ISSUE 4
June 2002
Part I
3 June to 9 June
2002
Compiled by
Richard Sherman
Edited by
Kimo Goree
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Contents
Independent
9 June 2002
Internet:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=303552
John Prescott was urged yesterday to go round the world "in 80 days" to save
a summit on world poverty after vital talks collapsed The talks – the last
formal preparatory negotiations before the summit which meets in
Johannesburg at the end of August – broke up in Bali, Indonesia, with more
than 100 points still unresolved, largely due to American obduracy. The Bush
administration rejected any new targets for reducing poverty and, in effect,
refused to negotiate, stating its position and challenging the rest of the
world to take it or leave it. It blocked plans to halve the number of the
world's people without any sanitation – a situation that causes a child to
die every 10 seconds from water-borne disease – and to double those who have
electricity and other modern forms of energy. The negotiations at Bali were
made more difficult because of weak leadership of the developing countries
at the talks that allowed Opec, which opposed any
resolutions on energy, to set the tone. Europe was also ineffectually led by
Spain, the current holder of the EU presidency. The collapse throws the
summit – officially named the World Summit On
Sustainable Development – into jeopardy, amid fears that heads of government
will now stay away from it to avoid being associated with a failure. But
Tony Blair, the first prime minister to announce his attendance, is
committed to going, and Britain has led the international drive to get the
summit to produce results. The Johannesburg meeting was intended as the most
significant world summit on the environment and the problems of the
developing world since the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago.
The Johannesburg summit will review progress since Rio while turning the
spotlight on problems in the developing world and in particular the
eradication of poverty. But the American intransigence throws its future
into doubt. Derek Osborn, the head of Britain's main co-ordinating group for
the summit – the Stakeholder Forum For Our Common
Future – called on Mr Prescott to travel the world to save it from disaster.
The Deputy Prime Minister, who successfully brokered the Kyoto protocol on
global warming, has visited 30 prime ministers and almost 100 environment
ministers over the past two years, as Mr Blair's representative, to try to
prepare the way for a successful summit. But he has been scarred recently by
inaccurate press reports accusing him of wanting to go to Bali for a
"junket''. Mr Osborn said: "There is an awful lot to be done in a very short
time. There are just 80 days until the summit opens and someone is going to
have to go round the world a couple of times in those 80 days to pull it
off. We really need John Prescott.'' There are two remaining opportunities
at the end of this month to rescue the conference from disaster. A meeting
of a few heads of government in Rio arranged by the Brazilian President,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso – and the G8 summit which will see leaders of rich
countries meeting their counterparts from several African states. Experts
say, however, that there will have to be a sustained effort to mobilise key
leaders around the world if the summit is to succeed. Failure could put back
by decades the hopes of reducing world poverty. Margaret Beckett, the
Secretary of State for the Environment, tried to put a positive gloss on the
Bali summit, saying "a huge amount" had been achieved. "We have had a lot of
movement and achieved quite a lot of work," she said. "There was a bit of
disappointment because we didn't achieve quite as much as we could have
done, given the goodwill that exists, but we ran out of time. These are
complex negotiations that involve so many countries across the world, so it
is difficult." Mrs Beckett had been criticised for the £180,000 cost to the
taxpayer of sending a British delegation to Bali. Friends of the Earth
International criticised the outcome of the Indonesian talks as a "foul
result" that had produced too many voluntary agreements that benefited the
US and the World Trade Organisation.
Scotsman.com
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4791451
Environment
Secretary Margaret Beckett was today urged to explain to MPs why top level
international talks on help for the Third World had "apparently failed". The
mini-summit of UN countries in Bali, described by Mrs Beckett as "tough",
ended today with no agreement between nations on a number of crucial issues.
Mrs Beckett, who was representing the UK at the talks, rejected claims by
Green pressure groups that it had been a failure and said the outcome "takes
us well down the road" to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
September. But the Liberal Democrats claimed the lack of agreement in Bali
could lead to a "carve-up" by the United States at the milestone summit in
Johannesburg. Mrs Beckett said the UK and other EU states had achieved
"broad agreement" on the importance of providing adequate sanitation and
access to affordable and clean energy in eradicating poverty.
There was also a
"specific global focus" on the needs of Africa for the first time, she
added. But there was no agreement on setting a renewable energy target of a
15% share of the global market by 2010 and no consensus on the target to
halve the proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015. Liberal
Democrat environment spokesman Malcolm Bruce said: "Margaret Beckett should
make a statement to the House of Commons about the apparent failure of the
Bali summit. "Participating NGOs have complained that no realistic agenda
was set for the earth summit in Johannesburg in August. "Poor countries will
be extremely angry that what is supposed to be a milestone 10 years on from
Rio could turn out to be a simple carve-up by the US to make the rich richer
and the poor poorer."
The Jakarta Post
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20020608085329&irec=4
Nusa Dua, Bali (Agency): Ministers failed on Friday to agree a draft action
plan for a major U.N. summit in August that hopes to slash poverty and
protect the environment, with rich and poor nations divided, officials said
as reported by Reuters.
Officials made no attempt to hide their disappointment at the result of
preparatory talks on Indonesia's island of Bali, but insisted the setback
did not mean the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg was
headed for failure.
Dubbed Earth Summit 2, the conference in Johannesburg is being billed as the
largest-ever U.N. gathering. More than 100heads of state and 60,000
delegates are expected to attend. Environmental groups pinned much of the
blame on the United States, accusing it of being reluctant to commit to some
targets for action at home in the interests of business profits, charges
members of the U.S. delegation here have denied. "We came to Bali to seek
concrete agreement with timetables and targets that could save human lives,
eradicate poverty...We have not achieved that, or at least not been able to
achieve as much as we wanted," Spanish Environment Minister Jaume Matas told
reporters after negotiations ended near midnight. Some 120 ministers holding
environmental and development portfolios had met since Wednesday, following
10 days of inconclusive talks between government negotiators. The
Johannesburg summit opens on August 26 and falls a decade after the landmark
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which put environmental issues on the global
political agenda. Room for debate. Emil Salim, a
former Indonesian environment minister and chairman of the Bali talks, left
open the way for further debate before Johannesburg, or said a deal could be
reached there. He said the meeting failed to reach agreement on "essential"
areas in the action plan such as time bound commitments and ways of
financing pledges in the draft. He gave no specific details. About 80
percent of the action plan was agreed, he added.
"This is not a disaster, of course personally I'm
disappointed. It's a battle, a conflict of interest between developed and
developing countries," Salim said. Even before the setback in Bali,
officials had struggled to kindle enthusiasm for Johannesburg amid a
never-ending cycle of summits and a draft action plan that covers everything
from poverty, water and energy to cleaning up the polluted planet. Aware of
the importance of getting key leaders to Johannesburg, U.N officials had
urged ministers to inject political clout into the preparations to ensure
Johannesburg avoids Rio's fate -- lofty goals, but few results.
Environmentalists were scathing, saying what had
been agreed at Bali would do little to help three billion people -- half the
world's population -- who live on less than $2 a day. "The U.S. and its
friends might as well come from Mars for all they care about the future of
our planet," said Daniel Mittler, head of the Friends of the Earth
delegation in Bali. Several European ministers briefed the media after the
talks ended, but U.S. officials were not available for comment.
Associated Press via the Washington Post
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15788-2002Jun8.html
BALI, Indonesia, June 7 -- Key talks on how to raise living standards
worldwide and protect the environment broke down today over several issues,
including a U.S. demand that countries do more to fight corruption before
receiving more Western development aid. More than 6,000 delegates, including
118 environment and finance ministers, met on Bali to debate a development
blueprint to be voted on in August at a U.N.-sponsored summit in
Johannesburg. "The meeting has failed to reach a compromise on essential
issues . . . due to the lack of good faith and spirit of constructive
dialogue and compromise," chairman Emil Salim
said. "We have tried until the last hour to bridge the gap, including
through engaging the heads of delegations and the ministers." He said
wealthy nations were blocking proposals to commit to binding agreements for
implementing environmental programs. Other sticking points included free
trade, agricultural subsidies and the amount of aid to be given to poorer
nations. The United States was criticized for insisting that development
funds be conditioned on reducing corruption and promoting good governance.
"Both conflicting groups have not moved from their position. There was no
meaningful progress," said Djumala Darmansjah, an Indonesian delegate
involved in the financing talks. Salim said that unresolved issues would be
taken up in August at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg
The News International, Pakistan
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2002-daily/08-06-2002/world/w2.htm
BALI: Ministers struggled on Friday to wrap up vital talks aimed at
providing a political springboard for a UN summit in August that hopes to
slash poverty and save the environment. Officials have said preparatory
meetings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali might fail to reach full
agreement on a draft plan for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
South Africa, putting off some thorny issues for the main event. With a
number of items still unresolved, debate might last into the early evening
before concluding, they said. Dubbed Earth Summit 2, the conference in
Johannesburg is being billed as the largest-ever UN gathering. More than 100
heads of state and 60,000 delegates are expected to attend. Officials have
struggled to kindle enthusiasm for Johannesburg amid a seemingly
never-ending cycle of UN summits and with an agenda that covers everything
from poverty, water, health, energy and biodiversity to cleaning up the
polluted planet. "I think Bali and Johannesburg (amount to) global
indigestion, but I think we'll get there," Mark Malloch Brown, head of the
United Nations Development Programme, told Reuters. "We'll hopefully drink
lots of stomach settlers between now and Johannesburg and synthesise and
crystallise this, but it's very ambitious," he added. Ministers have been
meeting since Wednesday. The Johannesburg meeting opens on August 26 and has
been timed to fall a decade after the landmark Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro, which put environmental issues on the global political agenda.
Aware of the importance of getting key leaders to Johannesburg, UN officials
have urged 120 ministers holding environment and development posts meeting
here to inject political clout into the preparations to ensure Johannesburg
avoids Rio's fate -- lofty goals but little implementation. Earlier in the
week UN officials said most of the draft plan had been agreed following 10
days of debate by negotiators, but key differences have proved difficult to
resolve. Some have been between developing nations and the United States
over financing pledges being drawn up in the plan. Poor nations have said
they wanted additional aid that was pledged at a summit on financing
development in Mexico's Monterrey in March to be linked to Johannesburg, but
that the US was seeking detailed conditionality. Washington raised its aid
at Monterrey in return for poor nations doing things such as fighting graft
and opening markets. Environmental groups taking part in the Bali talks have
been scathing in their criticism. They have predicted Johannesburg would
flop and do little to help three billion people -- half the world's
population -- who live on less than $2 a day. But officials here have said
there was too much at stake politically to let Johannesburg
fail, arguing world leaders would get on board,
even at that last moment. Nevertheless, some doubted US President George W.
Bush would show. "I think Bush's support for issues is indispensable to a
world view on anything," said Malloch Brown. "I have to tell you it will be
a happy surprise if he was there but I certainly am not expecting him to be
there." Some officials have said Bush might not want to get boxed in by
criticism of Washington's decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol and recent
moves, such as hiking agriculture subsidies.
The Jakarta Post
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20020608.@01&irec=0
Two weeks of talks on an action plan for sustainable development in Bali
ended on Friday at midnight, and failed to reach a deal over a disagreement
on whether developed countries should pledge more aid and trade to finance
the plan. "There's no agreement, it's a deadlock," said Slamet Hidayat, a
member of the Indonesian delegation, late on Friday. He added that
negotiations on the action plan would continue in the three months before
the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa,
slated to begin in late August. Delegates from around the world descended on
Bali in the fourth and last leg before the Johannesburg Summit to align
economic development with social and environmental interests under a 10-year
action plan to be known as the Bali Commitment. But talks at the United
Nations (UN) fourth preparatory committee meeting here were slow from the
onset and fell into a deadlock on Friday. Delegates remained divided between
North and South over the issue of finance and trade. Negotiations went on
until the early morning over the past few days, with pressure from the
Indonesian side to get delegates to come to an agreement in Bali. A last
attempt to salvage the negotiations with a compromised document by South
African environment and tourism minister M.V. Moosa failed to bridge the
differences. Slamet said that the negotiation block of Group 77 plus China,
in which Indonesia is a member, had accepted the document, which only
revised Chapter IX on the means of implementation covering finance and trade
issues. Also accepting the document was Norway of the European Union and New
Zealand. New Zealand is part of the JUSCANZ (Japan, United States, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand) negotiation block, which had been adamantly
objecting the proposed document. "The U.S. and other members of JUSCANZ were
against Moosa's proposal while EU countries were mixed about it, Slamet
said, adding that the U.S. appeared to have the most objections. He said
that developing countries were pushing for more aid from developed
countries, reasoning that without funding, the action plan could not be
implemented. The decision to end talks and freeze the action plan until
Johannesburg had yet to be approved by the plenary meeting, which should
have been held late on Friday night. Since Wednesday, the meeting was joined
by 118 ministers who took part in the preparation for the political
declaration for the Johannesburg Summit but was not directly involved in the
negotiation of the action plan. In his speech for the political declaration,
the U.S. representative to the UN Economic and Social Council and a senior
delegate member, Ambassador Sichan Siv, stressed the importance of trade,
domestic and foreign investment as development resources, while omitting the
word aid. A delegate member of Venezuela, which leads the negotiation block
G-77 plus China, said Moosa's proposal was non-negotiable and that it came
under the rule "take it or leave it". She said the U.S. and the EU began to
negotiate it paragraph by paragraph since Moosa's proposed document was
handed out. If delegates could not agree on Moosa's document, she said, the
G-77 plus China block would return to the original chapter IX of the action
plan drafted on June 2 and bring the remaining contentious issues to
Johannesburg. The June 2nd draft plan of implementation for the World Summit
on Sustainable Development is the outcome from the first week of talks in
Bali. Negotiations in Bali began with the Chairman's Text, which is a
summary of the three previous preparatory meetings in New York made by the
meeting's chairman, Emil Salim. The former Indonesian environmental minister
said he wanted the Bali Commitment to contain definite targets, measured by
time and actions. But what started out as a 39-page Chairman's Text covering
100 points, grew to a 158-point, 78-page draft plan, weakening the plan with
political rhetoric, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) said.
Various international and local NGOs have joined protests and accused the
JUSCANZ negotiation block of watering down the Chairman's Text with words
like "promote", "encourage" and "explore". Greenpeace managed to stage a
late night protest inside the conference building, which was effectively
under UN control since the meeting began. It urged governments to prepare
themselves better for Johannesburg, taking the three months to commit
themselves to including the concrete time targets and action under the Bali
Commitment.
Voice of America
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=C316E1D4-C931-4AD6-A4BAEFC044B7462E&title=Bali%20Development%20Conference%20Ends%20Without%20Agreement%20on%20Key%20Issues&catOID=45C9C785-88AD-11D4-A57200A0CC5EE46C
Delegates at an international development conference in Bali, Indonesia have
failed to agree on key issues. But officials are playing down their
inability to reach a consensus. The chairman of the talks, former Indonesian
minister Emil Salim, says the meeting failed to reach agreement in
"essential" areas, such as finance and timing commitments. He says, however,
that 80 percent of the action plan had been agreed upon. The 6,000 delegates
at the two-week Bali talks drew up a development blueprint that will be
debated and voted on by world leaders at the United Nation's Summit on
Sustainable Development. That conference will be in August in Johannesburg,
South Africa. Key issues divide rich and poor nations, especially finance,
trade, and environmental protection. Environmental delegates were critical
of the United States and other rich nations, who they say are acting in the
interests of multi-national companies. The Johannesburg Summit comes a
decade after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It is billed as one of the
largest U.N. gatherings ever, with more than 60,000 delegates and one
hundred heads of state expected to attend. The summit's goals include
cutting the number of people in the world living on less than one dollar a
day by half and halving the number of people who don't have access to safe
drinking water by the year 2015. The U.N. says more than three million
people die yearly because of unsafe water, and 815 million go hungry.
One-point-one billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.4
billion lack adequate sanitation.
United Nations
Press Release
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb21-e.pdf
The fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development concluded its session early this morning by deciding
to entrust its Chairman, Emil Salim (Indonesia), to facilitate agreement on
all outstanding issues in a draft plan of implementation to be transmitted
to the Summit. The draft implementation plan -- the subject of extensive
negotiations during the two-week session -- was not finalized. The text's
introduction reaffirms the validity of Agenda 21 -- the comprehensive plan
of action adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED), which embraced economic growth, social development and
environmental protection to achieve sustainable development in the
twenty-first century. Agenda 21, the text says, establishes the fundamental
principles and programme of action for achieving sustainable development. In
addition to the introduction, the draft text contains chapters on, among
others: poverty eradication; changing unsustainable patterns of consumption
and production; and protecting and managing the natural resource base of
economic and social development. Also tonight, a document was circulated
during the meeting summarizing the informal meetings held during the session
on partnerships (see document A/CONF.199/PC/CRP.4). Jan Kara (Czech
Republic) and Diane Quarless (Jamaica), Committee vice-chairpersons,
introduced the report. In other business tonight, the Committee adopted an
orally revised draft decision setting out the organization of work for the
Summit (see document A/CONF.199/PC/L.7) and a report on its work for the
session (see document A/CONF.1999/PC/L.6). It decided that reports on the
multi-stakeholder dialogue segment, the ministerial segment and the
Committee's discussion on partnerships would be annexed to the report. Ms.
Quarless (Jamaica), in her capacity as Committee rapporteur, introduced the
report. The Committee also adopted a draft decision, sponsored by the "Group
of 77" developing countries and China, by the terms of which it expressed
its appreciation to Indonesia for having made it possible for the meeting to
be held in Bali, Indonesia, and for the excellent facilities, staff and
services placed at its disposal. The Committee also decided to transmit the
elements of a political document to the Summit for consideration. Lowell
Flanders, a senior official with the United Nations secretariat, noted
several minor editorial changes to be made to the draft implementation plan.
Maria Luiza Viotti (Brazil), Committee vice-chairperson, also noted an
editorial change to be made to the text. Kiyotaka Akasaka (Japan), Committee
vice-chairperson, also spoke regarding editorial changes. Statements were
made during the discussion on editorial changes by the representatives of
India, Egypt, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Spain (for the European Union),
Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, United States and Nigeria. Other statements
were made by the representatives of South Africa, Spain (for the European
Union), Venezuela (for the "Group of 77" developing countries and China),
Japan, United States, Lebanon, Belgium, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Nitin Desai, Secretary-General of the World Summit, made closing remarks, as
did, Mr. Salim (Indonesia), Committee Chairman.
Highlights of the Preparatory Meeting Much of the session was given over to
negotiations on the draft plan of implementation, with delegates working
until late at night in an effort to reach agreement on the text. In addition
to the negotiations on the plan of implementation, a three-day ministerial
segment was held during which representatives discussed implementation of
the Bali commitments, partnership initiatives, and elements for the
political document to be adopted in Johannesburg. Opening the segment,
Megawati Soekarnoputri, President of Indonesia, called for international
cooperation to help developing countries utilize resources in a sustainable
manner. The tendency to blame one another had become part of any discussion
of sustainable development; conflicts and instability had often resulted.
But, she said, closely cooperative endeavours were the only answer.
Interdependence, in the global village, was real. Also speaking at the
opening of the segment, Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette noted that
Secretary- General Kofi Annan had proposed five key areas for particular
focus -- water and sanitation, energy, agriculture, biodiversity and
ecosystem management and health. It was important to have firm goals and
targets in those areas and specify concrete commitments so that real
progress could be made in the implementation of Agenda 21 and the Millennium
Declaration. During the discussion on the political declaration, many
speakers asserted that a concise, forceful, action oriented document should
be adopted by the heads of State and Government in Johannesburg. Committee
Chairman Emil Salim (Indonesia) suggested that interdependence,
sustainability, participation, equity and an enabling political environment
were concepts that declaration might wish to promote. Speakers during the
dialogue on implementation stressed, among other things, the need to move
from ideals to actions to achieve sustainable development. When the segment
took up partnerships, it was underlined that such initiatives should
complement, not replace government negotiated declarations and plans of
action. Another important aspect of the session was the "multi-stakeholder"
dialogue. The three-day segment allowed a wide range of civil society and
government actors to express their views on issues crucial to sustainable
development, which included the importance of good governance, the role to
be played by civil society at all levels of the process, and the importance
of capacity-building and partnerships in promoting the social, economic and
environmental pillars of development. "Major groups" representing women,
youth, indigenous peoples, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local
authorities, trade unions, scientists and farmers participated in the
deliberations, as did representatives of national governments. Also during
the session a large number of "side events" promoting sustainable
development were held by representatives of civil society, the private
sector and government. Nearly 5,000 people, including government
representatives, civil society participants, and United Nations staff
attended the session. More than 170 countries were represented with some 120
Ministers in attendance. Emil Salim (Indonesia), chaired the Preparatory
Committee. Committee vice-chairpersons were Kiyotaka Akasaka (Japan), Maria
Luiza Viotti (Brazil), Richard Ballhorn (Canada), Ihab Gameleldin (Egypt),
Goran Engfeldt (Sweden), Ositadimna Anaedu (Nigeria), Jan Kara (Czech
Republic) and Diane Quarless (Jamaica) who also served as rapporteur.
