountability for government partners; and include corporate partners
only when enforceable and functional standards for corporate accountability
are in place. Many speakers suggested that the low priority currently assigned
to water issues is linked to the fact that water shortages are primarily
affecting low-income countries and population groups, while the
better-off countries and income groups are not yet affected by such
problems. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of the UN Human Settlements
Programme (UN-HABITAT), said
water availability in growing cities was in such a crisis situation
that the poor were often paying four to five times more for water
than better-off people connected to the water system. Questions related to cost recovery—whether through tax transfers,
user fees, or cross-subsidization—were one of the most hotly-debated
topics during the discussion. The trade unions representative expressed
reservations as to the role the private sector should play in meeting
basic needs given the fact that the primary motive of business is
profit and not welfare. The business representative argued that
in his experience of public-private sector service delivery programmes,
it was not only rich people who could pay for water. As a matter
of fact, he said, the poor were willing to pay more, but it was
often the politicians that were not willing to charge them. Ronnie
Kasrils, the South African Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry,
said that appropriate financial systems were required to ensure
that water services were financially sustainable. For the poor,
she added, while there was a willingness to pay, there was not always
the ability to pay for water. There was a need for subsidies, either
from tax revenues or cross-subsidies from other water users.
Miloon Kothari, the UN’s Special
Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said that recent experiences
with privatization of water services tended to reveal three sets of
problems from a human rights perspective, namely: an overemphasis
on profit-making and cost recovery; inadequate coverage of vulnerable
groups, such as slum dwellers; and lack of accountability of service
operators. These privatization schemes overlook the precise commitments
that States have undertaken under specific human rights instruments,
including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention
on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. He also noted
that once privatization has failed, it is difficult for local municipalities
and governments to recover the initiative. He further warned that
these issues were not adequately taken into account in the ongoing
negotiations on liberalization of trade in services at the WTO. Discussions also focused on the sustainability of water sources,
which are fast becoming depleted in many parts of the world. Some
said this required an ecosystems approach to water management that
would integrate environmental protection and biodiversity concerns.
Energy
According to one speaker, energy interventions
in the past have not been efficient. Small-scale technologies, with
costs ranging from US$50 to US$300, are available as a means for providing
energy services to the poorest, particularly in rural areas. Such
technologies include mechanical water pumps, solar dryers and bio-fuel
furnaces. He encouraged developing countries to allocate a quarter
to a third of their energy budgets to small-scale energy technologies,
which he said should be as self-reliant as possible in terms of inputs,
local equipment manufacturing and maintenance. Moving away from fossil fuel-based technologies to combat pollution
and climate change was noted as a major challenge. However, such
a shift would not, in the immediate future at least, be driven by
scarcity of oil reserves—thus many participants called for
the need to focus on time-bound targets on increasing the use of
renewable energy. Commenting on the proposed (but eventually rejected)
target on renewable energy being negotiated by governments, the
UN representative said that such a target was feasible but depended
on the structure of the energy sector. The lack of consensus on a renewable
energy target during the intergovernmental negotiations was reflected
in the subsequent exchange by governments in the plenary. The minister
in charge of petroleum from the Office of the President of Nigeria
said it must be acknowledged that access to modern forms of energy
was out of the reach of most developing countries. Economic development,
he said, could not be achieved in the developing world without affordable
energy sources. He added that it was presumptuous for the Summit
to tell any government to establish numerical targets or timetables
on energy. He urged the international community to focus its efforts
on helping developing countries to enhance their capacity for affordable
sources of renewable energy. In sharp contrast, the representative
of Tuvalu insisted on the importance of such targets and timetables.