ACTION ON CHAIRMAN'S PAPER
LOWELL FLANDERS, senior official with the United Nations Summit secretariat,
called attention to editorial changes in the draft plan of implementation
for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which contained an account
of the negotiations conducted in Bali on that plan (document
A/CONF.199/PC/L.5 and add.1 to 5). MARIA LUIZA RIBEIRO VIOTTI (Brazil) then
read a bracketed paragraph (one on which consensus had not been reached)
emphasizing the role of ethics in sustainable development. Representatives
of India, Egypt, Canada, Norway, Spain (on behalf of the European Union),
Belgium, Switzerland, Australia and Venezuela then commented on the revised
text. KIYOTAKA AKASAKA (Japan) explained that some of the language under
discussion was subject to further negotiation. The representative of the
United States explained that country's opposition to language on the Kyoto
Protocol. The representative of South Africa expressed hope that her
Government and the Chairman could continue to work closely on preparation
for the World Summit. The representative of Spain, on behalf of the European
Union and associated countries, said the Union welcomed the fact that the
United Nations welcomed progress towards consensus on work programmes to
eradicate poverty, sustainable consumption and production, protection of
natural resources and strengthening institutional arrangements in all those
efforts. The Union remained committed to a global partnership to be agreed
upon in Johannesburg as a cornerstone of the global deal between developing
and developed countries. The representative of Venezuela, for the "Group of
77" developing countries and China, said she stood in solidarity in seeking
consensus to implement Agenda 21. Despite all efforts made and the
flexibility shown by the Group, consensus had not been achieved. Major
concessions had been made by the Group. She underlined the principle of
common but differentiated responsibilities. Eradicating poverty and moving
to sustainable patterns of consumption and production were very important to
the group, as was the struggle to achieve a healthy environment. The
representatives of the United States and Canada then sought clarifications
regarding editorial changes.
The Preparatory Committee then decided to entrust the Chairman to facilitate
agreement on all outstanding issues on the "Draft plan of implementation for
the World Summit on Sustainable Development" for transmittal to the World
Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg for further consideration.
The representative of Nigeria made a statement of an editorial nature. The
representative of Japan thanked Indonesia for hosting the Conference.
Considerable progress had been made on the plan of implementation, he noted.
Utmost efforts should be exerted to finalize the plan and the other Summit
outcomes. The representative of the United States said all could say it had
been an arduous but productive two weeks. All could look back with
satisfaction on the success that had been achieved. She appreciated the fact
that tough issues had not been avoided -- rather, they had been confronted.
She noted the importance of the Doha trade summit and the International
Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey. She underlined
the challenges ahead that must be met to ensure sustainable development.
POSSIBLE ELEMENTS FOR A POLITICAL DOCUMENT
Mr. SALIM (Indonesia) then drew the Committee's attention to document
A/CONF.199/PCC or the working paper, which contained some possible potential
elements for the political declaration. The Committee then decided to
entrust the Chairman to prepare the paper containing potential inputs for a
political declaration for transmittal to the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg.
REPORT ON PARTNERSHIPS
The Committee then decided to annex the three Chairman's summaries from the
Multi-stakeholder Dialogue Segment, the High-level ministerial segment and
partnerships ("type 2" outcomes) to the report of the fourth session of the
preparatory committee.
SUMMIT ORGANIZATION OF WORK
LOWELL FLANDERS, senior United Nations official with the Summit secretariat,
called attention to editorial changes in the draft decision submitted by the
Chairman on behalf of the Bureau of the Preparatory Committee, entitled,
"Matters related to the organization of work during the World Summit on
Sustainable Development" (document A/CONF.199/PC/L.7). The Preparatory
Committee then decided to adopt the draft decision as contain in
A/CONF.199/PC/L.7, as orally revised. The representative of Lebanon thanked
the Government of Indonesia for hosting the Summit. He reconfirmed that the
continued occupation of part of its land by Israel represented a breach of
international law and negatively impacted the future development of the
region. Occupation should be combated within the framework of international
law. The Group of 77 would remain a fundamental platform working to achieve
development for its members, he stressed. The representative of Spain (for
the European Union) proposed an amendment to the decision on the
organization of work of the Summit. NITIN DESAI, Secretary-General of the
Summit, responding to the proposed amendment, said the specialized agencies
would be invited to the Summit, by the terms of the text as it now stood.
The representative of Belgium sought a clarification regarding Spain's
proposed amendment. Mr. DESAI reconfirmed what he had said. The
representative of Spain said he was referring to participation by heads of
specialized agencies, and Mr. Desai said he had confirmed that they would.
The representative of Venezuela, on behalf of the Group of 77, then
introduced a draft decision entitled
"Expression of thanks to the people and Government of Indonesia", which
expressed gratitude to that country for hosting of the fourth Preparatory
Committee. The Committee then adopted the draft decision. The representative
of Indonesia, responding to that expression of thanks, expressed gratitude
for the work that went into the Preparatory Committee and its
accomplishments. The problem of sustainable development, he said, was a
global one and it must be solved together or all would be buried together.
In addition, all three pillars of sustainable development must be tackled
together. A decade of experience with Agenda 21 had shown that political
will was needed for progress, he said. He hoped that the achievements of
Bali would be built upon in Johannesburg, for the good of this generation
and future generations. He expressed gratitude for the opportunity to host
the Preparatory Committee and for the hard work of everyone involved. The
representative of Saudi Arabia asked how delegations could help best with
the process leading up to the Summit. Mr. DESAI said a "decision by
exhaustion" had been taken and the full pleasures of Bali had not been
enjoyed. A great deal had, however, been achieved -- that should be
recognized. What was left was of course difficult. Political will to find
common ground on the outstanding issues was needed. That was the challenge
between now and Johannesburg. There was much to be done based on what had
been agreed so far, he said. All parts of the United Nations system,
including the Bretton Woods institutions, would be brought together before
Johannesburg to prepare for the outcome of the Summit. He thanked all those
involved in the session. The representative of Iran thanked the Chairman for
his work. He suggested that the mandate of the Bureau be extended to assist
him. The CHAIRMAN asked for time to look into the matter. Making closing
remarks, he said he hoped a sense of optimism could be maintained even
though not all the work had been completed. He thanked all the
vice-chairpersons for their work. He noted that 80 per cent of the programme
had been completed, even if it had not all been agreed. Consensus on how to
have full agreement had not been achieved. This was a "wake up" call - there
was still work to be done, with disagreements between the North and South.
IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
In its introduction, the draft plan of implementation reaffirms the validity
of Agenda 21 -- the comprehensive plan of action adopted at the 1992 United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which embraced
economic growth, social development and environmental protection to achieve
sustainable development in the twenty-first century. Agenda 21, the text
says, establishes the fundamental principles and programme of action for
achieving sustainable development. The present implementation text will
further build on the achievements made since Rio and expedite the
realization of those goals. "To this end", the text reads, "we commit
ourselves to undertake concrete actions and measures at all levels and to
enhance international cooperation. Efforts will promote the above-mentioned
three components of sustainable development as interdependent and mutually
reinforcing pillars. Poverty eradication, changing unsustainable patterns of
production and consumption, and protecting and managing the natural resource
base of economic and social development are overarching objectives of, and
essential requirements for, sustainable development. Those measures, the
text asserts, should benefit all - particularly women, youth, children and
vulnerable groups and involve all relevant actors through partnerships
between North and South, and between governments, the private sector and
organizations at all levels. As reflected in the Monterrey Consensus, such
partnerships are key to pursuing sustainable development in a globalizing
world. According to the text, good governance within each country and at the
international level is essential for sustainable development. At the
domestic level, sound environmental, social and economic policies,
democratic institutions responsive to the needs of the people, the rule of
law, anti-corruption measures, gender equality and an enabling environment
for investment are the basis for sustainable development. The gap between
developed and developing countries points to the continued need for a
dynamic and enabling international economic environment supportive of
international cooperation, particularly in the areas of finance, technology
transfer, debt and trade, and global decision-making. Peace, security, and
stability "are essential" for achieving sustainable development and ensuring
that sustainable development benefits all, the text says. Placing great
emphasis on poverty eradication, the draft stresses the need to launch
programmes aimed at meeting the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of halving
the proportion of people living in poverty. It also calls for halving the
proportion of people who lack access to proper sanitation by 2015. It goes
on to outline recommendations on a range of issues from limiting
unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, to protecting the
natural resource base of economic and social development, to combating
environmental threats to health and diverse ecosystems. There are separate
areas on actions recommended for Africa and Small Island States. Means of
implementation are also taken up by the text, although a considerable amount
of that portion of the document has not yet been finalized. The agreed text
asserts that the implementation of Agenda 21 and the achievement of the
internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the
Millennium Declaration as well as in the current plan of implementation
requires a substantially increased effort, both by countries themselves and
by the rest of the international community, taking fully into account the
Rio principles. Also included in the draft plan is a section on
institutional framework for sustainable development, which states that such
a framework is key to the full implementation of Agenda 21, to follow up on
the outcome of the Summit and to meet emerging sustainable development
challenges.
Xinhua News Agency
8 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FD20020607860000017.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI (Indonesia), Jun 8, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The three-day
ministerial session of the fourth Preparatory Committee Meeting for World
Summit on Sustainable Development ended here on Saturday after midnight, as
delegates concluded their discussions on a political declaration to be
adopted by world leaders at a summit in Johannesburg next August.
Among the many
issues under discussion, respect for human rights will be included in the
document. The Johannesburg declaration will also acknowledge the right to
development and the right for all to live in an appropriate, healthy
environment.
Representatives
applauded what the Bali meeting had achieved. " Much has been achieved here
in Bali and we were close to achieving more," said Margaret Beckett, British
secretary of state for the environment. "I am confident that what we have
achieved here takes us well down to the road to a successful Summit in
Johannesburg," she said. An Australian delegate stressed that the
Johannesburg declaration would express the world leaders' commitment to
sustainable management of the oceans. Representative of the United States
reiterated the barriers to trade should be reduced and globalization benefit
all. The political declaration of the World Summit was included in General
Assembly resolution 55/199, which calls for a concise and focused commitment
to a global partnership. The document will address the main challenges and
opportunities faced by the international community and renewed, at the
highest level, commitment to the North-South partnership, an official report
from the United Nations said.
Associated Press
Writer
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020608/ap_wo_en_po/indonesia_development_conference_9
BALI, Indonesia -
The United Nations on Saturday played down suggestions that disagreements
between poor nations and rich ones meant major development talks here were a
failure. Over 6,000 delegates, including 118 environment ministers, ended
almost two weeks of negotiations early Saturday on Indonesia's resort island
of Bali. They had been tasked with preparing a development blueprint for the
next decade to be voted on by world leaders at a major U.N. summit on
sustainable development to be held in August in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The delegates had agreed on most of the ambitious 158-point plan to achieve
goals set at a U.N. summit in 2000, but were unable to compromise on several
key issues, especially concerning trade, finance and the binding agreements
on the environment. Emil Salim, chairman of the Bali meeting, said there was
still time before the Johannesburg summit for governments to reconcile their
positions. "Significant agreement has been achieved," Salim said. "We can
expect Johannesburg to be a success." Environmentalists at the talks accused
wealthy nations led by Japan and the United States of blocking proposals
that would tie governments to a timetable for implementing the action plan
and providing money for development. Delegates from rich nations urged
poorer countries to address corruption by enacting laws promoting good
governance and enforcing laws more strongly. The United States insisted that
development funds be conditional on reducing corruption and improving
governance a stand criticized by poorer nations. Despite the
disagreements, Nitin Desai, the secretary-general of the Johannesburg talks,
remained upbeat. "The agreements reached in Bali are substantial," said
Desai. "We can still improve on the plan, but the real test ahead of us is
not in the words of a document, but in the actions that are undertaken."
About 50,000
delegates are invited to the Johannesburg summit. Dubbed "Earth Summit 2,"
it will coincide with the anniversary of the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. Critics point out that governments have largely failed to
carry out pledges to improve the environment made at the Rio de Janeiro
meeting. The United Nations says at least 1.1 billion people lack access to
safe drinking water and 2.4 billion lack adequate sanitation. More than
three million people die every year from water-related diseases and 815
million go hungry. Environmental activists at the Bali talks accused wealthy
nations of acting in the interests of multinational companies and of trying
to scupper the talks.
United Nations Press Release
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb20-e.htm
The three-day ministerial segment of the fourth Preparatory Committee for
the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development ended this afternoon,
as speakers concluded their discussion on the elements for a political
declaration to be adopted by heads of State at the Summit, which will open
this August in Johannesburg. During the debate, the importance of promoting
respect for human rights at all levels in the document was among the many
issues stressed. Belgium's representative said the starting point for
sustainable development, ethically speaking, was respect for human rights at
all levels. The Johannesburg declaration should acknowledge the right to
development and the right for all to live in an appropriate, healthy
environment. A representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
said the declaration should state both what should be done and why it should
be done. In that context, he emphasized the importance of children getting
the best possible start in life. No activity was more important than
investment in children, who represented the world's future. Explicit
reference should be made in the declaration to the outcome document of the
recent General Assembly Special Session on Children. As they did this
morning, many representatives asserted that the document should be clear,
concise and action-oriented. Botswana's representative said she agreed with
the Committee Chairman's statement this morning that the document should be
"crisp and punchy". The Summit should emerge with a strong political
message promoting the implementation of Agenda 21. The deteriorating state
of the environment and increasing poverty must also be highlighted, as
should the importance of inclusiveness and partnership with all
stakeholders. Rwanda's representative said the text should mention the goals
that had not been met since Rio and ensure that the same errors weren't
repeated. Education for all and access to up to date information must be
promoted, as should combating disease, erosion, desertification and natural
disasters. Moral and ethnical principles should underlie international
relations. Mutual respect, partnership and cooperation must be supported.
The political declaration of the World Summit was described in General
Assembly resolution 55/199, which calls for a concise and focused commitment
to a global partnership to implement Agenda 21. According to the Assembly,
the document should also address the main challenges and opportunities faced
by the international community in that regard, and it should reinvigorate,
at the highest political level, commitment to a North-South partnership,
with a higher level of integrated solidarity towards an accelerated
implementation of sustainable goals. Also speaking this afternoon were the
representatives of Honduras, Jamaica, Norway, Greece, Libya, El Salvador,
Zimbabwe, Panama, United States, Kuwait, Australia, Japan, Egypt, Nauru,
Nicaragua, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, United Republic of Tanzania, Nigeria, Peru
and Armenia.
The observer for Switzerland made a statement. Representatives of the
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) also spoke. The
Preparatory Committee is scheduled to meet again tonight at 8 p.m. to
conclude its work for the session.
BACKGROUND
The fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development this afternoon continued its ministerial segment.
The afternoon's discussion was expected to focus on elements of the
political declaration to be adopted at the Johannesburg Summit.
STATEMENTS
The representative of Honduras said he agreed with all those who had spoken
of ethical instruments that could be used as a basis for action for
sustainable development. He advocated wording that would express the
personal commitment of every individual on earth to work for sustainable
development. The representative of Jamaica supported the statement by
Barbados. She said it was clear that there were still differences that had
not been reconciled at the preparatory committee, but the declaration should
be concise and understandable by the majority of people so they could
advocate for it. It should include, among other elements, an
acknowledgement of deteriorating conditions and previous international
conferences, and specific references to HIV/AIDs, small island issues, Type
2 Initiatives and a vision for the future. The representative of Norway said
that, to bring action forward on sustainable development, firm deliverables
should be reflected in the political declaration. There should also be
quantum leaps in commitments for assistance, and important decisions should
be included. It should also include due care for life, liberty, and the
welfare of future generations. Strategic investments in the five areas
underlined by the Secretary-General would bring great dividends, she
continued. The declaration should be divided into four sections, including
overall goals, actions, follow-up and monitoring. At minimum, it should
answer questions concerning international action relating to the future
faced by the poorest children of the world. The representative of Belgium
said the pillars of sustainable development were complementary and should be
pursued in a mutually reinforcing manner. Sustainable development involved
the entire international community. Efforts must be made to change, among
other things, unsustainable patterns of consumption. Globalization should
be viewed from an ethical perspective. Standards for the three pillars --
social, economic and environmental -- should be adopted. The starting point
for sustainable development, ethically speaking, was respect for human
rights at all levels, he said. The Johannesburg declaration should
acknowledge the right to development and the right for all to live in an
appropriate, healthy environment. Sustainable development could not grow
unless there were shared ethical values. The need to control poverty and
social exclusion must be addressed at Johannesburg. Democracy and good
governance at all levels were key. The representative of Greece said a clear
political message promoting sustainable development must be sent to
Johannesburg. It must be concise and structured around the key issues. The
link between goals and actions must be set out. Unsustainable consumption
and production patterns must be reduced, and globalization must be made to
work for sustainable development. The declaration should stress the need to
integrate the environmental dimension into all policy decisions. It should
also stress the importance of the means of implementation, including
innovative financial mechanisms. The representative of Botswana agreed with
the Committee Chairman's statement this morning that the document should be
"crisp and punchy". The Summit should emerge with a strong political
message promoting implementation of Agenda 21. The deteriorating state of
the environment and increasing poverty must be highlighted. Previous
multilateral processes should be taken into account. The elements of
inclusiveness and partnership with all stakeholders must be highlighted.
The document should be couched in language that would be attractive to the
world media, so that they would pass it on to people in "our respective
countries." The representative of Libya said the declaration should be
short, clear and concise. It should reaffirm the principles of Agenda 21,
as well as the goals of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and
the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). It also should include
the goals of international commitments such as the Millennium Declaration.
Poverty reduction and other priorities should be pursued within specific
timetables. Other important issues that should be addressed, he said, were
desertification and the water supply, as well as the deterioration of other
resources. Official development assistance (ODA) and transfer of technology
should be taken into account. The document should also address colonialism
and its consequences, as well as the unequal distribution of the benefits of
globalization and the special problems of Africa. The observer from
Switzerland said the declaration was a crucial means to strengthen common
goals and communicate those goals to the world public. Consensus was the
most precious resource, and was important to reaffirm cooperation. The
different situation of various countries might require different approaches
to sustainable development, but good governance was universally crucial.
The improvement of international cooperation should go well beyond
Johannesburg. The Declaration should build on previous consensus and
include a determination to overcome past obstacles. It should also address
problems not yet in Agenda 21, such as bridging the digital divide, as well
as other overarching, substantive issues. The representative of El
Salvador said the declaration should stress common but differentiated
responsibilities and support the goals of the Millennium Declaration. It
should also address such issues as access to markets, natural disaster
mitigation and climate change. It should reference all relevant
international agreements of recent years, including those on population
issues, which are extremely relevant to sustainable development. A
representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said the text
should be concise and motivate all stakeholders to commit to sustainable
development. It should be a firm commitment to action and provide a
framework for accountability by those participating at Johannesburg. The
declaration should state both what should be done and why it should be
done. It should clearly say that "children are the future of the world" and
that they would be the primary future actors in the world. He stressed the
importance of children getting the best possible start in life. No activity
was more important than investment in children. Explicit reference should
be made to the outcome of the recent Special Session of the General Assembly
on Children. A representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
said the declaration would be an important element in securing political
will and the necessary commitment to achieve sustainable development. He
welcomed the reaffirmation of the Rio principles and the outcome of recent
United Nations conferences. Population, reproductive health and women's
empowerment were crucial dimensions of sustainable development, he stressed.
The representative of Zimbabwe said the common platform of agreements
already in place should be one of the anchors of the document. The text
should also be clear in stating that quality of life for many had
deteriorated since Rio. That statement should be followed up by a clear
elaboration of measures to be taken. Issues such as health, poor
sanitation, access to water and desertification should be accorded as much
priority as issues of biodiversity and climate change. He stressed the
importance of upholding the principles of sovereignty and non-interference
in the internal affairs of States. He noted that the State had a role to
play in bringing about equity in land ownership, which was related to
poverty reduction and ownership of resources by local people. The role of
countries was key to sustainable development in poor States such as his and
should not be undermined by international cooperation. The representative of
Panama joined others in a call for a clear, specific declaration that would
spell out the responsibilities incumbent on each country. Education,
information flow, and transfer of technology for sustainable development
were essential elements. The declaration should also recognize the rights
of indigenous peoples and refer to a common ethical framework such as the
Earth Charter. The representative of the United States recalled commitments
recently made at Doha and said cooperation was required to reach those
goals. The declaration should contain a clear, concise and focused message
of hope. Each country bore primary responsibility for achieving sustainable
development, while cooperation among countries and between sectors must be
promoted. Barriers to trade should be reduced and globalization should
benefit all. He described the vision of a world in which humankind would be
trustees of the world resources and which was free from hunger, poverty,
disease and despair. The representative of Kuwait said that many problems of
the world, including occupation, bore upon sustainable development. The
Earth Charter, the Rio Declaration and other relevant international
agreements must be implemented. He hoped the Declaration would be very
specific on a range of problems related to sustainable development. It
should also include a direct link to methods of implementation. The
representative of Australia said the declaration should send a message of
commitment to sustainable development. A course for the future should be
charted. It must set out how to move from commitment to action. The text
should therefore focus on priority areas and reflect the shared
responsibility of all. It should not summarize or repeat the programme of
action -- it should pitch its message in general terms and at the highest
political level. The declaration should express leaders' commitment to
sustainable management of the oceans. How financial resources would be
mobilized to promote sustainable development should also be noted. The
essential role of national governance should further be underlined. The
text should speak to all the peoples of the world. Africa and Small Island
developing States (SIDS) should receive appropriate mention. The
representative of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the
declaration should not be too long, because it might not get the required
attention. Nor should it be too short, because it might leave out key
issues. It should give high emphasis to poverty eradication, including
elements addressing the ever-increasing water crisis and climate change. He
drew attention to the deleterious effects of natural disasters and stressed
the need for monitoring and early-warning mechanism to promote sustainable
development. The representative of Japan said the declaration should be
short, punchy and give hope to people. The text should emphasize that each
country must take concrete action to ensure that existing goals were
realized. He also emphasized the importance of promoting the three pillars
of sustainable development. To promote ownership by developing countries,
the importance of capacity-building and improvements in governance should be
stressed, he said. The need to fully utilize all available resources and to
include all stakeholders in the process was also key. No economic
development was possible without environmental protection. The critical
situation of the global environment must be recognized. The representative
of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that health was one of the goals
of sustainable development, but was also central to its achievement. It was
an investment with major economic returns. Some of the greatest risks to
health, he said, came from a contaminated environment. Globalization could
improve health but could also increase risks. Health goals were clear and
quantifiable and the means for improving health were clear as well.
Spending must be increased, but so must innovation and systemic approaches.
In the political declaration, the key point was the mutual well-being of the
earth and of the human beings who inhabited it. Now was the time for action
on that point. The representative of Egypt said the declaration should
clearly express the political will of leaders to deal with the problems of
sustainable development, which required a range of economic and cooperative
measures. The declaration must also express a commitment to end occupation
-- as Palestinians were unable to control their own sustainable development
-- and to minimize the effect of sanctions on the sustainable development of
the peoples involved. The representative of Nauru called for a clear
declaration that informed people and States of their responsibilities toward
sustainable development. Its deadlines should be coordinated with those of
the Millennium Declaration, and it should pay special attention to the
problems of Africa and those of small island developing States (SIDS), to
which the condition of the oceans were of particular concern. The
representative of Nicaragua said her country supported Agenda 21 as a point
of reference in the declaration. Eradication of poverty was key to
sustainable development. Access to education must be a priority,
particularly among women and children and in rural areas. Respect for
cultural diversity and recognition of indigenous communities must also be
promoted. The representative of Hungary said it was a unique feature of the
human being that it drew up a plan before acting for the good. He noted the
important role played by education and upbringing in how people interacted
with the natural environment. It was tragic how rapidly the garbage of
advertising had contaminated the physical and mental world. Humans must
control that kind of pollution -- if they didn't, they could not achieve
sustainable development. Such concepts should be reflected in the
declaration. The representative of Rwanda said the text should give a short
account of what had happened since Rio. It should mention the goals that
had not been met and ensure that the same errors weren't repeated. The
right to safe water and shelter could not be stressed enough. Education for
all and access to up-to-date information must be promoted. Combating
disease, erosion, desertification and natural disasters was key. Moral and
ethnical principles should underlie international relations. Mutual
respect, partnership and cooperation must be supported. The representative
of Kyrgyzstan said the main cause of the ecological crisis and of poverty
was a lack of understanding of sustainable development at the political
level. Information on the subject was needed at all levels. The science of
the subject had also not been adequate thus far and could not inform public
policy. In addition, he said, the market had failed to protect the
environment. Market mechanisms had to be changed seriously; the free market
by itself would not protect the environment. The private sector must
provide resources to redress the environmental degradation that had
occurred. In government, institutional support for sustainable development
was also weak. The declaration should be short -- very few had read the Rio
Declaration because it was so long. The representative of Tanzania said the
political declaration should capture commitments by parties and should
contain all the do-ables. It should be based on the three pillars, and
emphasize poverty eradication and the goals of recent relevant agreements.
The access of the poor to health care, energy, water, sanitation and other
basics was essential, as was conservation. The range of measures to support
those goals should all be included, but he emphasized measures to deal with
the negative effects of globalization. The representative of Nigeria said
the political declaration should be short and action-oriented, and send a
very clear signal that delegates would put into action what they had put on
paper, including means of implementation and adequate resources for
development. Above all, capacity-building should be emphasized along with
relief for the specific problems of small island States and Africa. He
hoped that consensus would prevail today. The representative of Peru said
the text should be short, very clear, specific and concise. It must convey
a resolve to implement commitments undertaken in the past. Development must
be linked to the preservation of the environment, which required
international cooperation and financing. Also important was dealing with
the debt issue and recognizing indigenous peoples. The rights of women and
gender-equality must be reaffirmed in the text. Globalization was widening
the gap between rich and poor -- that must be changed in Johannesburg. The
representative of Armenia said adoption of the political document was of the
utmost importance. It should reaffirm the Rio principles and other
important documents. The declaration should be short and dynamic, and it
should avoid unnecessary repetition. Commitments to be undertaken by all
countries should be concrete, and time frames for implementation should be
set out.
United Nations Press Release
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb19-e.htm
A clear, forceful and comprehensive commitment to concrete action in
implementing Agenda 21 was called for this morning by speakers in Bali, as
the ministerial segment of the fourth and final Preparatory Committee for
the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development began its interactive
dialogue on elements for a political declaration to be issued by heads of
State at that Summit. "No stone must be left unturned" in a comprehensive
vision for sustainable development, the representative of Mauritius said.
But the function of the political document itself should be to bind States
to the actions that would be spelled out in detail by the implementation
plan. For that purpose it must be short and to the point. He said the Rio
Declaration, which launched Agenda 21, should not be overshadowed by the new
document. Instead, the declaration should reaffirm the Rio text, while also
reflecting the new world economic order caused by globalization. The
political declaration of the World Summit was described in General Assembly
resolution 55/199, which calls for a concise and focused commitment to a
global partnership to implement Agenda 21. According to the Assembly, the
document should also address the main challenges and opportunities faced by
the international community in that regard, and it should reinvigorate, at
the highest political level, commitment to a North-South partnership, with a
higher level of integrated solidarity towards an accelerated implementation
of sustainable goals. During the course of the fourth preparatory meeting
thus far, the declaration was the subject of one plenary meeting and various
informal discussions. Initial inputs for the discussions included the
outcomes of the second and third preparatory meetings, information provided
by the Vice-Chairs from Egypt and Canada on relevant discussions, outcomes
of the multi-stakeholder dialogue and input from the Secretary-General's
panel. This morning, the representative of the Philippines said that the
General Assembly resolution described the political declaration clearly, and
it should not be reworked unduly. Heads of State could speak volumes of
commitments, but it would not necessarily affect the lives of the poor.
Instead, he said, a declaration should clearly support a concrete
implementation plan that included a solidarity fund, time-bound targets,
food security efforts, the end to trade-distorting subsidies, the engagement
of civil society, an accounting of indigenous peoples and communities, and
other means to accomplish Agenda 21 goals. Through that document, everyone
should be mobilized to create a sustainable future for all mankind. Many
speakers today stressed the need for the political declaration to provide an
ethical basis for the actions to be called for in the implementation plan,
following a statement by the representative of Romania, who said that there
was too much negotiation on the issues at hand based on cost/benefit
analysis. The Earth Charter, he said, set forward a set of ethical
principles for sustainable development; those principles should be
integrated into the document under discussion. Sometimes, he said, it was
necessary to look to the skies and to ethics. Statements were also made by
the representatives of Cuba, Cyprus, Russian Federation, Thailand, Namibia,
Kenya, Mozambique, Spain (for the European Union), Tunisia, China,
Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, Finland, Uganda, Canada, Ukraine, Colombia,
Bolivia, Bhutan, Lesotho, Sudan, Syria, Gabon, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Nepal, Cote d'Ivoire, Iraq, Barbados (for the Caribbean Community) and the
Netherlands. The observer for Palestine also made a statement. Also taking
the floor during the debate were representatives of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the
International Labour Organization (ILO), the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS), and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Emil
Salim (Indonesia), Committee Chairman, made opening remarks. The ministerial
segment of the fourth Preparatory Committee meeting will meet again at 3:00
p.m. today.
BACKGROUND
The fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development this morning continued its ministerial segment,
during which Ministers were expected to discuss the follow-up to the Bali
implementation plan, partnership initiatives and elements for the political
declaration to be adopted at the Johannesburg Summit. The focus of this
morning's discussion was the political declaration to be adopted at the
Johannesburg Summit.
STATEMENTS
EMIL SALIM (Indonesia), Preparatory Committee Chairman, said an informal
meeting had been held prior to this morning's session at which two options
for the political document had been put forward. The first option was for
it to be "short, punchy and crisp". It must be understandable,
action-oriented and linked to the implementation plan without repeating all
the plan's elements. The second option was to have a longer document with
an assessment of what had happened since the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio. It would incorporate lessons
learned and list all issues in the implementation plan.
An opening inspirational statement that would induce people to read it could
be included, he said. Reaffirmation of the Rio principles and renewed
commitment to its outcome could be made. Reference could be made to all the
agreements since Rio. A specific link to the implementation plan could be
made, and priority issues could be included. The representative of Mauritius
said for the declaration to be forceful and credible, it must be short and
succinct. It must leave no stone unturned to implement Agenda 21. The Rio
Declaration should not be overshadowed by the new document. Instead of
"reinventing the wheel", the declaration should reaffirm the Rio text. Some
new clauses should be included, to reflect the new world economic order
caused by globalization. It should, among other things, recognize the
vulnerability of Small Island developing States (SIDS). The representative
of Cuba said the process needed a firm and effective political statement.
Clear, dynamic language was essential. It should contain sufficient vision
to remain in force until the world could look back over the sustainable
development agenda as a whole. All the commitments since Rio had been
insufficient to prevent the ongoing deterioration of the economic and
environmental situation around the planet, caused in large part by
neo-liberal globalization. He stressed the importance of observing the
principle of common but differentiated responsibilities for the developed
and developing world. The declaration should contain an explicit
condemnation of the use of unilateral coercive measures, which ran counter
to the United Nations Charter, and impeded sustainable development. The
representative of Romania said that there was too much negotiation on the
issues at hand based on cost/benefit analysis. Sometimes it was necessary
to look to the skies and to ethics. The Earth Charter set forward a set of
ethical principles for sustainable development; those principles should be
integrated into the political declaration. The representative of Cyprus said
that a global partnership was essential to achieve the still-elusive global
good. In the Mediterranean region, agreements had shown that consensus was
possible in sustainable development. Policies adopted needed to be flexible
enough to accommodate improvements in health, water, trade liberalization,
resource depletion, biological diversity and other areas. The means were
available; political will was required to develop an international ethic of
mutuality. The representative of the Russian Federation said that genuine
efforts for sustainable development were costly and required institutional
investment, relief for foreign debt, global ecological services and other
mechanisms. Until those problems were resolved, sustainable development
would not be a reality. He expressed readiness to work on meeting all the
necessary challenges. A representative of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) noted that a paradigm shift
might be in order to achieve sustainable development. The three-fold nature
of sustainable development must be reinforced by the outcome of
Johannesburg. Clear priorities must be set in a careful and
stakeholder-oriented way. The overall strategy to achieve sustainable
development needed careful preparation. Implementing sustainable
development on all levels could reflect a "dimensionality for all of us". A
representative of the International Labour Organization (ILO) said the ILO
was deeply concerned that it had not been possible to better reflect the
social pillar of sustainable development in the draft implementation plan.
He stressed the importance of promoting health, education and employment.
The social dimension required attention at all levels, especially at the
workplace level. The ILO would like to see the promotion and protection of
employment represented in the declaration. In that regard, he highlighted
the special importance of youth employment. The representative of Thailand
said all had believed that through the outcome of the Rio summit,
sustainable development could be achieved. That had not happened. It was
necessary to look to the future. "We cannot afford to lose another 10
years", she said. A time frame for implementation of goals was key. The
declaration must contain some elements of definite time-bound targets. "We
must learn from our mistakes", she said, calling for forward movement with
unity of purpose. The representative of the Philippines said the General
Assembly resolution described the political declaration clearly, and it
should not be reworked unduly. Heads of State could speak volumes of
commitments, but it would not necessarily affect the lives of the poor. An
implementation plan that included a solidarity fund, time targets, food
security efforts, an end to trade-distorting subsidies, the engagement of
civil society, an accounting of indigenous peoples and communities, and the
ethics of the World Charter would begin to accomplish that goal. Everyone
should be involved in creating a sustainable future for all mankind.
The representative of Namibia said that humanity was at a crossroad to the
future. A commitment must be made to move in a direction that would ensure
prosperity and the improvement of the lives of millions of people,
particularly in developing countries. The political declaration should be a
firm basis for the full implementation of Agenda 21. It should provide
visionary guidelines. But he reiterated a call for action, throughout the
twenty-first century, to make the dream a reality, with poverty eradication
the primary focus, and access to markets and other measures supporting that
focus. The representative of Kenya said that mutual global partnership was
essential in line with the principle of common but differentiated
responsibility. The political declaration should support a concrete
implementation plan with special attention to Africa and the kind of
partnerships developed through the New Programme for African Development (NEPAD).
Poverty was an impediment to sustainable development; the Millennium Goal of
halving poverty must be met, and additional resources must be provided to
meet it. The results of all other conferences since Rio must be built on as
well. The representative of Mozambique said it was necessary to reaffirm the
principles of the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21, including common but
differentiated responsibilities. The problem was not reworking those
principles, but agreeing on means to carry them out. He agreed on the
Secretary-General's five key areas of primary focus and said the political
declaration should be a commitment to concrete action in those areas.
Provision of adequate official development assistance (ODA) was particularly
important in those areas, but a participatory approach at all levels was a
necessity. The representative Spain, for the European Union, said the
declaration should contain an assessment element. It should reaffirm Agenda
21 and other agreements for sustainable development. The political
foundations for sustainable development were peace and security, good
governance, respect for human rights, among others. Sustainable
development should be confirmed as the overall goal for the international
community. The three pillars of sustainable development should be
integrated in a balanced way, he said. There was a strong link between
poverty and environmental degradation. The role of women in promoting
sustainable development must be emphasized and must permeate the whole
outcome of the Summit. Poverty eradication should also be highlighted in
the declaration. The new opportunities presented by globalization should be
strengthened and the importance of changing patterns of consumption and
production should be stressed. The Union strongly supported development
efforts under way in Africa, such as NEPAD. The observer for Palestine said
he hoped the final step of the meeting would be a great success. He said
his delegation had been unable to attend the proceedings because of the
situation in Palestine. Little had been done since Rio to eliminate the
constraints to sustainable development. An era of ethnic cleansing carried
out by the occupying forces of Israel was being witnessed in Palestine.
Foreign occupation should be placed ahead of such issues as malnutrition in
the political declaration. The issue was of the highest importance. He
called for the help of the international community to help stop the violence
against Palestinians. The representative of Tunisia said there could not be
sustainable development unless all forms of poverty, marginalization and
exclusion were eliminated. He noted the formation of a national solidarity
fund, which had greatly helped in alleviating poverty in his country. He
called for an international solidarity fund to help the poor around the
world.
He attached great importance to the anti-desertification, climate change and
biological diversity treaties. He asked whether the current international
trade and finance system was equitable. The growing digital divide must be
bridged and clean technologies must be transferred to the developing
countries. There could be sustainable development without peaceful
settlement of disputes. In that regard, he cited the case of Palestine.
Occupation or unilateral sanctions undermined sustainable development. The
declaration should reflect those ideas as clearly as possible. The
representative of China said the political declaration should be a fresh
point of departure in implementing Agenda 21. It should be terse and clear,
reiterating the basic principles of the Rio Conference. Common but
differentiated responsibilities were basic to those principles. It should
stress, in addition, its full concern over the inequitable distribution of
the benefits of globalization. Developed nations should take the lead in
transfer of technology and assistance in capacity-building in the developing
world, however all nations should formulate their own development policies.
The representative of Indonesia said that poverty eradication, unsustainable
patterns of production and consumption, good governance, foreign occupation
and other priority areas should be priorities in the political declaration.
It supported Romania's call for integration of the Earth Charter into the
Declaration, in particular in the preamble of the document. A change of
attitude was called for; hence the use of the Earth Charter as an ethical
base. The representative of the Dominican Republic said that the language of
the declaration should be strong, clear, short and action-oriented. For a
model of that kind of format, similar documents that had already been
created at the regional level could be seen as a model. The representative
of Chile said the declaration should be "short, easy to understand and
inspiring". It should set out "what we want and how we're going to achieve
it". Emphasis should be placed on the need to eradicate poverty. The need
to be action-oriented must be clearly and strongly set out in the
declaration. Economic development must be worked on, and policies for
sustainable development must be set out. Sincere efforts must be made to
refine and increase democracy. Building capability for follow-up was also
key. The representative of Mexico said the structure of the declaration
should be divided into several main chapters. Her country had made a huge
effort to comply with Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration. There must a
renewed commitment with clear goals to fulfill those agreements. Clear
commitments for support to countries vulnerable to climate change should be
made in the declaration. She noted that a number of like-minded countries
had adopted the Cancun Declaration, in which a common agenda for sustainable
development and biological diversity had been set out. The representative
of Costa Rica said the eradication of poverty, environmental education and
protecting water basins were among the elements that should be included in
the declaration. The time had come to move from talk to action and to
improve institutions promoting sustainable development. His country
combated corruption, which it believed was "an evil that must be
overthrown". He appealed for all to act together for the success of the
Johannesburg Summit, with serious commitments to promote the various aspects
of sustainable development. The representative of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea said that political commitment and will were of primary
importance in achieving the goal of sustainable development. Mutual respect
and the avoidance of unilateralism were essential in that regard. Financial
assistance and transfer of technology to developing countries were other
important elements in the implementation of Agenda 21. The representative of
Finland supported the statement of Spain on behalf of the European Union.
The Declaration should express priorities as well as commitments and send
new, future-oriented messages, with a respect for biological as well as
cultural diversity. Peace and security and human rights should be stressed
as pre-requisites for sustainable development, along with women's integrated
decision-making at all levels. The link must be broken between economic
growth and environmental degradation -- developed countries must take the
lead in that effort with technology transfer and changes in patterns of
consumption and production. The representative of Uganda said the
declaration should be short, concise and to the point, reiterating the Rio
goals but with supporting timetables, means of implementation and additional
resources required to reach those goals. Importance should be placed on the
areas emphasized by the Secretary-General, giving prominence to poverty
eradication and access to markets by developing countries. It should
support environmental agreements that have already been reached. The
representative of Canada said the declaration should be "high-level, brief
and inspirational". It should endorse the plan of implementation but not be
an executive summary of it. It must assert the interdependence of humanity
and should recommit governments to sustainable development. None could
underestimate the challenges, which could not be met alone. The declaration
should therefore promote partnerships and assert that sustainable
development was "everybody's business". Trade-offs between the three
pillars of sustainable development were no longer acceptable -- balance was
essential. The representative of Ukraine said his delegation supported, as a
whole, the view of the Chairman on the declaration. A critical assessment
of progress over the past 10 years must be included, along with the main
reasons for failure. The declaration must reflect lessons learned. It
should clearly indicate the political willingness to establish a mechanism
to effectively implement the outcome of Johannesburg. The representative of
Colombia said the declaration should be brief, clear and action-oriented,
and it should discuss follow-up. The principles of sustainable development
must be reconfirmed. It should make reference to the obstacles encountered
and lessons learned -- that was extremely important. A vision of
sustainability must be affirmed, while bearing in mind cultural and
biological diversity. Reference should be made to the plan of
implementation and follow-up mechanisms. The representative of the
Commonwealth of Independent States said the declaration must describe the
technologies that would be used to implement the commitments, to avoid
implementation problems that had beset Agenda 21 during the past 10 years.