He expressed his disappointment that Tuvalu’s proposal earlier
in the WSSD preparatory process—to develop a legally binding
arrangement on energy—was rejected. Health The discussion also emphasized major
resource allocation questions. A representative of the World Health
Organization (WHO) said that, according
to a 2001 report of the WHO’s Commission on Macroeconomics
and Health, an increase in domestic budgetary resources of 1% by
2015 and donor grant resources of US$27 billion a year by 2007 and
US$38 billion by 2015 would be needed to effectively tackle the
diseases of the world’s poor. A representative of the United
Nations Children Fund (UNICEF)
said that country-level coordination among partners in the field
of immunization programmes was a good example of the effective use
of funds through partnerships on the ground. Agriculture
Much of the discussion focused on international
trade issues and problems related to the high level of agricultural
subsidies in developed countries. Many called for the phasing out
of such subsidies which are also environmentally harmful, and the
dismantling of developed countries’ trade barriers to developing
countries’ agricultural exports. However, the farmers’ representative
stressed that what farmers were really asking for was to be able to
earn a living by farming. If production costs were compatible with
market prices, then no subsidies would be needed. It was not that
farmers were clamouring for subsidies, he said, but subsidies were
required in the current state of the world market.
Later in the discussion, the agriculture
minister of Tanzania emphasized the fact that while rich countries
were subsidizing their agriculture to the tune of US$1 billion a day,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank continued
to pressure developing countries to remove subsidies to support their
own farmers. It was noted in this regard that cheap subsidized food
imports in liberalized developing countries’ markets were undermining
local farmers’ livelihoods and cutting jobs in the domestic agricultural
sectors. Improving the competitiveness and productivity of small farmers,
while creating a level playing field vis-a-vis large agribusiness,
was highlighted as a key priority by a number of speakers. Reversing
the downward trend in ODA to agriculture was also emphasized. According
to a representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
the millennium development target of cutting hunger by half by 2015
will require additional public investments of US$24 billion a year
over the next 13 years. One speaker noted that an enormous financial
potential could be freed up to combat hunger and poverty in developing
countries if only a small proportion of rich countries’ US$1
billion daily agricultural subsidies was allocated for that purpose.
The discussion also sought to draw lessons
from the Green Revolution, which some described as technology-driven
and input intensive. While it enabled the world to make a quantum
leap in agricultural productivity, it also led to environmental degradation
and favoured capital-intensive producers. It was suggested that the
future agricultural revolution should be sustainable, small-farmer
and low-input based. In this respect, many participants shared their
experiences in organic farming and the use of indigenous farming methods,
which they said offered great promise as a way forward in agriculture,
but were often undermined by current trade practices and agricultural
policies that favour resource-intensive mass production methods. Although it did not receive much
attention during the partnership plenary discussion on agriculture,
the issue of biotechnology and genetically-modified (GM) foods was
raised in the session on cross-sectoral issues, and hotly debated
in the corridors of the conference and in the streets of Johannesburg.
The issue became all the more controversial since the Summit was
taking place in the midst of a food crisis in Southern Africa, in
response to which the United States was offering genetically modified
maize food aid to the affected countries. Biodiversity A senior UNEP representative said that unless governments took
immediate action to address critical matters related to biodiversity,
particularly environmental degradation and overuse of natural resources,
the future of the world could soon be irreparably undermined. He
said there had been some achievements, particularly with the support
of NGOs. Major treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) had been developed, some species had been saved from extinction,
and tracts of land were under protection. However, he expressed
concern that protected areas were in fact not well protected and
many treaties were not fully implemented. A representative of the
secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands said it was “shameful”
that international treaties related to biodiversity were negotiated
at a very high level, but such instruments were subsequently handed
over to small agencies with very little power to ensure implementation.
During the interactive session, some
participants linked the lack of public awareness of biodiversity issues
as an important reason for lack of progress and called for public
education campaigns as a new phase of implementation. However, other
participants insisted that beyond public awareness raising, it was
the wider economic forces at play that needed to be tackled. Several
speakers cited the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPs), which they said gave corporations monopoly
over biological resources and the ability to patent life forms, adding
that it needs to be rebalanced to ensure equitable benefit sharing.
It was essential, one NGO representative stressed, to re-examine macro-economic
policies which undermined sustainability, and to set limits to industrial
exploitation of natural resources on which local communities’
livelihoods depend. In this regard, the UK environment minister emphasized
the necessity to have incentives to reduce commercial pressures leading
to the over-exploitation of natural resources. He said that in addition
to the need to strengthen time-bound targets for biodiversity, effective
mechanisms, monitoring and funding were also required.