Knowledge was often available at a great lag, but it could be a tool to
fight problems that were growing rapidly. The role of ongoing education for
sustainable development was underestimated. Quality education, universally
provided, must be a priority, and the latest technologies must be made
available globally. The representative of Bolivia said that the declaration
should be short but very specific and reflect strong political will, with an
emphasis on poverty reduction. Poverty should be fought with a variety of
economic measures, such as the opening of markets and access to new
technologies. Countries that were combating drug trafficking must be
supported in those efforts, as those activities had adverse moral and
economic effects. The representative of Bhutan said the Declaration should
be short and precise and support Agenda 21. The vulnerable situation of the
Least Developed Countries (LDCs) must, in addition receive priority
attention. The representative of Lesotho said political declarations were
the most important element of any summit. The current statement should
contain a commitment to a specific timetable for the implementation of
Agenda 21. It should promote protection of fragile ecosystems and support
combating disease. It must commit to strengthening the international
financial architecture. Peace and democracy were indispensable for
sustainable development -- that should be reflected in the document. The
representative of the Sudan said the declaration should stress the need to
implement the plan of implementation, above all in developing countries. A
spirit of peace should be developed -- war should be ended, and foreign
occupation should be ended. In that regard, he cited the situation in
Palestine and other areas of the Middle East. Civilians must be protected
during occupation. The political declaration should touch upon the
fundamental cause of the refugee problem. It should also reflect the
principle that partnerships should be fair without strings attached. The
representative of Syria said the declaration should include clear,
unambiguous text on the need to end foreign occupation in conformity with
international law. In that context, he cited the situation in the Middle
East. An end must be put to any form of siege or bilateral measures.
Efforts for disarmament must be undertaken to ensure a safe world. The
digital divide between the North and the South must be bridged and trade
barriers facing developing countries should be taken down.
The representative of Gabon said that for Bali to make a difference in the
future of the planet, the political declaration must be clear, take stock of
Agenda 21 and the Millennium Declaration, and include priorities such as
poverty eradication and equitable treatment of all countries. Conflict
prevention, technology transfer and other elements that made that possible
should all be taken into account. The representative of Bosnia and
Herzegovina stressed the importance of reaching consensus on commitments for
the Johannesburg Summit. However, he warned of interest-driven
interpretations of the commitments made and activities that would defy the
goals and actions set forth in any agreement. He called for measures that
would anticipate and counter such activity.
The representative of Nepal, supporting the statement of Spain on behalf of
the European Union, agreed with the need for a clear document with targeted
goals in a range of areas. He emphasized taking into account the problems
of mountain countries, as well as countries which had been marginalized in
various ways. The representative of Cote d'Ivoire stressed the need to move
from promises to implementation. An enabling environment at the national
and international levels must be established. He stressed the importance of
regional and subregional mechanisms. Resources for the developing countries
should be increased by replenishing the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
He also called for concrete measures to apply the anti-desertification
convention. Human rights and democracy should be respected. Further
impetus should be given to international cooperation.
The representative of Iraq said the declaration should call for an end to
the Palestinian occupation, and he stressed the need to put an end to
sanctions. The Middle East should be made a nuclear weapons-free area.
Developing countries must be able to have access to sophisticated technology
to help with sustainable development. A representative of the Joint United
Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said AIDS affected all three pillars
of sustainable development. She stressed the need for early action to slow
or halt the spread of the disease. The declaration should draw attention to
the declaration of commitment adopted at the landmark United Nations General
Assembly session on AIDS. Action was needed on many fronts to combat the
disease.
The representative of Barbados said the declaration should reaffirm the Rio
Principles, along with regional and international agreements that had been
reached in past years. Language that recognized the vulnerability of SIDS
should be included. She mentioned other important elements such as the
inclusion of all stakeholders, a linkage to a concrete implementation plan,
and an emphasis on the primary responsibility of governments in sustainable
development. The representative of the Netherlands gave a report on the
ministerial roundtable discussion on Agriculture for Food Security that was
held yesterday. He noted that a number of proposals had been put forward
for the political declaration and the plan of implementation
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020607.@02
Uncertainties continued to cloud the fate of the Bali Commitment in the
final hours of negotiation, as its draft plan on sustainable development
remained clogged with unresolved issues, leading to either weaker
commitments, or more negotiation in Johannesburg, South Africa. The
Indonesian delegation reiterated on Thursday that the talks would end in
Bali despite statements by senior UN officials indicating otherwise. Several
non-governmental organizations urged delegates not to compromise in Bali for
a weaker document. Indonesian delegate Makarim Wibisono said that as long as
talks were still going on, there should not be fear of a weak Bali
Commitment. "There haven't been any discussions at all to extend the
negotiation (to Johannesburg)," Makarim said. "The mood here is that
everyone wants to finalize it." Delegates have been in Bali since May 27 for
the drafting of the Bali Commitment -- an action plan that will set the tone
for the global development over the next 10 years by balancing economic
development with social and environmental interests. The upcoming world
summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg in August is expected to
attract over one hundred heads of state who will endorse the Bali Commitment
with a political declaration.
Yet the long-standing North-South division in the world reared its ugly head
in Bali. Developed and developing countries disagree on whether or not the
Bali Commitment should get the backing of new financial resources. Debates
on the financial commitments remained tough, said Lowell Flanders a senior
United Nations official tracking progress on the negotiation. He said talks
centered on demands to link developed countries' aid commitments during the
conference on financing development at Monterrey, Mexico, with programs
under the Bali Commitment. Earlier this year, developed countries pledged to
set aside US$30 billion in aid by the year 2006 to help combat poverty. But
Monterrey left open the question of how and where developed countries would
distribute the aid. A number of activists raised concerns that some of the
money would come in the form of foreign investments and trade incentives
rather than pure grants. They also pointed out that agricultural subsidies
were six times the amount of the Monterrey aid, and was harming developing
countries, yet developed countries refused to cut back the subsidies. The
Group 77 plus China, which is the developing countries' negotiation block,
demanded that developed countries raise their aid levels. They also want the
funds pledged at Monterrey to help finance sustainable development programs
under the Bali Commitment. Debates now focus on whether developed countries
should go beyond Monterrey or whether the Bali Commitment should merely
endorse the Monterrey pledge. An Indonesian delegate, who refused to be
named, said that the country would not settle for anything less than "beyond
Monterrey." According to Flanders, as of Thursday neither side showed signs
of backing down from their positions, while in other contentious issues,
compromises were being made. Among them is the debate on ocean affairs,
where delegates agreed to emphasize the exploitation of marine life on
conservation instead of sustainable use. But other outstanding issues,
marked by bracketed and bold paragraphs in the negotiated draft plan,
continue to dominate the draft plan. "At the rate that we are proceeding at
this stage, we may not have a lot to include," Flanders said. Given the slow
progress, he said, delegates might decide to continue negotiations in
Johannesburg, possibly discussing finance and trade. "It's very possible
that countries would like to keep things open until Johannesburg," he said.
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) administrator Malloch Brown echoed
the NGO's calls not to be afraid to "take the brackets to Johannesburg." NGO
member Antonie Hill of Oxfam International urged delegates to resume talks
in Johannesburg, saying talks on finance and trade were going nowhere.
"Everybody is waiting for the finance and trade thing, until that is
resolved or unless some movements happen there, the other step is
meaningless. It's not real commitment, it's not something that's
implementable," he said. The Indonesian People's Forum of local NGOs and
groups representing among others women, youth and indigenous people took a
harder stance, rejecting the Bali Commitment and boycotting the Johannesburg
summit altogether. They charged governments with excluding their interests
in the draft plan in favor of business interests. He said outstanding issues
in the draft plan of implementation for the Bali Commitment, had gone
nowhere, and were overwhelming given the tight deadline on Friday.
The Jordan Times
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.jordantimes.com/Fri/homenews/homenews5.htm
AMMAN (JT) - HRH Princess Basma brought the Earth Charter to the attention
of the Bali PrepCom IV delegates on Thursday, emphasising the need for all
governments to give serious consideration to the use of the charter as
appropriate and to express their moral and political support for the
initiative. In a keynote address entitled: "Towards a Common Vision for
Sustainable Future," the Princess said effective international and
cross-cultural collaboration urgently needs to build a shared vision of
basic values that can provide a framework for worldwide partnership and an
ethical foundation for the emerging world community. Speaking on behalf of
the Earth Council and Earth Charter Commission, Princess Basma said: "In our
troubled region, we yearn to heal the suffering with which we have lived for
so long by nurturing a culture of tolerance, non-violence and peace ... as
never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning.
Such renewal is the promise of the Earth Charter principles." The Earth
Charter declaration articulates a consensus on the fundamental values that
is taking form in the emerging global civil society, while giving expression
to the basic concerns of both developing and developed nations. Governments
who have already supported the Earth Charter Initiative so far are: Costa
Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Japan, Niger and Jordan. This event, held on the
sidelines of the World Summit for Sustainable Development PrepCom IV, was
organised by the minister of environment of Indonesia in cooperation with
the Earth Council, and was attended by representatives and ministers of
various government , as well as heads of the Arab delegation who are in
Bali. Later that evening, Her Royal Highness addressed the official
launching ceremony of the Capacity 2015 initiative. The event, hosted by the
Indonesia government in collaboration with UNDP, was also held during the
ministerial segment of the PrepCom IV, leading up to WSSD, aims to address
the real challenges to sustainable development that developing countries and
countries in transition face at the turn of the century. Capacity 2015 will
assist communities in developing their capacities to nurture healthy local
economies, societies and environments; effectively face the challenges of
globalisation; and derive the greatest possible benefit from actual and
emerging global trends. This platform aims to help the global community meet
the Millennium Development Goals, especially the halving of poverty by 2015,
within the framework of Agenda 21. Highlighting the necessity for Capacity
2015 to be a flexible process-driven approach with a sensitivity to local
culture, politics and context, Princess Basma said: "My own experience in
this area has shown me that change has its own momentum, and is more readily
fostered when internally-motivated, than when externally-imposed. While
donor contributions are a lifeline to sustainable development projects,
their approaches need to show sensitivity and consideration to the varying
local cultures which dictate the pace and modes of implementation, as well
as building on existing knowledge, rather than replacing it." Capacity
development has been at the heart of all UNDP's activities since the Earth
Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which gave UNDP a mandate to help
countries develop their capacities to implement the summit's Agenda 21. UNDP
Administrator, Mark Malloch-Brown also addressed the high-level gathering,
which was attended by ministers and representatives from donor and
developing countries, the private sector, academia, UN agencies, and civil
society.
Business Day
7 June 2002
http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1098106-6078-0,00.html
JAKARTA - A UN
meeting to hammer out a strategy to protect the planet stretched into a
sixth day on Saturday as the United States baulked at new targets and
timetables for issues such as renewable energy sources, officials said. "The
US does not want to add new targets or set timetables. Their position is
that there are already many goals that have been set on issues such as food,
water and access to education," said UN spokeswoman Pragati Pascale. "In
September 2000 the Millennium Summit agreed on several specific targets. so
the US says better take action to achieve those targets before we set new
ones," she told AFP from the Indonesian island of Bali, where the conference
is being held. The UN Millennium Summit called for a halving, by 2015, the
number of people living on less than one dollar a day and the number of
people who have no access to clean water. Thousands of officials and
activists are meeting in Bali to try to reach agreement on various issues
before the World Summit on Sustainable Development, dubbed Earth Summit II,
in Johannesburg. The European Union and many developing countries want the
Johannesburg summit to adopt a proposal that 15% of all energy consumption
worldwide to come from clean, affordable and renewable sources within eight
years. But the United States opposed the proposal. The delegates' meeting
which began Monday will be followed by a ministerial-level gathering from
June 5 to 7, which will focus on a declaration to be adopted in Johannesburg
from August 26 to September 4. Talks on the draft action plan were supposed
to end late Friday. A member of the Indonesian delegation, Effendy Soemardja,
said delegates could see eye-to-eye on most issues but talks were slowed
down by disagreement on matters such the degree of commitment and time-bound
measures. "We hope the discussion can be concluded today. If not, there's
still tomorrow," he said. Griffin Thomson, a member of the US delegation,
was quoted by Saturday's Jakarta Post as saying that the time targets
proposed were difficult to achieve owing to technological constraints. "When
the people of the United States commit to any target, they take it
seriously. I'd like to require the European delegates to tell me how they're
going to achieve their targets," he said. The draft text calls for poverty
eradication, changing harmful patterns of consumption and production,
protection of natural resources and ecosystems and development initiatives
for Africa and Small Island developing states. The UN says 1.2 billion
people live below the poverty line while 1.1 billion people lack access to
clean drinking water and power.
Mail and Guardian
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?a=13&o=439
Delegates
discussing how to develop the world without destroying it will need a
"miracle" to reach agreement on key issues before the United Nations
conference ends on Friday, a senior UN official said on Thursday. Issues
dividing some developed nations from developing countries - such as trade
and finance - will probably get carried over to the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August, Lowell Flenders said.
"There's a very good possibility. There will be a fair amount of (issues) in
the text (to be carried over to Johannesburg) unless a miracle occurs
between now and tomorrow, which could happen in terms of an all-night
session", he told a press conference. "There seems to be a logjam on the
issue of trade and finance." More than 3 000 government officials and
activists from 173 countries are meeting on Bali Island to try to bridge
differences before the Johannesburg Summit. They have been meeting since May
27 to discuss the action plan or "Bali Commitment" but have yet to reach
agreement.
The UN says a deal
in Bali is crucial for the success of Johannesburg. On Wednesday 118
ministers from around the world began a parallel three-day meeting to
discuss ways to implement an action plan and a political declaration to be
endorsed in Johannesburg. The action plan focuses on water and sanitation,
energy, agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystems and health. Officials say
the United States is reluctant to commit new financial aid for programs to
reduce poverty and protect the environment in addition to what it pledged at
the development finance summit in the Mexican city of Monterrey. The US also
argues that the Bali meeting is not supposed to discuss new money but should
focus on implementation. But the European Union and developing countries
maintain that the previous commitments do not come close to what is needed
to tackle poverty and protect the environment. Athena Ronquilla of the Eco
Coalition, which groups international activists from Greenpeace, Friends of
the Earth and Consumer International, accused the US and its allies in the
developed world of trying to scuttle any agreement in Bali.
"I think over the
last couple of days we've already heard of serious attempts by particular
countries to shamelessly hijack the Bali process," she said." Countries led
by the world's major polluter are in fact quietly and slowly making this
process arrive at a stalemate. "They are coming to Bali with no mandate to
negotiate new money, no targets, no timetables and yet after almost two
weeks of negotiation they still manage to arrive at a conclusion that it is
the developing world who is to blame for the lack of progress in this
negotiation," she said. The head of the United Nations Development Program,
Mark Malloch Brown, urged governments to narrow their differences.
"Obviously we are concerned about the continued political and intellectual
differences that appear to separate delegates," Brown told AFP. Developing
countries have called for stronger references to ways of financing
sustainable development and a greater commitment by developed countries to
open their markets wider to trade and to transfer technology. Among other
proposals at the meeting, the EU and many developing countries want the
Johannesburg summit to adopt a proposal that 15% of all energy consumption
worldwide should come from clean, affordable and renewable sources within
eight years. The US and some other developed states, including Japan,
Australia and Canada, have been reluctant to add new targets and set
timetables. They said many targets had already been set at the UN Millennium
Summit in September 2000 that called for the halving, by 2015, of the number
of people living on less than one dollar a day and the number with no access
to clean water.
The UN says 1,2
billion people still live below the poverty line while 1,1 billion people
lack access to clean drinking water and power.
Daily Despatch
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2002/06/07/foreign/BALI.HTM
BALI, Indonesia --
Only 45 national leaders have confirmed their attendance at the upcoming
Earth Summit in Johannesburg in August, a survey disclosed yesterday. While
most European Union leaders have already confirmed their plans to join the
summit, the United States, China, India and Russia remain uncommitted, said
Jacob Scherr, director of the Natural Resources Defence Council. The
Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development is deemed an important
follow-up to the first such Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in June
1992. "We are very concerned that, at this late stage of the preparatory
process, so many national leaders still have not yet announced their intent
to go to the World Summit," said Scherr. "Making promises in Rio a decade
ago was easy. Now the question is whether the world's leaders have the
courage to go to Johannesburg to really take action," he added. He noted
that former United States president George Bush senior, the father of
President George W Bush, didn't make his decision to join the Rio summit
until the last minute. "If President (George W) Bush does go to
Johannesburg, it will be because he is urged to go by other nations," said
Scherr.
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20020607.L02&irec=1
Government
delegates called for local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil
society groups not to boycott the results of the ongoing UN meeting in Bali
and instead keep on voicing and fighting for the welfare of the common
people through to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg. Canadian delegate Angela Keller-Herzog said during the last
open dialog at the Indonesian People's Forum on Thursday that she was
impressed with the quality and analysis of the statements delivered by
representatives of the major groups voicing disappointment and disagreements
over the negotiating process at the Bali meeting here. "All of us at times
feel that we're not heard and that we're being marginalized," said
Keller-Herzog, senior economist from the Canadian International Development
Agency. She said that the Indonesian People's Forum had produced a level of
analysis that was "very impressive." "I think that's exactly the kind of
approaches and tools that are useful for constructive engagements,"
Keller-Herzog added. Other senior delegates also voiced the same sentiment,
saying that NGOs should not boycott either the results of the current
meeting in Bali or the upcoming World Summit in Johannesburg in August and
September.
Other delegates
attending the open dialogue included Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for
Social Affairs Jusuf Kalla, the Netherlands' Environment and Development
Department director Sweder van Voorst tot Voorst, director general of the
Danish Environmental Protection Agency Steen Gade, and Finland's
Environmental Committee chairman and member of parliament Pentti Tiusanen.
Local NGOs and civil society groups had voiced their rejection of all the
results of the current preparatory committee (PrepCom) meeting for the World
Summit on Sustainable Development, including the Draft Plan of
Implementation -- previously called the Chairman's Text. They even called
for a boycott of the World Summit in Johannesburg in August and September.
They claimed that
government delegations at the meetings were working in the interests of
industrialized countries and multinational corporations, at the expense of
developing countries. Denmark's Gade said that it would not be good for
progress if NGOs boycotted the dialogues between governments and civil
society groups. "They should instead see it as a struggle and to continue
voicing their concerns from one conference to another," he said.
Furthermore, the role of the NGOs must be stronger in Johannesburg than it
was here in Bali, or even at the WTO meetings, said Finland's Tiusanen. NGOs
should not boycott the meetings but force the governments to hear their
demands, he said. The Netherlands's Voorst said that the ongoing
negotiations were a difficult process because of the many complex subjects
being negotiated, and were complicated by the rules and procedures applied
within the United Nations. He also said that the number of countries
involved in the process was huge.
"It certainly could
not please everyone, everybody, not all societies, not all governments, but
that's part of the deal," he said, adding that NGOs as well as governments
should continue to fight to get a more favorable outcome from the
negotiations.
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20020607.L01&irec=0
High population
growth, industrialization and inefficient lifestyles have damaged the
environment greatly in the last 30 years, bringing misery to people,
according to a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). If
there was no commitment or concrete action by all stakeholders of the earth,
especially the governments, to deal with the deteriorating environment, more
devastating impacts to both the earth and its people could occur in the next
30 years, according to a UNEP report presented on Thursday at the
preparatory committee (PrepCom) meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development here.
The report,
entitled Global Environment Outlook-3 (GEO-3), provided an assessment of
environmental trends since 1972, the year the Stockholm Conference on
Environment was held. The report followed two other reports GEO-1 and
GEO-2000, which were launched in 1997 and 1999 respectively. The GEO-3
report accused human activities, including expansion of agricultural land,
over-harvesting of industrial wood and illegal logging as the main culprits
in rapid deforestation. During the 1990s, a net loss in global forests was
about 94 million hectares. Forests, which cover around one third of the
Earth's land surface (3,866 million hectares), have declined by 2.4 percent
a year since 1990. Deforestation has long been blamed for various
environmental problems, as deforestation adversely affects water catchment,
and often leads to flooding, drought and oversiltation of rivers, not to
mention the increase in greenhouse gases. Due to climate change and
environmental degradation, people have experienced more natural disasters in
the last decade. It is estimated by the report that the number of people
affected by disasters jumped from an average of 147 million a year in the
1980s to 211 million a year in the 1990s. Global financial losses from
natural disasters were, in 1999, estimated to cost over US$100 billion.
According to the report, the failures to mitigate and to tackle the damage
could lead to catastrophe in the future, as more people would be affected by
the damage. Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP, said that what would
happen in the coming decades would depend on "what we, especially the
government, are doing now." "The scenarios do clearly show that today's
policy decisions will have an impact long into the future. Different
decisions can lead us towards very different futures and the future is very
much in our hands," he said. Toepfer demanded parties negotiating in the
preparatory committee meeting to produce concrete action plans, concrete
time tables and an iron will from all sides to turn the promises made in Rio
into reality. The UNEP report said that if world governments continued to
give priority to short-term economics, or, in the words of the report
"market first," then, environmental destruction would continue unabated.
Failure to stop deforestation could lead to major destruction and
disturbance of habitats and wildlife by 2032. Over 70 percent of the world's
land could be affected with the highest impact in Latin America and the
Caribbean. Meanwhile, failure to meet the ever increasing population's
demand for clean water could also increase the number of people living in
areas with severe water stress. It is estimated by the report that 55
percent of the global population could be affected by a water crisis by
2032, up from around 40 percent currently. Despite the bleak outlook, the
report said that concrete measures to sustain the development and to protect
the environment could curtail this devastating scenario of the environment,
which UNEP called "sustainability first." Under the sustainability first
scenario, most regions in the world in 2032 would see the areas under water
stress remaining more or less constant at 40 percent, as more efficient
management of water reduces water withdrawal, especially for irrigation.
Deforestation could also be held in check, especially in Latin America and
the Caribbean.
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20020607.L03&irec=2
The United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) launched here on Thursday evening its Capacity 21
project to empower the people in fulfilling their own basic needs for water
and energy, and in fighting against poverty. UNDP administrator Mark Malloch
Brown said that dealing with local communities was the best way forward for
sustainable development as the local community or people served as "the
front line of the battle." "That is why we have to invest in the
fundamental line. The local community is the frontline in turning around
natural degradation," Brown said during the launching of Capacity 21 here on
Thursday.
The project goal is
to deal directly with the local communities in empowering them to build
partnerships with other groups in the effort to provide access to water and
energy, and eradicate poverty. Capacity 21 is designed to support
developing countries in meeting the Agenda 21 on sustainable development
that was agreed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro ten years ago.
The project is also
meant to achieve the Millennium Goals, agreed in 2000, of halving the number
of people lacking access to clean water and energy by the year 2015. Over
the past ten years, the UNDP had been working with 2,600 NGOs in 35
countries in carrying out various sustainable development programs. It
would continue to work with those NGOs in implementing its Capacity 21
projects so that sustainable development projects would continue to improve
the world even if the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg failed to produce something beyond the Rio declaration. "The
real application happens at the local community level. The people are the
means to win the battle of sustainable development," Brown said.
Separately, the UNDP environment and sustainable development group chief,
Alvaro Umana, told The Jakarta Post that the Capacity 21 project would
educate the people so that they could organize themselves in obtaining their
basic needs of energy and water.
He underlined that
when people had the knowledge, they could address their own problems with
water or energy access and improve the quality of their lives. Umana
stressed that although the program promoted partnerships, it would not
encourage any privatization of water and energy supplies for the ordinary
people. "This partnership is not something that considers privatization as
we all agree that energy and water should not be for making profits," Umana
said.
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20020607.L04&irec=3
When traffic jams
clog the streets of Johannesburg, when hotels are overbooked for weeks, when
thousands of people from around the globe descend on the city, South Africa
will have Jan Pronk to thank. Pronk is the Netherlands' environment
minister, as well as the former chairman of the now-defunct International
Consultative Group on Indonesia. And as the United Nations' special envoy
for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, he has been touring the
globe since late last year, calling on world leaders to attend the summit in
Johannesburg in August and September. The Jakarta Post's Berni K. Moestafa
caught up with him in Bali.
Question: What is
your task as the UN's special envoy for the World Summit? Answer: To get as
many heads of government to Johannesburg, to discuss the political context
of the whole conference. There is a representative group of countries which
I was able to establish contact with, either by going to the countries or by
making contacts in a different framework. I also went to many international
conferences in order to meet with representatives of countries, because
physically it is a bit difficult to go to all the countries.
CAN YOU DISCUSS
SOME OF THE VISITS YOU MADE AS A SPECIAL ENVOY?
It started with a
visit to President Megawati (Soekarnoputri of Indonesia), and later on I
departed to many countries in the world, both in the North as well as in the
South. Everybody was very anxious to ask about the conference. Speaking
about Johannesburg, quite a number of world leaders, prime ministers, heads
of state want to come. The whole process, to a certain extent, has already
had some success -- the Monterrey conference. You may say the downward trend
in international resources has now reversed into an upward trend. The
commitments are different, they are surprisingly good. Of course not yet
adequate, but we need more money and it is very important, the whole setting
of the sustainable development conference. Not only governments but also
other stakeholders, businesses, will play a role. I have also had quite a
few discussions about the political situation. At the moment, the major
international conflict, that is in relation to the Middle East and
Afghanistan, will not result in paralysis in governments dealing with
social, economic and developmental issues. But many governments, in their
discussions with me, also said that they understand that the conference also
offers an opportunity to deal with such problems.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE
RESPONSE TO YOUR VISITS?
Developing
countries in particular say, 'Put your money where your mouth is. You have
made many promises in the past, and you did not deliver on your promises,'
and they are right. That's why in Bali we are not drafting a complete new
text, but are drafting a plan to implement what has been promised in the
past. If there is no implementation, then you should not have a conference
at all. That is why action is important. There is an increase in the
ratification of the Kyoto protocol, many biodiversity treaties. Governments
are asking parliaments to ratify in order to have a clean slate when we
start the meeting in Johannesburg.
WHY DO YOU THINK
THE TREND FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IS RISING?
There are a number
of factors. You may say there is a globalization trend, which is meeting
with a lot of criticism, and the criticism in particular refers to the fact
that many people or countries seem to be excluded from the benefits of
globalization. The criticism is being listened to now, and capitals
understand that something has to be done in order to make globalization
indeed serve the people. They also understand that it is politically
necessary, otherwise there is too much criticism against globalization,
which may lead to violence. These are the reasons why you see more positive
reactions toward the preparations for the conference; you see it in all
parts of the world. Secondly, we have had a surprising number of positive
outcomes at major international conferences in the past. The climate
negotiations are a good example, producing the Kyoto protocol which is being
ratified by a number of countries. Monterrey was the third factor. Nobody
expected that the downward trend would be reversed there. You can say that
Johannesburg will be seen as a kind of umbrella of international
negotiations. At the same time it is very realistic, you may say, that
conferences are betting on two horses. As far as the political situation is
concerned, we have an anti-terrorism policy, a security policy, a coalition
against terrorism, and that is taking shape and some countries are very
strongly oriented toward that.
Betting on two
horses means that at the same time, countries are also interested in taking
away possible causes of violence, are willing to approach the backgrounds of
violence, are willing to ask serious questions in regard to inequality and
injustice.
That is betting on
two horses. It is not certain how long that will last, and that is the
reason it is necessary to have some success as far as the second track is
concerned, that is Johannesburg, in order to keep it attractiveness to
governments. There is momentum, but momentum can fade very easily
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20020607.M08&irec=7
The Indonesian
government, currently hosting the UN meeting on sustainable development
here, should not insist that the final document, called the Bali Commitment,
be completed since there are too many contentious issues blocking
negotiations, NGOs say. Martin Kohr, who represented NGOs at the multidialog
meeting with ministers on Thursday, said that forcing the completion of the
document could damage the image and the reputation of Indonesia as the draft
plan of implementations contain "bad things."
"We understand that
the Indonesian government would like to have the name of Bali (on the
document), but it would be better to stick to the principles and to leave
everything in bold rather than have a Bali Commitment that contained
unfavorable things," he told The Jakarta Post after the meeting. The
Indonesian government is required by UN resolution to seal the draft plan of
implementation for the World Summit on Sustainable Development during the
current ministerial meeting in Bali.
Since negotiations
have met with so many stumbling blocks, Indonesia has been approaching
opposite groups to ensure that the draft plan of implementations is
finalized in Bali before the meeting ends on Friday. Khor suggested that
the unresolved points in the draft plan of the implementation be left in
bold or brackets and be brought to Johannesburg, where world leaders will
have their summit in August and September. "The name of Bali would be
worse. There is no harm in having a few square brackets in Johannesburg," he
said. The meeting lasted for more than an hour, with not that many
ministers attended the session, and only a few of them responded to the
major groups' statement. The meeting was attended by representatives of the
nine major groups: NGOs, Youths, Women, indigenous people, scientists, local
governments, workers, farmers and businesses.
These groups also
requested that the draft plan incorporate measures to demand corporate
accountability and review the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund). Youth, Women's, NGOs and indigenous
people's groups are demanding that business communities consider the
environmental impacts when conducting their activities.
Khor further added
that the Bali meeting would be meaningful if it could promote an alternative
economic paradigm that opposed current ones, now dominated by the World
Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The problems at the
World Summit of Sustainable Development would remain the same, that is, that
the implementation of sustainable development would again be overshadowed by
the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, he remarked. The Bretton Woods
institutions had stronger influence in the world as their agreements and
policies as independent bodies were compulsory and legally binding.
These institutions
are considered to represent the interests of multinational corporations and
developed countries like the United States. On the other hand, the United
Nations' conventions and summits, like the next one in Johannesburg, which
favor developing countries do not enjoy the same kind of authority as the
Bretton Woods institutions. Khor also said that the groups had asked
developed countries to support developing countries, especially in dealing
with their mounting debts. "We also warn the governments not to take the
partnerships issue as a substitute for political commitments of the
developed countries," he remarked.
The Jakarta Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20020607.M12&irec=11
Only three months
left to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, but the majority of
world leaders have yet to confirm their attendance at the Summit, scheduled
to be held from August to September this year in Johannesburg, South Africa,
according to a survey. The survey, conducted by U.S.-based non-governmental
organization The Natural Resource Defense Council, revealed a grim picture.
It said that leaders from key countries in the United Nations such as the
United States, China, India and Russia had not yet confirmed their presences
at the upcoming summit. "Making promises in Rio a decade ago was easy. Now,
the question is whether the world's leaders have the courage to go to
Johannesburg to take real action to ensure a sustainable future?" Jacob
Scherr, international program director of the Council, told journalists at a
press conference on Thursday. The Council's finding were based on the
results of a survey it carried out with the 175 country missions at the
United Nations headquarters in New York and delegations at the current
preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit in Bali. The survey,
which was started in March this year, found that only 45 national leaders
had confirmed their attendance at the World Summit in Johannesburg. Another
40 countries said that their heads of state would "likely" participate in
the meeting. Indonesia is included in this second "likely" category. The
figure is worrisome, compared to the previous Rio Summit a decade ago. As
of March 1992 -- three months before the summit -- 64 presidents, prime
ministers and heads of state had confirmed their attendance at the Rio
Summit. And no less than 110 leaders finally gathered at the first Earth
Summit in June 1992.
Associated Press
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4467769%255E1702,00.html
KEY talks on how to
raise living standards worldwide and protect the environment were deadlocked
today, with delegates saying they were unlikely to agree on several key
issues. More than 6000 delegates, including 118 environment and economic
ministers, are meeting on Bali Island to debate a development blueprint to
be voted on in a major UN-sponsored summit in August in Johannesburg, South
Africa. The main unresolved issues centre on the United States' insistence
that more aid to poor countries be conditional on reducing corruption and
promoting good governance. "Both conflicting groups have not moved from
their position. There was no meaningful progress," said Djumala Darmansjah,
an Indonesian delegate involved in the financing talks. Delegates said it
appeared likely that some issues would have to be debated in Johannesburg.
The Bali talks were scheduled to end later today. The European delegation
said last night it had proposed new ideas to "unblock the stalemate," but
was ready to accept that some of the most important points be discussed
later. "Some issues might have to be left to Johannesburg," said European
Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom. Delegates are working on an
ambitious 158-point plan to be called the Bali Commitment, which includes
ways to achieve goals agreed to in the UN Millennium Summit in September
2000. One of the poverty reducing programs is to halve the number of people
living on less than $US1 a day by 2015. Another is to halve the number of
people who are unable to reach or afford safe drinking water by 2015. UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed five key areas to focus on: water
and sanitation, energy, agriculture, biodiversity, and ecosystem management
and health. Ministers are also scheduled to produce parts of a political
declaration stating their governments' willingness to carry out the action
plan. World leaders will later vote to adopt both texts in Johannesburg.
That summit is expected to be the largest gathering of world leaders with
some 50,000 delegates invited. Dubbed "Earth Summit 2," it will coincide
with anniversary of a 1992 summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. However,
critics say the landmark meeting produced the first global agreements on
environmental protection, but it failed to force governments to carry them
out.
Bangkok Post
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/07Jun2002_news42.html
A question that has
been asked in recent days as we mark the World Environment Day is whether
the environment has improved during the past decade. The timeframe of a
decade is used apparently in reference to a major environmental landmark,
the World Summit on Sustainable Development that will take place from Aug 26
to Sept 2. The event, in Johannesburg, South Africa, is being held 10 years
after the Rio Earth Summit ended with a plan of action to try to arrest the
environmental degradation that had spread around the world at an alarming
pace. The agreement, known as Agenda 21, has since been the topic of
discussion in many forums, especially in recent months, in preparation for
the Johannesburg summit. Meanwhile, most people on the street are going
about their business unaware of these two events. This is hardly surprising.
The events seem far from their everyday concerns which are mainly
economy-related. The world after 1997 has not been the same, thanks to
Thailand, a seemingly economically insignificant country, which set the ball
of economic crisis rolling. The crash which has since been referred to as
the Tom Yam Kung Effect has reverberated around the world. Even the mighty
United States has succumbed. To economists, industrialists, business
executives and government leaders, the phenomenon must be nothing short of
calamitous. Here it was, the world was enjoying what must have been the
greatest growth spurt ever known to mankind, and it seemed as if there were
no end in sight. It was the triumph of consumerism and free enterprise. But
then the Thai bubble burst, and with it the whole facade of the new economic
order came tumbling down. It was most distressing to people the world over.
A lot of dreams were crushed and hearts broken. It will be a long time
before the pieces are put back together. The world will never be the same
again. This could be good or bad, depending on what lessons we have learned
and how willing we are to apply them. I think one of the key lessons is that
natural resources are not infinite in spite of our technological advances.
Yes, technological advancement may stretch the usefulness of certain things.
But pretty soon, it will hit the limits imposed by physical and natural
laws. Just like with economics, you cannot have the kind of growth we
experienced in the 1980s and '90s forever. Soon you will have to come down
and, in most cases, the higher you go, the harder you land. One of the
most-repeated catch phrases when the environment is discussed is sustainable
development. This refers to the type of development that has the least
impact on the environment. Much has been proposed to achieve this lofty
goal. The efforts, however, have focused largely on technology and
management. This merely sidesteps the real issue, which is the ever
increasing consumption of natural resources. Few nations, if any, are
willing to discuss this, let alone do anything about it. A survey by the
United Nations Environment Programme and Consumers International bears this
out. It found that very few governments have implemented the United Nations
guidelines for sustainable consumption. Many governments were not even aware
of the existence of these guidelines, which are meant to help them formulate
and strengthen policies and legislation for more environmentally-responsible
consumption and production patterns. Changing the pattern of consumption is
impossible however as long as most nations continue to subscribe to the
dominant economic system that preaches the virtue of ever-increasing
consumption. So the answer to the question whether the environment has
improved is obvious because the condition for its improvement has been by
and large absent.
Islamic Republic News Agency
7 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.irna.com/en/head/020607184542.ehe.shtml
Bali, Indonesia, IRNA -- The fourth preparatory meeting for the upcoming
Earth Summit in Johannesburg moved into its final day of
negotiations on Friday amid signs that delegates would fail to complete
their action plan in Bali, an outcome which non-governmental organizations
would welcome, the German news agency, DPA reported from Bali, Friday. The
two week preparatory meeting's chief task has been to complete the "Bali
Commitment," to be used as a foundation for a second Earth Summit scheduled
to be held in Johannesburg in late August to early September. The first such
summit was held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, with dubious follow up
results. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) session attending the Bali
meeting, which is expected to drag on until late Friday night, said no
agreement from the resort would be preferable to a water-downed one
without fixed timetables and targets to be passed on to Johannesburg.
"Millions of people are going to die if we do not do get a good, strong
action plan," said Remi Parmentier, political director of Green Peace. He
added, "We think it's better if there is no deal, than a bad deal."
Negotiations in Bali over the past two weeks have bogged down on numerous
"bracket" clauses in the action plan, which remained unresolved by
mid-Friday, the final day of the meeting. European Environment Commissioner
Margot Wallstrom told a press conference Thursday night that it was likely
that some highly politicized issues such as trade and finance for
sustainable development would need to be settled at the Johannesburg summit
in August. "We said before that we even anticipated that we might end up
with a situation that we might have to defer decisions on to Johannesburg,
and we're not afraid of that because we want a good agreement, not an
agreement at any price," Wallstrom said. The E.U. tabled a compromise paper
on trade and finance issues Thursday night in an effort to break the
deadlock between developed countries, led by the US, and poor countries, who
want more financial commitments for sustainable development. But the
proposal was rejected by the U.S. delegation, which insists that Bali is not
the right forum for discussing financial assistance for development. NGOs
attending the meeting have been widely disappointed with the results thus
far, and have pegged their hopes on the debate being carried forward to
Johannesburg. "It's been a profoundly disappointing process so far," said
Matt Phillips of Friends Of the Earth. "I think if there is one thing the
NGOs feel, it's that the governments haven't listened." In particular,
attending NGO caucuses have bemoaned signs that the Bali Commitment had
failed to nail down proposals on sustainable production and consumption, had
scrapped a framework on big business accountability and liability and had
secured no new financial commitments from the developed nations to support
sustainable development among poor countries. "We are tremendously unhappy.
The best scenario now is if some of these items don't get decided now," said
Jennifer Morgan of World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In general, NGOs have been
critical of the E.U. for caving in negotiations to the "dirty three" - the
US, Canada and Australia. One exception may be in terms on energy, where the
E.U. has insisted on setting a global target of 15 percent use of renewable
energy by the year 2010, albeit including
hydro-energy.
Wallstrom brushed off the criticisms. "We haven't abandoned any of our firm
demands and firm wishes on how to proceed on these important things,
especially on targets and timetables to make this a complete agenda for
change," Wallstrom said.
United Nations Press Release
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/otherstories_undp_capacity.htm
6 June, BALI, Indonesia- Prepared to follow-up on the commitments made at
the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the United
Nations Development Programme tonight unveiled a new initiative, a platform
to help developing countries build their own capacities for sustainable
development, and meet the Millennium Development Goals. The new initiative,
Capacity 2015, builds on the programme launched after the 1992 Earth Summit,
Capacity 21, which has focused on implementing programmes and projects in
communities throughout developing countries. "Capacity building is the key
to this process of sustainable development," according to UNDP Administrator
Mark Malloch Brown. Calling sustainable development something that has to
happen at the local level, Malloch Brown said Capacity 2015 "takes our
thinking a great big step forward." The new initiative, he said, is "a much
profounder vision of what capacity building is," adding that, "it is not
about imposing outside models of development." With an emphasis on beefing
up the ability of local communities to take charge of their own development,
Malloch Brown said it was "enormously important" that the Millennium
Development Goals-a set of eight targets that include a pledge by
governments to reduce by half the number of people living in poverty by
2015-remain at the center of the new programme's objectives. Malloch Brown
said "real success" in the follow-up to Johannesburg lies in the partnership
initiatives that can support the commitments made by governments in
Johannesburg. There should not, however, be a rush to finalize a weak
document. "It is better for those of us working is sustainable development
that they get this right." With two important pieces in place-solid
commitments and partnership-Malloch Brown said, "We can have a real
architecture for sustainable development underpinned by the resources that
were promised in Monterrey." Countries have agreed, in the Bali negotiations
on the implementation programme, "to significantly strengthen" support for
UNDP's capacity building programmes in developing countries, "building on
the experience gained from Capacity 21." Indonesian Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Hassan Wirajuda said UNDP, through Capacity 2015, had strengthened
its role in capacity development activities. "It is, I am convinced, only
through such partnerships that the WSSD will be able to make a difference in
ensuring the achievement of sustainable development objectives under Agenda
21 and the Millennium Development Goals." According to Fevzi Aytekin,
Minister of Environment for Turkey, UNDP's Capacity 21 had helped Turkey's
own Local Agenda 21 programme, which has brought public institutions, local
authorities and citizen groups together to address local problems. "We
believe the Capacity 2015 initiative will be a step forward," he said, " to
strengthen local, national and global partnerships and synergies for
achieving the goals of the 21st century." Jordanian Princess Basma bint
Talal applauded the new initiative, calling it an attempt to address the
real challenges. "By launching this initiative, UNDP is taking the lead to
find innovative approaches that will allow local communities to develop
their own capacities." In addition to meeting the Millennium Development
Goals, UNDP expects Capacity 2015 to result in a review of national and
local policies and legislation in order to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure
proper incentives for local sustainable development. It hopes to support
learning networks, civic engagement, and responsible local leadership, while
also mobilizing resources to help communities compete successfully in a
globalized world.
OneWorld South Asia
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/oneworld/20020606/wl_oneworld/1032_1023369217
Faced with an
ongoing water crisis, a group of Asian nations is joining forces to press
for a new approach to the problem at upcoming world conferences on poverty
alleviation, economic development, and environmental protection, according
to information obtained Thursday from a global water research body.