A business representative said partnerships
were at the heart of solutions. No single sector was responsible for
biodiversity, he said. The root causes of biodiversity loss had to
be addressed, which meant giving priority to equity sharing and giving
local communities a stake in conservation. In this respect, the environment
minister of India noted that his country’s conservation strategy
had depended heavily on partnerships and cooperation with all stakeholders.
However, the environment minister of Gabon cautioned that partnerships
in his country had not always attracted “the most virtuous partners.”
While Gabon had a product that could be useful to treat drug addiction,
a transnational corporation wanted to patent that product, he said.
The so-called “Type 2” outcomes, he insisted, must provide
safeguards against such situations.
In closing, Mr. Pronk said that there
was overall consensus that the international community was not on
target. The necessary knowledge was present; what was needed was action
to meet the commitments undertaken. The urgency of the matter could
not be overstated. The greater the threat of further loss, he said,
the greater the need to change the models and policies of the past. Cross-sectoral Issues
A representative of the scientific community
stressed the importance of partnerships between scientists and other
stakeholders in all key areas. He said new lines of research were
needed to address the links between natural systems, socio-economic
systems and sustainable consumption and production patterns. A UNEP
representative said a key example of the link between science and
policy making was the problem of the ozone layer, where scientific
evidence had led to an international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting
substances.
An NGO representative, however, sounded
a note of caution on the far-reaching effects of partnerships, noting
that such arrangements can also produce harmful or inequitable results.
By way of example, he cited the increasingly connected nature of the
science/biological research community and transnational corporations—and
the biases this may imply in partnership agreements. In this regard,
the farmers’ representative argued that there was an increasing
imbalance in scientific interests that were becoming more and more
market-driven, while governments shied away from public spending on
research and technology development.
Several speakers noted that the business
community was much more present at Johannesburg than it was ten years
ago in Rio. The business representative described this as a “transitional
period in social history,” as awareness was growing about the
ecological footprints left by current models of production and economic
growth. Still, business needed to be more open and involved, he said,
noting that its role is both facilitated and constrained by government
action. Asked whether governments were not constrained by corporate
pressure, he said that there were “myths” about those relationships,
which he described as not valid. The corporate structure, he said,
had proven to be sufficient for providing for the large-scale needs
of society. The youth representative noted with
concern that so few speakers had addressed the critical issue of
patterns of unsustainable consumption. He argued that everyone knew
that large corporations were more interested in selling their products
than in conservation. Later in the discussion, the Swedish minister
noted how controversial the topic of unsustainable consumption and
production patterns had been in the Summit’s intergovernmental
negotiations. Her country’s experience had shown that prevention
was less expensive than the cure, adding that the key to changing
production and consumption patterns was the younger generation.
The NGO representative stressed that the Rio Principle of common
but differentiated responsibility indicated that the North should
take the lead in this area because it had the resources and capacity
to do so, and should transfer that capacity to the South.
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| TOP | Partnership Outcomes |
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Partnerships and initiatives to implement
Agenda 21 became an important element of the Summit’s outcomes.
Termed “Type 2” outcomes, the over 220 WSSD partnership
initiatives identified so far between different stakeholders (including
governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society and business
entities) are meant to complement and reinforce “Type 1”
outcomes—namely the intergovernmentally negotiated plan of implementation
and the political declaration.
The inclusion of partnership initiatives
as part of the formal WSSD outcome was endorsed last year by the UN
General Assembly in Resolution 56/226, which encourages “...global
commitment and partnerships, especially between Governments of the
North and the South, on the one hand, and between Governments and
major groups on the other.”
Many participants viewed Type 2 outcomes
as a potentially empowering and complementary way of making progress
towards sustainable development. Various stakeholders could commit
considerable resources, as well as the expertise and energy to invest
in implementing Agenda 21. The Type 2 track opened the door for practical
ways to make concrete commitments, without being held back by the
limitations of the intergovernmentally-agreed POI.