Ministers from 10 nations in the region--from South Asia and Indochina to
Southeast and East Asia--have signed a joint statement calling for moves to
stop water wastage as a means of helping to place a higher value on the
commodity. The statement will be presented at the World Summit for
Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August, and
at the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, next March. "This
evaluation would not mean raising a tax on water," said Michael Devlin, a
spokesman for the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute.
"When we speak of the evaluation of water, we mean encouraging people to use
it sparingly. If the value of water is high, people make better use of it."
The need for a fresh approach was underscored at a meeting last month
organized by IWMI and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for
Asia and the Pacific. Ministers pointed out that cycles of droughts and
flooding, and access to clean water were common areas of concern in the
region, where one in two of the population does not have adequate sanitation
facilities and where some 500,000 infants die each year because of dirty
water and poor sanitation. The water crises, they said, should be tackled
with regional cooperation, including technology sharing, and exchange of
expertise, research, and training. "We firmly believe that integrated water
management is an appropriate direction to solve water problems," said
Thailand's deputy prime minister Pitak Intrawityanunt. "Regional cooperation
in transfer of knowledge among countries will definitely support our work."
A statement issued May 23 from the meeting said Asian ministers at the
Johannesburg "Earth Summit" would emphasize that publicly accountable and
open methods by governments in the region would help to deal with the
widespread water problems. "The water crisis is mainly a crisis of
governance not of water scarcity," said IWMI's director-general Frank
Rijsberman. "We believe that good governance of water resources requires
openness of information about water supplies and demands, accountability of
public agencies...community empowerment, and the rule of law." According to
IWMI, water-related problems were some of the major obstacles to successful
economic development, of the kind which will be the focus of discussions in
Johannesburg. Tackling those problems would therefore also help some of the
most impoverished communities in the region. "People who are the poorest
and stand last in the line of development are the hardest hit by water
crises," said IWMI's Devlin. "If you resolve the problem of water, you help
reduce poverty."
Associated Press
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020606/ap_wo_en_po/indonesia_development_conference_1
BALI, Indonesia -
Pressure mounted Thursday on rich countries to ease their conditions for
giving financial aid to poor nations as part of a U.N.-sponsored blueprint
to cut poverty and protect the environment over the next decade. Delegates
at an environmental conference said the main sticking point in negotiations
for the blueprint was Washington's insistence that aid to poor countries be
conditioned on reducing corruption. The European delegation is expected to
ask the United States to ease its position in meetings later Thursday.
Non-governmental organizations and environmental groups are also asking the
United States, Canada and Australia to come ahead with promised aid. More
than 100 environment and economic ministers are gathering on Indonesia's
Bali Island in a preparatory meeting ahead of a major U.N.-sponsored summit
in August in Johannesburg, South Africa. Delegates are working on an
ambitious 158-point plan to be called the Bali Commitment, which includes
ways to achieve goals agreed to in the U.N. Millenium Summit in September
2000. The head of the U.S. delegation, Under Secretary of State for Global
Affairs Paula Dobriansky, said that although "there were no quick fixes,"
the United States was committed to completing the plan. One proposal is to
halve the number of people living on less than one dollar a day by 2015.
Another is to halve the number of people who are unable to reach or afford
safe drinking water by 2015. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web
sites) has proposed five key areas to focus on: water and sanitation,
energy, agriculture, biodiversity, and ecosystem management and health.
Annan's deputy secretary-general, Louise Frechette, said it was usual for
the United States "to keep this issue of financing until late on the
negotiating table," but urged delegates to come to an agreement. Ministers
are also scheduled to produce a political declaration stating their
governments' willingness to carry out the action plan, which was supposed to
be done by last weekend but has run into delays. Both texts will be voted on
by world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held
in Johannesburg. U.S.-based environmentalists on Wednesday staged a protest
against their government outside the beachside convention center on Bali. A
giant three-headed green dragon brought in by Greenpeace International
depicted U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites), Canadian Premier
Jean Cretien and Australia's John Howard, whom the environmental group
accuses of blocking progress in the talks. Some 50,000 delegates are
expected in Johannesburg in what will be the largest ever U.N. gathering.
The meeting, dubbed "Earth Summit 2," will coincide with the 10-year
anniversary of a summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, where the first global
agreements on environmental protection were reached. However, critics say
many of the governments did not to carry out the programs they agreed to in
Rio.
Xinhua News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FG20020606090000027.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI, INDONESIA,
Jun 7, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The Fourth Preparatory Committee Meeting
in Bali is the last opportunity to accomplish the global plan for
sustainable development before it is to be adopted and endorsed by world's
leaders in Johannesburg, South Africa in next August. The meeting, started
May 27, entered its final day on June 7 and it had been reported that more
than 4,300 people from 173 countries were participating in the meeting,
including 1,794 government delegates, 1,324 representatives of
nongovernmental organizations and 181 journalists. Sustainable development
is simply understood as the efforts to improve the lives of all human beings
while protecting the global environment to ensure better future for the
upcoming generations. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has named
five key areas for particular focus -- water and sanitation, energy,
agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem management and health. However, many
doubted that Bali meeting would be able to lay out the specifics for World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, saying that the
current talks were lacking specific timelines, specific targets and specific
concrete plans for WSSD. "The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro did not
identify clear time targets either and, as a result, fell short of producing
the measures promised under the Rio Declaration," said Dawn Martin, chairman
of a U.S.-based NGO. "The question for the world's leaders is will we learn
from our past or are we condemned to repeat it?" The meeting is made more
difficult as many countries want to address different issues and each wants
the outcome to reflect their positions, though there are efforts to make the
process smoother by negotiating in blocs. The developing countries are
represented by the Group of 77 and China and the members of European Union
speak with one voice. Another more informal group is the JUSCANZ countries
-- Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Yet, it
remains unlikely to generalize the common result so far, as many delegates
spent the precious few days debating details and seeking consensus behind
closed doors and restricted from journalists. Despite hesitation of global
consensus on sustainable development to be reached in Bali, Chairman of the
Preparatory Committee Emil Salim stays optimistic. "Everyone has the same
spirit that it will be finalized in Bali," he said. He firmly said that in
the next ten years, poverty eradication would be an essential element of
sustainable development and urged delegations to finalize the agenda here.
"Bali was final harbor before sailing into Johannesburg. It means all
necessary documents had to be finalized here," he affirmed. U.N. Deputy
Secretary General Louise Frechette underlined that important progress had
been made in Bali, though some critical work remained to be done between
Bali and Johannesburg. "Full agreement must be reached on a solid, specific
implementation plan with targets before we leave Bali," she said. "We know
what needs to be done. Now, let us move ahead."
Xinhua News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FC20020606200000057.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI, INDONESIA,
Jun 6, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The United Nations Environment Program
(UNEP) warned Thursday evening about the degradation of world environment
here at the United Nations- organized Preparatory Committee Meeting for the
World Summit on Sustainable Development. UNEP Executive Director Klaus
Toepfer told the press briefing how the earth had become much more fragile
and degraded than in 1972. He began with a story of a UNEP-sponsored
expedition in the Himalayas in May, when the team learned that the glacier
had retreated by around five kilometers up the mountain. It was a clear
evidence that global warming was emerging as one of the biggest threat to
the environment, raising the fear of a sudden glacial floods swollen by
melting glaciers, he said. He added the main driving force had been the
growing global population, as currently there were 2.2 billion more mouths
to feed than there had been in 1972. Around two billion hectares of soil,
equal to fifteen percent of the earth's land cover, is now reported as
degraded as a result of human activities. The main types of soil
degradation were water erosion, 56 percent; wind erosion 28 percent;
chemical degradation 12 percent and physical or structural damage four
percent, according to the report. "Unless we alter our course (in exploiting
natural resources) now, we will be left with little of value", Toepfer
warned. The United Nations-organized Preparatory Committee Meeting for
World Summit on Sustainable Development was opened by Indonesian President
Megawati Soekarnoputri on Wednesday. Megawati underlined that the Indonesian
government was determined to do its utmost for the success of the meeting.
More than 400 ministerial-level delegates from 140 countries and regions
take part in the meeting which will end Friday before finalizing the agendas
for the World Summit to be held in Johannesburg.
Xinhua News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FA20020606990000051.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI, INDONESIA,
Jun 6, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Land degradation has resulted in drylands
of about forty percent of the earth's surface, where more than one hundred
countries, mostly least developed ones in Africa, lie entirely or partly
within. The was made clear by a report released by a panel at the meeting on
sustainable development here Thursday. The report said geography of poverty
coincides strongly with that of land degradation. Of 1.3 billion people
living on less than one dollar per day, nearly 75 percent live in rural
areas and nearly half of the 325-million population of the African continent
live in drylands. Mostafa Tolba, president of Egyptian Center for
Environment and Development and panel member, noted that while the
international community is strongly committed to poverty eradication as the
ultimate goal of sustainable human development, the practical measures taken
to reach this objective do not always produce expected results. In fact,
according to chairman of the panel, the number of people living by less than
one dollar a day in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 217 million to 291
million between 1990-98. He demanded participants of the meeting here to
formulate soon effective strategy for poverty eradication. The United
Nations-organized Preparatory Committee Meeting for World Summit on
Sustainable Development was opened by Indonesian President Megawati
Soekarnoputri on Wednesday. Megawati underlined that the Indonesian
government was determined to do its utmost for the success of the meeting.
"I believe that we all share the same perception and dreams about an
advanced life that is prosperous, just, independent and dignified, " the
president said. More than 400 ministerial-level delegates from 140 countries
and regions take part in the meeting which will end Friday before finalizing
the agendas for the World Summit to be held in Johannesburg.
Xinhua News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FB20020606850000134.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI, INDONESIA,
Jun 6, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- With only two days left for ministers in
Bali to finalize a common agenda for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in August, questions over world leaders ' commitment to attend
the summit started to rise. "We are very concerned that at this late stage
of the preparatory process, so many national leaders still have not yet
announced their intent to go to the World Summit," Jacob Scherr, director of
the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said here Thursday.
He pointed to the latest survey conducted by NRDC mentioning that only 45
national leaders had been confirmed as planning to attend the Summit in
Johannesburg, and an additional 40 countries said that their head of state
would 'likely' participate. The leaders of a number of key countries are
still uncommitted, including the United States, India and Russia. "Now the
question is whether the world leaders have the courage to go to Johannesburg
to take real actions, collectively and individually, to assure a sustainable
future?" Scherr asked. Kathleen Rogers, president of the Earth Day Network,
said, " Considering the magnitude of problems ranging from poverty and
homelessness to environmental degradation and human health, it is shameful
so few leaders have shown the courage or feel any need to commit to
attending the Johannesburg Summit." The most awaited guest in Johannesburg
will be U.S. President George W. Bush, leader of the world biggest consumers
of the planet's natural resources and one of the biggest polluters as well.
Earlier in the day, a group of activists of some American non- governmental
organizations gathered in front of Nusa Dua Hotel, the venue for
international delegations of Preparatory Meeting, demanding leadership role
by the U.S. government in global sustainable development.
The Jakarta Post
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020606.@01
President Megawati
Soekarnoputri urged on Wednesday ministers of various nations to build the
world anew, as they gathered in Bali to decide the direction that world
development would take in the next decade. Speaking at the opening ceremony
of the ministerial meeting in Bali on sustainable development, Megawati's
call for building a new world coincided with World Environment Day and came
amid concerns that countries lacked the political will to change the world's
course and balance economic interests with environmental issues. Nearly two
weeks of talks on an action plan for sustainable development ran the risk of
being watered down by a general lack of commitment. "Should we manage to
make the concept work, it would simply mean that we actually materialize the
ideals of building the world anew," Megawati said. She referred to a speech
delivered in the 1960s by her father -- first president Sukarno -- to the
General Assembly of the United Nations titled "To Build the World Anew" at a
time when the cold war threatened world peace. The spirit and principles of
Sukarno's address, she said, remained relevant to the world's current
situation and challenges. Overexploitation of the earth's natural resources
because of current global economic development put at risk future
generations, bringing calls for a new approach that would harmonize
development with nature. In 1992 the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil called on nations through the Rio declaration to implement
sustainable development principles in their national development plans. But
implementation of the declaration fell short of expectation as countries
lacked the necessary commitment. Ten years later, delegates in Bali are
drafting another action plan to be known as the Bali Commitment. They hope
it will get countries to implement the decided measures and go beyond the
Rio declaration in the next 10 years. The meeting in Bali is a precursor to
the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa,
which will run from late August through early September. Heads of states are
expected to endorse the Bali Commitment with a political declaration.
Negotiations on the plan advanced slowly despite three pre-summit meetings
in New York. Bali is hosting the fourth and last meeting, and a UN
resolution requires delegates to finalize the Bali Commitment here. But
negotiators have run into a near deadlock on the level of commitment
countries should put into the action plan. "Critical work remains to be
done over the next three days. Full agreement has to be reached on a solid,
specific implementation plan with targets before we leave Bali," said UN
deputy secretary-general Louise Frechette in her opening remarks. Getting
time targets and strong action into the draft plan remain an elusive effort
as they require more commitments that many developed countries appear
reluctant to lend.
Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) also criticized business interests for holding hostage
developed countries, which flinched during negotiations on paragraphs
hampering free trade and restricting corporate action. Frechette said
sustainable development could not go without the involvement of the private
sector, but urged it to do more than "corporate philanthropy".
"The world is not
asking corporations to do something different from their normal business,
but rather to do their normal business differently -- to see the long term,
not just the short term; and to see not just the cost of change, but also
the cost of status quo," she said. Frechette said that progress toward
implementation would also depend on the availability of resources.
"Governments must
sustain the momentum generated by the Monterey conference, particularly in
the area of official development assistance," she said. The European Union
and the United States pledged some US$30 billion in additional aid to fight
poverty during the conference on financing development early this year in
Monterey, Mexico. Developing countries, however, questioned the gesture,
noting that the amount of aid promised was six times less than what
developed countries spend on subsidizing their agricultural sectors at the
expense of developing countries. A senior U.S. delegate further dismissed
hopes of more aid, and asked developing countries instead to first improve
their laws. "The U.S. delegation insists that they will only head for a
compromise when the rest of the world considers the U.S. government's
interests," he said. Head of the Indonesian delegate Makarim Wibisono said
that developing countries wanted developed countries to go beyond Monterey.
Negotiations, he said, were aimed at getting developed countries to agree to
at least indicate willingness to go beyond Monterey, meaning more aid. The
position of developed countries was that the Bali Commitment should just
endorse the results of Monterey.
The Jakarta Post
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020606.L01
More than 500
non-governmental organization (NGO) activists took the opportunity of
President Megawati Soekarnoputri's arrival in Bali on Wednesday to launch a
demonstration denouncing the results of the UN meeting on sustainable
development here.
The protesters
marched from the amphitheater in the sprawling Nusa Dua hotel complex where
the meeting is being held toward the Bali International Convention Center,
also in the same complex. Besides denouncing the ongoing meeting, the
activists also rejected the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD) in Johannesburg, to be held in August through early September.
Wednesday's rally, the largest to take place during the ongoing
ministerial-level preparatory committee (PrepCom) meeting for the WSSD, was
organized by the Indonesian People's Forum (IPF) on behalf of groups
representing women, children, farmers, fishermen, indigenous peoples, labor
unions, the urban poor and NGOs. The demonstrators charged that government
delegates lacked sincerity in accommodating the interests of major civil
society groups during the whole PrepCom process.
The demonstrators
claimed that developed countries, multinational corporations and
international financial institutions had dominated the process. The
demonstrators also called for international civil society groups to rally
under the antitrade liberalization banner at the global forum for civil
society in Johannesburg, and called for governments to stop their repression
and aggression against the people. Hundreds of people marched out of the
amphitheater carrying colorful banners and plywood figures depicting
fishermen and farmers. Four men, their bodies painted red, white, blue and
green, performed a dance at the head of the line, each using props such as a
bamboo ladder, a wok and plastic bags to represent the pollution of the
earth. "Reclaim our earth!" they cried in unison. Meanwhile, an
open-speech forum was led by members of local and international NGOs,
including from the Philippines and Palestine. About an hour later, the
marchers headed toward the Bali International Convention Center, the main
venue of the ministerial-level meeting, but were blocked by security
personnel. The demonstration caused traffic jams within the Nusa Dua
complex and outside the resort, prompting the police to block off some roads
to clear the way for the President and her escort to enter the complex. The
police also were deployed in surrounding areas to prevent others from
joining the rally.
The police were
seen cooperating with traditional Bali security guards, or Pecalang, with
their black outfits sporting the emblems of the Indonesian Democratic Party
of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), to prevent more people from joining the
rally. They were also seen searching vehicles entering the complex. Some
NGOs claimed their members were unable to reach the IPF venue, forcing the
organization to cancel most of its scheduled meetings and workshops. In
response, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), as well as
several other NGOs, are planning to file a lawsuit against the National
Police and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle's civilian guards for
blocking the entrance to the Nusa Dua complex. "Our lawyers are now
arranging lawsuits against both parties," said Emmy Hafild, the national
coordinator for the IPF as well as the Walhi executive director.
Emmy went on to say
that the IPF committee suffered a significant financial loss due to the
cancellation of many of its events.
"The committee was
forced to totally cancel at least two programs from our schedule this
morning," Emmy said.
Despite the
cancellations, the committee still had to pay booking fees for function
rooms at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
"The booking fee
for each function room reaches Rp 6 million, while the ballroom costs Rp 24
million," she said.
The Jakarta Post
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020606.L02
Comprehensive
measures must be taken to combat corruption as it significantly contributes
to damaging the environment, an expert said on Wednesday. Richard Holloway
from the Partnership for Governance Reform, an initiative of the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), said during a workshop on the global
anticorruption agenda here that one clear example that corruption could
damage the environment was ongoing illegal logging activities. "It's an
open secret that some private companies have bribed government officials to
get forest concessions," Holloway said. This harmful practice often ended
up with illegal logging which seriously damaged the forests and the
environment. Illegal logging is considered to be one of the most damaging
activities to the environment, he added. The workshop was a fringe event at
the ongoing ministerial/preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit
on Sustainable Development here. Holloway went on to say that the scale of
forest concessions granted by the government to private companies was
excessive. In 1995, the government awarded 585 forest concessions involving
a total area of 62 million hectares. These concessions supplied between 60
and 70 million cubic metres of logs per year, far from the sustainable
harvest rate of 20 million cubic meters per year, according to data provided
by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
"Illegal logging
involves some 50 million cubic meters of logs per year, the equivalent to
US$4 billion in financial losses per year to the state," said Walhi. Some
25 percent of the total state losses goes into the pockets of government
officials, especially the legal apparatus," said Agus Purnomo, an executive
of Transparency Indonesia, an affiliate organization of Transparency
International.
"Many ships
transporting illegal logs are arrested by the authorities, but they are
released soon afterwards due to (an alleged) lack of evidence," Agus added.
Given widespread corruption, law enforcement was far from what it should be.
Law enforcement was badly needed to deter the illegal loggers from damaging
the environment. Needless to say, the absence of law enforcement had paved
the way for illegal loggers to extract more logs, which further damaged the
environment, said Agus. He explained that illegal logging and deforestation
had caused severe environmental degradation in forested areas as they
damaged water catchment areas with ensuing heavy flooding during wet seasons
and drought during dry seasons. Meanwhile, Peter Rooke from Transparency
International-Australia, explained that the organization provided technical
assistance to developing countries to implement antibribery measures and
good governance initiatives. Transparency International, founded in l993,
is a global anticorruption movement operating in 85 countries. However, he
admitted that the government itself was not able to eradicate corruption due
to the complicated and immense problems facing it. "NGOs, including
Greenpeace, and other international organizations and agencies, such as the
World Bank, have set up the Forest Integrity Network, for example, to help
the government and the authorities eradicate illegal logging," said Rooke.
He further said that illegal logging was always backed up and facilitated by
corrupt officials. According to Holloway, the drive to combat corruption
should not merely be confined to the sustainable development agenda since
the harmful practice would bring suffering to all the people, especially
children.
"People cannot send
their kids to school because their are no school buildings as the money was
stolen by government officials. Parents are not able to access health
facilities since they have to pay bribes to the nurses, for example," said
Holloway.
The Jakarta Post
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020606.L03
Coordinating
Minister for the Economy Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti called on businesses on
Tuesday to leave their "business as usual" practices and move toward more
responsible methods benefiting society and the environment. Meanwhile, the
business leaders said that the awareness was there, claiming that they had
carried out efforts to pursue sustainable development, including protecting
the environment and helping the society, but other factors prevented them
from doing it all the time. Dorodjatun said the business sectors were given
emphasis because they had an immense role in the sustainable development
drive. Businesses, according to Dorodjatun, had become the most powerful
institution after nation states. They are now stronger than labor unions or
non-governmental organizations (NGO). "Even, in some cases, the governments
are even powerless in facing multinational corporations," Dorodjatun told
business players during a luncheon speech in Nusa Dua, on the sidelines of
the current ministerial/preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit
on Sustainable Development. Unfortunately, many business sectors had failed
to push ahead with the sustainable development drive in their operations,
and worse, they were deceitful to the public by defending their harmful
practices through public relations moves, said Dorodjatun. Due to the
immense role of business, their contributions were needed both to prevent
their harmful practices to the environment and to support community and
government programs to continue development while maintaining the ecological
balance for future generations. "There should be concrete action. For
example, after digging the earth, the mining companies must carry out
reforestation to prevent ecological damage in the area," said Dorodjatun in
an interview with The Jakarta Post, after the luncheon. The failure to
contribute to protecting the environment could lead to disaster in the
future. "The next generations deserve a better life, and the business
sectors are also responsible for this," Dorodjatun said. Meanwhile, business
leaders claimed that they had given particular attention to sustainable
development through, for example, the establishment of foundations dealing
with issues on environmental impact. Mining company Rio Tinto and consumer
product company PT Unilever Indonesia Tbk -- both foreign-owned companies --
were among those which had established such foundations, the Rio Tinto
Foundation and Uli Peduli Foundation respectively. The companies kept parts
of their profits flowing to such foundations to finance the sustainable
development drive such as through Clean Rivers and Forestation programs. "We
keep the highest standards for corporate behavior, not only to the
employees, but also to public," claimed A.A. Pranatadjaja, the director of
PT Unilever Indonesia Tbk.
The Jakarta Post
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020606.M04
Sustainable
development still poses problems for developing countries, including India,
China and Indonesia, despite high economic growth and improvements in social
development in these three prominent developing countries, a report has
found.
The report,
released here on Wednesday by the United Nations University based in Japan,
stated that industrialization, which contributed to high economic growth,
had developed well in the three countries over the past several decades.
In China, for
example, industrial output growth averaged 12.6 percent a year in the 1980s.
One decade later, growth had accelerated to 18 percent per year. The three
countries also enjoyed improving levels of social development as manifested
in decreasing poverty levels, said the report. The poverty rate in India
declined steadily from 54 percent to 38 percent between 1973 and 1986.
Indonesia was able to dramatically reduce the poverty rate over the past 20
years, from 70 percent to below 10 percent in the early 1990s. Even after
the financial crisis in 1997, Indonesia's poverty rate never reached higher
than 20 percent.
While
industrialization and high economic growth are hoped for, unfortunately they
can later pose challenges to sustainable development. Due to rapid
urbanization and industrialization in Indonesia, the country will have to
deal with an increase in solid waste of 500 percent by 2020 for the
residential sector and 1000 percent in the case of the manufacturing sector.
Besides waste, the
three countries also faced problems arising from increased demand for water.
Rapid industrialization increased industrial and residential water use in
China from 45.7 billion cubic meters and 6.8 billion cubic meters in 1980
respectively to 112.1 billion cubic meters and 525 billion cubic meters in
1997. To reduce the undesirable impacts of industrialization and social
development, a researcher at the United Nations University suggested that
multiple approaches be taken by the authorities, in partnership with the
people. "The three developing countries need more resources and better
technology to implement Agenda 21 of the Rio World Summit," said Thangavel
Palanivel, who presented the report on the sidelines of the
ministerial/preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit on
Sustainable Development here at the Bali International Convention Center.
Ambassador Milos
Alcalay, a G-77 representative from Venezuela, praised the report, saying
that it could provide a good model for developing countries to achieve
higher standards of living. He further suggested that science and
technological development be pursued by governments in developing countries
as this sector were crucial to sustainable development. "The role of science
and technology should be stressed since these could show us the way to
sustainable development," he said in a keynote speech before the
presentation.
The Jakarta Post
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20020606.M05
The ones who know
the best about what is good for the people are the people themselves. The
ones who know the best about the environment are the people who have lived
on the land for millions of years, according to Princess Basma bin Talal of
Jordan.
In creating a
successful partnership program for the interest of sustainable development,
it was important for the local community to be involved, Princess Basma said
on Wednesday in her keynote speech at the United Nations Development
Program's (UNDP) side event to the preparatory committee (prepcom) IV
meeting here. "Each local community has their own sets of values in managing
the sustainability of their lands, and these should be involved to share,
learn and create partnerships that promote sustainability," she said. The
participation of women in the management of water, for example, was of
utmost importance because when women see water and sanitation problems they
instinctively understand the direct effect the problems have on hygiene and
health, Prema Gopalan, executive director of India's Swayam Shikshan Prayog,
said. Therefore women's participation in determining the improvements of
operations and maintenance in water management were important and could form
a force that could work together with local governments, she said in the
dialog entitled "Communities make the difference" organized by UNDP.
Kenya's Minister of
Agriculture, Edward Owango, said that the African experience in involving
local communities in the management of soil and water had so far been
successful because of the wealth of knowledge that indigenous people
possess.
He said that ideas
generated from the people themselves caught on easier than those from
foreign sources, and with it there was a lot more enthusiasm by the people
to try new innovations. Owango said that there should be a paradigm shift in
which local indigenous people were involved, but that to unlock the
knowledge that these people own, guidance was needed. Meanwhile, Susan
McDade, manager for UNDP's Sustainable Energy Program, said that women
should be involved when making public policies on energy, explaining that
more than two billion people in developing countries had to work and live
without the benefits from energy such as illumination and refrigeration. Not
so long ago, this lack of energy also was common in developed countries, she
said, explaining that her grandmother had to get up every morning to light
the wood-fire stove to boil water in which to clean and wash.
"I am sure that
there are other grandmothers in developed countries that have the same
experiences, all this not so long ago," McDade said, explaining that
developed countries had come out of the dark by getting organized and
raising the people's awareness on the importance of energy. However, the
magnitude of the task to provide basic energy sources to about a third of
the earth's population is getting bigger, she said. The UNDP has launched a
series of initiatives that focused on the participation of local communities
in decision-making processes for sustainable development, including those on
water, energy and agriculture, UNDP's director for environmentally
sustainable development groups Alvaro Umana said.
United Nations
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=3872&Cr=johannesburg&Cr1=
6 June - With
government officials still working in Bali to hammer out a final action plan
and political declaration for the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable
Development, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today unveiled
a new initiative for countries striving to meet global targets for cutting
poverty by 2015. Known as "Capacity 2015," the project aims to support
nations in improving their ability to meet the goals set at the 2000
Millennium Summit in New York. The scheme provides a flexible,
service-oriented platform to address a diverse range of capacity development
needs, including nurturing healthy economies and environments and bringing
practical support to communities, while linking their efforts to national
and global initiatives, according to UNDP. "Real improvements in managing
water, energy and biological resources, health services and sanitation, must
happen at the local level, [but] local actors will need national and global
support to achieve their goals," UNDP said in a statement released in Bali,
where more than 4,500 delegates are gathered for the final preparatory
meeting for the Summit, which will be held from 26 August to 4 September in
Johannesburg, South Africa. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has named water
and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity as key areas of
focus for the Summit. Meanwhile, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Louise
Fréchette, today participated in the political launch of a recent UN report
that looks at policies and environmental affects of the past 30 years and
outlines approaches for the coming three decades. The Global Environment
Outlook-3 (GEO-3), the Deputy Secretary-General said, paints a picture that
is "not pretty" and shows that the environment is seriously at risk because
of the burdens being placed on it. "GEO-3 warns us that we can no longer
blindly trust in the regenerative capacity of the planet's ecosystems," she
said. "Even in the best-case scenario, conditions will continue to worsen
for several decades in a number of areas." The preparations in Bali for the
Johannesburg Summit afforded delegates an opportunity to focus on practical
responses, the Deputy Secretary-General stressed. "It would be disastrous to
sit back and ignore the picture that GEO-3 has painted for us," she said.
"Let us resolve to translate the vision that GEO-3 offers us into reality."
Xinhua News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FB20020606940000128.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI, INDONESIA,
Jun 6, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Indonesia and Australia have signed an
agreement on environmental management relating to water, waste water,
recycling and renewable energy. Indonesian Environment Minister Nabiel
Makarim and his Australian counterpart David Kemp witnessed here Thursday
the signing of the agreement between the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (KADIN) and the Environment Business Australia. Signed during the
Fourth Preparatory Committee Meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, the agreement is expected to pave the way for a number of
partnerships to address poverty eradication, change unsustainable production
and consumption practices and protect and manage natural resources. The
agreement was signed by Ing Ilhamy Elias, chairman of the Environment
Compartment of KADIN and Fiona Wain, CEO of Environment Business Australia.
"Australia is close to Indonesia and has advanced technologies that have
been well tried and are appropriate to our country," Elias said. Australian
Minister for Environment David Kemp said that the agreement reflected
Australia's willingness to share its expertise in environmental management
with other countries.
Xinhua News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FA20020606800000010.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
BALI, INDONESIA,
Jun 6, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The Japanese government announced
Thursday its entry of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), an
environmental group aiming to preserve Earth's most critically endangered
and biologically richest regions, in the side event of the Fourth
Preparatory Committee Meeting for World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Japan's Minister for the Environment Hiroshi Ohki told a press briefing here
that Japan had considered biodiversity conservation as one of the most
critical issues facing the world today and would strongly support the
efforts of private conservation group by joining the CEPF. "The CEPF
approach enables local people in developing nations to create and implement
projects for a healthy environment and to prosper economically", the
minister said. "That is why the Japanese government has chosen to be
participant in this very focused initiative". The five-member CEPF has
announced a commitment of financial assistance amounting to at least 150
million U.S. dollars over five years for biodiversity hotspots -- highly
threatened regions where more than sixty percent of terrestrial species
diversity is found on only 1.4 percent of the Earth's surface. Each CEPF
member organization has pledged to commit five million U.S. dollars annually
over five years to the fund, which provides financial support, technical
expertise, field knowledge and information on biodiversity conservation.
The bulk of the 58.1 million U.S. dollars approved this year will be
disburse to Sumatra island of Indonesia, a home to more than 10,000 plant
species. Sumatra is the only place where elephants, rhinoceros, tigers,
clouded leopards and orangutans are all found.
Islamic Republic
News Agency
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.irna.com/en/head/020606225643.ehe.shtml
Bali, June 6, IRNA
-- Iran's Vice-President and the Head of its Department of Environment (DOE)
Masoumeh Ebtekar here Thursday
blamed industrial
countries as developing nations came to a face-off against the United States
at a meeting, held in this Indonesian
resort island, to
tackle world poverty while protecting the environment. The stalemate in Bali
talks could be blamed on the failure of
certain industrial
nations to fulfill their financing pledges to the developing nations shed
said. Ebtekar, who was addressing the UN-sponsored preparatory meeting for
World Summit on Sustainable Development, said the same cause had kept the
goals set at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro from materializing. The
Rio summit put environmental issues on the world political agenda for the
first time. She said the Bali meeting could serve as an appropriate occasion
to set the tone for a sustainable development and to address what has kept
certain countries from making good on their pledges made in previous
summits. Ebtekar stressed the significance of the action plan to be drawn up
at the Bali meeting, and said the international community must feel
duty-bound to implement the contents of the plan. She further stressed the
need to tap new financial resources to push ahead with the goals, set in the
1992 Rio Earth Summit as well as those declared by the UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan on sustainable development. "Although there had been several
breakthroughs to tackle such challenges as water, poverty, sanitary and the
unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, the success of the
Bali talks is still in doubt as there has been no tangible progress in such
issues as financial commitments of world (developed) countries," Ebtekar
said. President Khatami's envoy further said globalization, as the main
concern of the 21st century, had posed many threats to the international
community, in addition to its benefits. These threats, she stressed, have to
be limited. Ebtekar called on the international community to adopt measures
to protect the environment better, and also to support the developing
nations in facing up the perceived threats of globalization. "Globalization
must include both the developed and the under-developed nations on an equal
footing, and all world nations must benefit from its advantages," she said.
Ebtekar arrived in Bali Monday to attend the three-day ministerial meeting
meant to finalize a series of implementation plans that should help world
leaders stick to their commitments to sustainable development. The Bali
meeting which opened on Wednesday is also expected to debate a political
declaration to be adopted in the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, August 26 to September 4.It follows a UN
meeting of environment officials and activists in Bali that began last
Monday to sketch out a draft action plan to protect the planet. The draft
plan will serve as a blueprint for sustainable economic development over the
next decade.
Jordan Times
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.jordantimes.com/Thu/homenews/homenews5.htm
AMMAN (JT) - HRH
Princess Basma on Wednesday highlighted some of the major challenges to
sustainable development, and talked about possible mechanisms for facing
these challenges. In a keynote address entitled, "Communities Make the
Critical Difference," delivered in Bali, Indonesia at a preparatory meeting
for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the Princess spoke
of the strategic role that communities play in advancing sustainable
development. Despite the enormous contributions that civil society, and in
particular communities, have made to advance the understanding of
sustainable development, communities are generally the least well-positioned
to have a voice in international summits, she said. "While the critical and
dynamic relationship between a local community, its natural surroundings and
its cultural identity are now more recognised, the pitfall of many
well-intended projects has been in implementing measures that concentrate on
one aspect, to the detriment of the other ... sustainability cannot simply
be defined in absolute terms," Princess Basma said. "As we convene here
today..., let us remember that each community has its own set of values
which can be utilised to further sustainability." Princess Basma cited
Jordan's Dana Nature Reserve as home to a pioneering approach to
conservation - which integrates the needs of nature with the needs of local
residents, many of whom are still nomadic and dependent on the resources of
the reserve. "Let us also reinforce our commitment to eradicating poverty
and to strengthening local institutions that will take the lead in
demonstrating that `people do make a difference'," she concluded. Country
delegations, civil society representatives, international organisations and
other partners present at PrepCom IV in Bali, attended this event which was
hosted by UNDP and the Equator Initiative. In a sideline event, hosted by
the Arab Network for Environment and Development (RAED), of which Princess
Basma is patron, she put forward the priorities raised by the Arab states
regarding sustainable development. "Although great strides have been made
in the civil society movement, little is seen amidst the political events
the Arab region is witnessing. We are striving for peace, stability and
democracy in the hope for a prosperous and promising world in which we join
other nations in their efforts to achieve development and sustainability,"
said the Princess. RAED, is a network of more than 200 Arab
non-governmental organisations from Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,
Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar,
Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. It publishes a monthly environmental
and developmental newsletter entitled, "Montada Al Biah." Also on Wednesday
Princess Basma met with Indonesia's President Megawati. During the meeting,
Megawati expressed her admiration of the Hashemite leadership and spoke of
His Majesty King Abdullah's active role in the Middle East region. The
Indonesian leader also spoke of the efforts of King Abdullah to strengthen
the relations between Jakarta and Amman. The talks between Megawati and
Princess Basma also focused on the environment, development and women's
issues. The Indonesian president praised Princess Basma for her efforts in
these fields, especially her role in advancing humanitarian work and the
status of women in Jordan. The minister of municipal and rural affairs and
environment, who is accompanying Princess Basma, attended the meeting.
United Nations Press Release
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb18-e.htm
The importance of promoting partnerships to facilitate the acquisition and
use of modern technology by developing countries was among the many issues
stressed as the ministerial segment of the fourth and final Preparatory
Committee for the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development
continued discussing "implementation partnerships/initiatives" this
afternoon in Bali.
A representative of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
said technology was central to achieving sustainable development. Many
developing countries faced major challenges in acquiring and using modern
technologies. She noted a divide between the technology "innovators", the
technology "adaptors" and those countries that were technologically
"disconnected". The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
promoted partnerships to overcome the divide -- there was a programme under
way in 25 countries on assessing needs and promoting action in the area of
technology cooperation.
A representative of the European Space Agency described partnerships formed
to monitor the earth through satellite observation for many problems of
sustainable development. It was necessary to highlight the importance of
such observation in the World Summit documents. To do so would help direct
such programmes to support Agenda 21 objectives. The representative of
Kyrgyzstan, noting that his largely mountainous country had a vulnerable
ecosystem, said there was an absence of technology to take advantage of
natural resources such as water. A complex development programme for 2000
to 2010 had been developed by the Government, as had a strategy for poverty
eradication. Partnership with other Central Asian States was under way to
help protect the mountains, reduce debt and strengthen environmental
management. Among a number of speakers discussing the role of partnerships
to promote sustainable development in Africa, the representative of Gabon
said he hoped the Summit would adopt the New Programme for African
Development (NEPAD) as the best way of enhancing sustainable development in
Africa. Other regional efforts were under way that were aimed at promoting
sustainable development, he noted. The representative of Uganda said her
Government had been at the forefront of establishing a solid platform to
promote various forms of partnerships. Africa, she said, welcomed
partnerships intended to support regional and subregional initiatives such
as NEPAD and others. She looked forward to the announcement of new
initiatives at the Summit that were intended to support national and
regional efforts. Her Government sought partnerships to aid in combating
diseases, including those that were water-borne. The representative of
Finland said that partnerships were important because they provided
substantial additions of resources for sustainable development. Through
them, new actors could be brought in, and sustainable development could be
mainstreamed. Finland's basic strategy was to facilitate partnerships that
formed voluntarily under criteria of relevance, and to help link such
partnerships with international initiatives. Partnerships were so essential
to sustainable development that it could be said that the Johannesburg
Summit would be about partnerships. Statements were also made this afternoon
by the representatives of Mozambique, Turkey, Jordan, Belgium, Nepal,
Nigeria, Cuba, Iceland, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, South
Africa, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, China, Ireland, Senegal, Honduras,
Belize, Benin, Chad, Guyana, Panama, Bahamas, Solomon Islands, Austria, New
Zealand and Romania.
A representative of the Secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Control
of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal also spoke.
Richard Ballhorn (Canada), Acting Committee Chair; Jan Kara (Czech
Republic), Committee Vice-Chair; and Diane Quarless (Jamaica), Committee
Vice-Chair spoke at the conclusion of the debate. The ministerial segment is
scheduled to meet again tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. to continue its
deliberations
BACKGROUND
The fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development this afternoon continued its ministerial segment,
during which Ministers are expected to discuss follow-up to the Bali
implementation plan, partnership initiatives and elements for the political
declaration to be adopted at the Johannesburg Summit. The focus of this
afternoon's discussion was the implementation of partnership initiatives.
STATEMENTS
The representative of Mozambique said the right balance had to be created
between Type 1 and Type 2 partnerships. Type 2 partnerships could add to
the pool of resources available and increase other opportunities, but
governments should not be written off as the main actors in those kinds of
partnerships. In addition, he said, partnerships should be steered equally
by all actors. The New Programme for African Development (NEPAD) could be
very useful in areas of interest to his country. In Mozambique,
environmental laws had been enacted and many other activities had been
undertaken in response to Agenda 21. Those actions needed adequate support
by the international community, and type 2 partnerships could provide some
of that support.
The representative of Finland said that Type 2 partnerships were important
because they provided substantial additional resources for sustainable
development. Through them, new actors could be brought in, and sustainable
development could be mainstreamed. Finland's basic strategy was to
facilitate partnerships that formed voluntarily under criteria of relevance,
and to help link such partnerships with international initiatives.
Partnerships were so essential to sustainable development that it could be
said that the Johannesburg Summit would be about partnerships. The
representative of Turkey said that among the benefits of partnerships was
increased of awareness of sustainable development issues. Enhanced
partnership was essential for success in areas such as improved governance
mechanisms. Her country had fostered partnerships in support of Agenda 21
at all levels and in cooperation with United Nations agencies. She stressed
the need for increasing the capacity of local actors and for new resources
for demands placed on the Global Environment Facility (GEF). She emphasized
the importance of regional and cross-regional partnerships, which bridged
efforts at the national and local levels to those at the international
level. The representative of the United Nations Industrial Development
Organization (UNIDO) said technology was central to achieving sustainable
development. Modern technology had an important role to play in realizing
the Millennium Development Goals and alleviating poverty. Many developing
countries faced major challenges in acquiring and using technologies. She
noted a divide between the technology "innovators", the technology
"adaptors" and those countries that were technologically "disconnected".
She hoped the Summit would provide strong outcomes on technology issues in
the area of means of implementation. The UNIDO promoted partnerships to
overcome the divide -- there was a programme under way in 25 countries on
assessing needs and promoting action in the area of technology cooperation.
Partnerships in the area of energy were also being promoted by UNIDO. The
representative of Jordan said the current session was an opportunity to try
to resolve problems that had developed over the past 10 years and to assess
what had been done. Decisions must be strengthened but not repeated.
Working together was essential, he said, stressing the role of partnerships
between the various stakeholders in the sustainable developments process.