Over 220 partnerships (with US$235 million
in financing) were identified in advance of the Summit and around
60 partnerships were announced during the Summit by a variety of countries
and organizations. They include multi-million dollar initiatives in
a host of domains, including the five WEHAB areas identified by the
Secretary-General, as well as other issues such as environmental governance,
the development of small-and medium-sized enterprises, and marketing
communications programmes to promote the concept of sustainable development.
A number of initiatives publicized at the Summit will support the
POI commitment to halve the proportion of people without access to
sanitation by 2015 together with the Millennium Development Goal (MDG)
to halve the proportion without access to safe drinking water. The
US has announced US$970 million in investments in water and sanitation
projects; the EU announced its “Water for Life” initiative;
the UN has received an additional 21 water- and sanitation-related
initiatives with at least US$20 million in funding. Similarly, the
POI commitment on energy access will be accompanied by financial commitments
from the EU (US$700 million), the US (US$43 million), and 32 separate
partnership initiatives garnering up to US$26 million in investment.
The latest list of partnership initiatives is available on the WSSD
website (www.johannesburgsummit.org).
During the preparatory process a wide
range of concerns were expressed by a number of governments and NGOs
on the nature of Type 2 outcomes, their relation to Type 1 outcomes,
and the criteria used to determine which partnership initiatives should
qualify to be part of the formal Summit outcome. In the course of
PrepComs III and IV, a series of informal consultations were conducted
by the PrepCom’s Vice-Chairs, Jan Kara (Czech Republic) and Diane
Quarless (Jamaica). On this basis, they produced a set of guiding
principles for Type 2 outcomes, against which partnership submissions
to the Conference Secretariat were checked before being posted on
the Summit website.
Concerns about the nature and content
of partnership outcomes were vigorously debated during the multistakeholder
dialogue on partnerships held during PrepCom IV in Bali. NGOs and
a number of other major groups expressed serious reservations as to
the involvement of transnational corporations in partnership initiatives.
These concerns related to what they perceived as the rapid rise of
transnational corporate power and efforts by corporate lobby groups
to “greenwash” their activities by claiming to contribute
to sustainable development with a few isolated flagship projects.
Would Type 2 partnerships give carte blanche for transnational corporations
to obtain UN endorsement under a voluntary scheme? Was this part of
a trend by governments to abdicate more power to the corporate sector
without mechanisms of regulation, accountability and enforcement corresponding
to this increased power? In their statements, NGO representatives
expressed concern that talk of partnerships in the WSSD process was
diffuse and distant from the realities of power inequalities.
In closing the session, Mr. Desai underlined
that Type 2 partnerships were no substitute for strong commitments
between governments. “The real action,” he said, “is
out there in the negotiating room.” . On the eve of the Summit, the ECO-Equity Coalition (regrouping
Consumers International, the Danish ’92 Group, Greenpeace International,
the Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED),
Oxfam International and WWF International) released a discussion
paper entitled “Critical considerations about Type 2 partnerships.”
The paper stresses a number of issues not covered in the Vice Chairs’
guiding principles for Type 2 outcomes. These include questions such as:
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| TOP | Civil Society and Other Activities Around WSSD |
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Approximately 3,500 NGOs were accredited
to the WSSD. Throughout the preparatory process they played a prominent
role, mobilizing their constituencies, lobbying governments, and raising
awareness around the world of the issues at stake.
The Sustainable Development Issues Network
(SDIN)—which was a joint collaborative effort between several
NGO groupings, such as the Environmental Liaison Centre International
(ELCI), ANPED and Third World Network—played an important facilitating
and information disseminating role for major groups, notably through
their daily plenary briefing and strategy sessions. Other networks,
such as the Stakeholder Forum, focused more on facilitating discussions
on partnership-based implementation issues.
During PrepCom IV in Bali, a two-day
Multistakeholder Dialogue was held among all major groups with the
participation of governments and international i |