The specific roles of the various actors must be established, and the
interests of all must be taken into account, he said. Financial
institutions and governments of rich countries must provide monetary and
technological assistance to help with partnerships. He went on to highlight
Jordan's partnership initiatives to promote sustainable development. The
representative of Belgium said the Co-Chairman's document on guiding
principles for partnerships, which had been distributed throughout the room,
was a good paper. Partnerships should be based on what had already been
agreed. Sustainable development could only be achieved if there was respect
for the social, economic and environmental pillars. He said the
international community should work together on Agenda 21, which established
the proper balance among those pillars. Partnerships must be monitored by
the international community as they evolved to determine whether they were
up to the vision set forth for sustainable development. The
representative of Nepal said partnerships were vital to the goals of poverty
alleviation, environmental stewardship and increased equitability of
development. Such partnerships could help increase the resources
available. An international partnership for sustainable mountain
development was particularly important for his country. Civil society
partnerships were also vital in Nepal for dealing with such problems as the
depletion of forestry resources through use of wood fuels in homes, which
also caused other environmental and social development problems.
International support for partnerships formed within Nepal was necessary,
however. The representative of the European Space Agency described
partnerships formed to monitor the earth through satellite observation for
many areas of sustainable development. It was necessary to highlight the
importance of such observations in the World Summit documents. To do so
would help direct such programmes to support Agenda 21 objectives. They
should be supported as relevant "type 2" outcomes.
The representative of Nigeria said that governments could not undertake the
sustainable development agenda alone, and they required partners to do so.
That had been the case in his country in programmes to protect coastal and
marine environments, which had attracted the support of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. But such partnerships should
not be a substitute for government commitments, and they should serve such
commitments while being transparent, relevant and accountable. The
representative of Cuba said partnerships must not replace government
outcomes or multilateral cooperation. Initiatives should be geared towards
contributing to the three pillars of sustainable development. That could
only be ensured if partnerships were clearly and properly linked to the
Summit's plan of implementation. Monitoring was key, as were transparency
and coordination. He underscored that observing the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities for developed and developing countries must
be a basic concept underlying partnerships. The guiding principles with
regard to partnerships should be strengthened. He noted his delegation's
support for the NEPAD. Opportunities to promote South-South cooperation
should be seized. Respect for sovereignty and the development models of
individual countries were key. The representative of Iceland said her
country welcomed Type 2 initiatives as long as they did not undermine the
importance of Type 1 outcomes. A framework was needed to ensure that Type 2
outcomes added to the implementation of Agenda 21. All had something to
offer in the field of cooperation. Programmes of the United Nations
University on fisheries and geothermal energy had been hosted by her
country, she noted. A new initiative on capacity-building in the area of
geo-thermal energy was being contemplated by her Government.
The representative of Ukraine said Ukraine fully realized its role and
responsibility to protect natural resources. In that context, it would host
the Fifth Environment for Europe ministerial meeting in Kiev next year. The
meeting was expected to introduce action-oriented mechanisms to promote
environmental protection. The current task of the international community
was to eliminate the controversies between the new development methodologies
and old values. He urged negotiators to agree on a specific, time-bound
implementation plan. The session was crucial opportunity to make the
Johannesburg Summit a success.
The representative of the United Arab Emirates said his country had been
active in creating partnerships between all sectors in his country in
support of Agenda 21. In order to promote partnership with the
international community, it had established the Zayid International
Environment Awards, which this year, recognized programmes countering water
problems in dry areas, among other initiatives. It had also established
funds for the sustainable development of developing nations, helping to
build their capabilities in a range of areas and fulfill their
responsibilities under international accords. The representative of
Pakistan said that side partnerships were valuable but should not be an
open-ended process and had to be developed under strict guidelines to better
the lifestyles of the poor and support sustainable development in the most
vulnerable areas. The representative of South Africa stressed the need for
mutual respect in partnerships, which were vital to meet goals in water and
sanitation access and poverty reduction. Projects in water and sanitation,
in particular, met the criteria of all three pillars of sustainable
developments. Partnerships on those issues in southern Africa could be a
model of how Type 1 agreements could link with Type 2 initiatives to meet
Agenda 21 goals. Monitoring of water and sanitation goals should be
included in the follow-up to the Johannesburg Summit. The representative of
Kyrgyzstan said his country was 94 per cent mountains and had a very
vulnerable ecosystem. There was an absence of technology to take advantage
of natural resources, as well as large amounts of radioactive waste on the
territory. The waste and heavy metal residue had been left from the time of
the former Soviet Union. A complex development programme for 2000 to 2010
had been developed by his Government, as had a strategy for poverty
eradication. He wished to reinforce the Central Asian initiatives for
cooperation. Cooperation was under way to help protect the mountains,
reduce debt and strengthen environmental management. The representative of
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia said his Government had been among the
first countries to accept the concept of sustainable development. However,
the period of wars and sanctions during the 1990s had had visible
consequences. The technological level of the country had declined,
facilities were underused, and the import of raw materials and export of
finished products had been undermined. Scientific and technological
exchange and cultural cooperation had been interrupted. Cooperation with
international organizations had been undertaken to protect the environment,
he said. The country expected assistance in dealing with depleted uranium
from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) missiles. He fully supported
the search for financing to support sustainable development and was in
favour of reaching fruitful agreements for the establishment of
partnerships. The representative of China said to fully implement Agenda 21,
comprehensive partnerships must be established according to the Rio
principles. The actual difficulties confronting developing countries should
be addressed. Type 2 outcomes should reflect the spirit of global
partnerships and should complement the implementation plan. Only when all
parties demonstrated good political will in the plan could partnerships be
effectively implemented. China would take an active part in partnership
initiatives. Cooperation among civil society was important, but government
departments should provide guidance.
The representative of Ireland said partnership was central to sustainable
development, and that donors should work more closely with both the national
plans of developing countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) strategy and the World Bank's comprehensive development
framework. Partnerships should be owned by developing countries and should
complement all existing efforts. The private sector should be involved to
the greatest extent possible, and partnerships should continue to be
established after the Johannesburg Summit in support of its goals. The
representative of Senegal said that governments of developing countries
should be involved in Type 2 partnerships, as part of the assistance that
should be provided to partnerships at all levels. NEPAD was a Type 2
partnership according to his country, and its priorities should be access to
water, and new and renewable energy sources. Chemical development should
proceed, but its negative effects should be countered. Resources needed in
such efforts should be provided by the international community.
Institutional coordination had been one of the major obstacles in
implementing Agenda 21, and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) should
play an important role in that regard. The representative of Honduras said
his country had tried pilot projects in partnerships and, while there were
successes, much could be improved. Account needed to be taken of
efficiency, coherence and impact of such projects by ECOSOC so that
partnership models did not create an additional level of bureaucracy. It
was also essential that sustainable development strategies meshed with all
other existing activities. Only in that way could programmes have a
measurable, positive impact on people's lives.
The representative of Belize said Type 2 partnerships must complement and
not replace Type 1 outcomes. Partnerships should coincide with national
priorities and Agenda 21 objectives. Certain existing projects could be
extended, including regional initiatives. Too much structure initially
might be stifling, but at the same time too little structure could lead to
an unmanageable situation. The management and tracking of partnerships must
be dealt with. The ultimate responsibility for partnerships must in many
cases remain with governments, she said. Discussions should be conducted,
in large part, through regional and national agencies. A follow-up process
through self-reporting mechanisms should also be established. The
representative of Gabon said Type 1 outcomes had not really yielded the
results hoped for in the areas of climate change and conservation of
bio-diversity among others. Synergies must be sought in all areas not
covered by the Rio commitments. Type 2 initiatives should permit new kinds
of ways of doing things and also make possible new resources. He hoped the
Summit would adopt NEPAD as the best way of enhancing sustainable
development in Africa. Other regional efforts were under way that were
aimed at promoting sustainable development. The representative of Uganda
said her Government had been at the forefront of establishing a solid
platform to promote various forms of partnerships. For the past 10 years,
several partnership arrangements had been initiated and her Government would
continue to appreciate implementable initiatives with clear outcomes to
combat poverty. Africa, she said, welcomed partnerships intended to support
regional and subregional initiatives such as NEPAD and others. She looked
forward to the announcement of new initiatives at the Summit that were
intended to support national and regional efforts. Her Government sought
partnerships to aid in combating diseases, including those that were
water-bound. The representative of Benin encouraged the meeting to work for
quicker progress in filling in the blanks that still existed in the
implementation plan. Globalization, he said, still benefited only the
richest nations, and access to trade was blocked to many developing
countries. Type 2 partnerships should focus on those areas. NEPAD was a
good model of Type 2 partnerships. Non-discriminitory trade access and debt
relief should, in that way, help countries to relieve pressure on their
resources and the environment. The representative of Chad said that there
should be partnership at all levels in the effort for sustainable
development. It should also be the basis for mutual respect between the
North and South and allow developing countries to participate in global
development. His country was developing a decentralization programme, which
empowered action at all levels that needed to be supported by partnerships.
Partnerships that, on the other hand, aimed to pull strings from above, were
not what was needed. The representative of Guyana said he fully supported
the statement by Barbados of this morning. Efforts must be redoubled to
make and meet deadlines in sustainable development. He disagreed with what
had been said about the voluntary aspect of Type 2 partnerships. His
country had hosted a project on protection of rainforests that had all the
elements of the type of partnership that had been discussed. Yet
implementation had been slow because financial support had been voluntary.
There needed to be an arrangement that allowed for predictability in the
flow of resources. In addition, the power of large corporations relative to
developing governments must be taken into account. The representative of
Panama said governments of developing countries participating in the South
Summit in Algeria had instituted partnerships with NGOs, United Nations
agencies, and others. Panama had proposed that through a pooling of
resources and the formation of an academy for sustainable development,
existing information could be made available on the environment and
development. All that was needed now was political will to comply with the
commitments already undertaken. Partnerships could provide a basis to
support the implementation of Agenda 21. The representative of the Bahamas
said partnerships were a good opportunity to assist regional and national
governments in implementing Type 1 outcomes. Partnerships were voluntary,
and each was unique and specific to the partners. She suggested that
guiding principles set forward by the Co-Chairs promote the establishment of
review processes to evaluate the capacity of partners to promote sustainable
development.
The representative of Solomon Islands said the outcome of UNCED had not
really worked. Cooperation was necessary to ensure the success of
Johannesburg. His country had endorsed 24 international agreements and
conventions to promote sustainable development since Rio. The Government
had created national policies to investigate sustainable programmes and
planning. Obstacles to development were being investigated. He said a
network must be put in place to prevent duplication of activities. All
actors should work together in partnership to promote sustainable
development. He noted the spiritual connection some people had to the
environment -- that must be taken into account when policies were made at
the national level. The representative of Austria said that to realize
sustainability in all sectors, it had to be translated to the public;
partnership was the best means for that. An example was the Alpine
Convention - the Convention on the Protection of the Alps -- which fulfilled
all criteria for Type 2 partnerships. Energy was another important area for
partnerships, and to facilitate those, the Global Forum for Sustainable
Energy had been formed. In general, partnerships should not only be
established but also improved. The representative of the Secretariat of the
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous
Waste and Their Disposal cited examples of partnerships in areas such as
sound management of waste where partnership with industry was vital. The
representative of New Zealand expressed interest in many of the kinds of
partnerships discussed and the idea of the mainstreaming of sustainable
development. Voters and communities must be involved in the effort; so far,
that had not been the case. If the blank spaces in the implementation plan
were being filled in during closed meetings, there was no chance for
transparency or mainstreaming the case for sustainable development. The
representative of Kyrgyzstan said partnership was the main thing achieved
since Rio. All understood that barriers between the various actors were the
main obstacles to achieving sustainable development. A voluntary approach
to overcoming that problem was key. The representative of Guyana said
thought should be given to the process that would help concretize the kinds
of Type 2 outcomes that could address the major issues, especially those
identified by the Secretary-General. Thought should also be given to how
civil society actors and the private sector could be brought in to play a
central role in partnerships. RICHARD BALLHORN (Canada), Acting Committee
Chair, said the Secretariat had started producing background documents that
might help representatives to form partnerships. JAN KARA (Czech Republic),
Committee Vice-Chair, noted the five areas identified by the
Secretary-General. A background paper on sustainable energy and others were
being prepared. These papers were seen as a potential bridge between Type
1s and Type 2s outcome. The overall framework of Type 2 outcomes was Agenda
21, but it was also hoped that they would evolve around the
Secretary-General's five areas, as well as others. DIANE QUARLESS (Jamaica),
Committee Vice-Chair, said the guiding principles document was a work in
progress. There was no full answer to the questions yet posed. From now to
Johannesburg, the Secretariat was facilitating the process. There was a Web
site, she noted. There was agreement in the relevant working group that the
Commission on Sustainable Development would serve as a focal point for
partnerships. Mr. BALLHORN said there were Web sites and other ways to
facilitate the aforesaid processes. The representative of Romania then asked
how partnerships could succeed in combating climate change and what kind of
technical answers could be applied to that problem. Mr. BALLHORN said his
country had a joint application programme that coordinated efforts for
emission reduction. In addition, the Kyoto Protocol included many
opportunities to create all sort of partnerships in that regard.
United Nations Press Release
6 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb17-e.htm
Partnerships should not substitute for the commitments of governments to
promote sustainable development, speakers stressed this morning as the
ministerial segment of the fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the
upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development continued its interactive
dialogue in Bali. During the dialogue, which focused on the theme
"implementation partnerships initiatives", many speakers spoke of the need
to commit governments to specific initiatives, but also of the need to
encourage a flexible range of partnerships, the so-called Type 2
partnerships, that advanced the goals of Agenda 21, the guiding principles
of sustainable development set down at the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992. Type 2 outcomes are voluntary
partnership initiatives between governments, citizen groups and the private
sector, intended to help promote implementation of the government-negotiated
outcome documents in Johannesburg, known as the "Type 1" outcomes. The
representative of Barbados strongly supported "Type 2" initiatives, which
provided a range of possibilities, but only as a supplement to Type 1
activities. Governments, she said, should not be allowed to abrogate their
responsibilities through a shift of emphasis to the Type 2 initiatives,
which had less specificity in terms of deadlines and funding, the lack of
which had helped lead to failure in meeting the goals of Agenda 21. She
said there should be stronger promotion of partnerships at the South-South
level and between Small Island Developing States (SIDS). As such a State,
her country urged ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which identified many
kinds of partnership activity for the climate protection areas of
sustainable development. Effective partnerships were not possible without
funding, genuine capacity-building, and follow-up. Spain's representative,
on behalf of the European Union, said that it was essential to link up type
2 and type 1 partnerships and to clearly identify funding mechanisms. In
addition, partnerships must take into account all the development objectives
of all countries involved. All partners must mobilize necessary financial
resources and explore options for additional financing. The scope of
partnerships should always be international and innovative, providing
considerable added value. The World Summit was not a deadline for
partnerships activity, which would continue through follow-up mechanisms, he
said. Such follow-up would also include monitoring the results of
partnerships, for which all partners should actively gather information.
That information should then be summed up and reorganized for comparative
analysis and exchange of information. It was fundamental that various
stakeholders participate in the debate that would ensue. The representative
of Australia stressed that not all partnerships had to be multilaterally
agreed upon. Some could be created for specific needs in specific areas.
Type 2 outcomes should be flexible mechanisms for concrete action. Those
outcomes needed to include many voluntary elements and should not be overly
predetermined, in order to allow maximum innovation. Developed and
developing countries should enter into solid partnerships for which
political will was necessary on both sides, Qatar's representative said.
The objectives of sustainable development could only be achieved if the
necessary financial resources were found and if the requisite technologies
were shared. Statements were also made by the representatives of the
Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Sudan, New Zealand, Greece, Italy,
Japan, Syria, Ghana, Nauru (for the Pacific Islands Forum Group), Canada,
Saudi Arabia, Namibia, Lebanon, India, Norway, United States, Philippines,
Togo, Tajikistan, Zambia, Thailand, Australia, El Salvador, Bolivia,
Maldives, Romania and Marshall Islands. Representatives of the Business
Action for Sustainable Development, the Economic and Social Commission for
Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Common Fund for Commodities also spoke.
The ministerial segment is scheduled to reconvene this afternoon at 3 p.m.
to continue its deliberations.
BACKGROUND
The fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development this morning continued its ministerial segment,
during which Ministers are expected to discuss follow-up to the Bali
implementation plan, partnership initiatives and elements for the political
declaration to be adopted at the Johannesburg Summit. The focus of this
morning's discussion was the implementation of partnerships initiatives.
STATEMENTS
The representative of the Republic of Korea said resolving poverty and
related issues should be given priority in ensuring sustainable
development. Enhancing the status of women and promoting their access to
health services and education was key. She also emphasized the importance
of recycling and "eco-labeling". Partnerships would reinvigorate the
international pursuit of sustainable development. Participation of diverse
stakeholders from the initial stages of partnerships must be assured.
Caution must be taken to make sure that partnership projects were not used
as tools to avoid the outcome of the Summit. The representative of Kuwait
said the world was looking to this meeting and awaiting its achievements for
the benefit of future generations. A great number of issues related to
sustainable development had not been resolved. He stressed the need for
transparency in the implementation of Agenda 21. Measures agreed upon by
all with set time frames should be instituted. It was appropriate to
reaffirm the results and decisions adopted in Monterrey at the International
Conference on Financing for Development, and in Doha at the World Trade
Organization (WTO) meeting. Dealing with desertification and natural
disasters required lucid thinking and a comprehensive vision. Constructive
cooperation was crucial. He reaffirmed the importance of including major
groups and civil society in the process.
The representative of Azerbaijan said cooperation among all the stakeholders
was required to ensure the implementation of Agenda 21. His country was a
young, developing, landlocked State going through economic transition.
Sustaining social, economic and environmental development was key. His
Government fully supported the establishment of a public-private venture
capital fund. A number of action plans to strengthen management capacity in
the area of environment had been elaborated. Large financial resources were
needed to institute such programmes, and support by the international
community was therefore needed. His country fully supported partnerships as
part of the outcome of Summit. The representative of Sudan said the slow
implementation of Agenda 21 was partly due to lack of deadlines and funding
mechanisms, as well as slow transfer of technology. As a result, diseases
had spread, poverty had increased, and the situation in many areas had
worsened. Peoples were looking forward to initiatives that could reverse
those problems. Equitable partnerships, based on an international
framework, should include the private sector and civil society to combat
desertification, create health services and foster improvement in many
areas. None of that would happen without strong political will and
documents void of brackets. The representative of New Zealand said there was
a partnership in his country between the Ministries of Development and
Environment. Type 2 partnerships had received a great deal of funding.
Achieving partnerships should take as long a time as was needed by the
partner with the least capacity. Genuine partnerships were based on trust
and took into account historical facts such as the effects of colonialism.
His country was pursuing many partnerships within its region, between
countries as well as those including civil society and other stakeholders.
The representative of Spain, on behalf of the European Union, said it was
essential to link up type 2 and type 1 partnerships and identify funding
mechanisms. In addition, partnerships must take into account all the
sustainable development objectives of all the countries involved. All
sectors should participate in partnerships from the beginning so that all
became stakeholders. All partners should also mobilize necessary financial
resources and explore options for additional financing. The scope of
partnerships should always be international and innovative, providing
considerable added value, he continued. The World Summit was not a deadline
for partnerships activity, which would continue through follow-up
mechanisms. Such follow-up would also include monitoring the results of
partnerships, for which all partners should actively gather information.
That information should then be summed up and reorganized for comparative
analysis and exchange of information. It was fundamental that various
stakeholders participate in the debate that would ensue. The representative
of Qatar said the objectives of sustainable development could only be
achieved if the necessary financial resources could be found. Developed and
developing countries should enter into solid partnerships and the necessary
political will should be found on both sides. The international community
should have a system of international trade without any discrimination, as
set out in the Doha Declaration. The problem of lack of technology in the
developing countries should be redressed. Unsustainable patterns of
production and consumption should also be tackled, he said. Qatar attached
special importance to having a successful Summit -- it should make positive
commitments to implement agreements already made to promote sustainable
development. An approach based on responsible participation was necessary.
A representative of the Business Action for Sustainable Development said
that whatever targets were agreed at the Summit, sound governance of
society, including the business sector, was needed to deliver them. Global
governance would be ineffectual unless it was underpinned by strong local
governance. Governments would set priorities for sustainable development
and "we will cluster our partnerships" under the various headings of energy,
water and biodiversity, among others. Poverty eradication needed official
development assistance (ODA), but also the development of business, he
said. A number of international businesses, in collaboration with other
members of civil society, were gathering under the auspices of the Global
Compact to see how best they could contribute to sustainable development in
developing countries. Businesses looked forward to participating in the
Summit. The representative of Greece said her country supported the need to
promote partnerships that were results-oriented and that fairly shared the
burden between developed and developing countries. They should be based on
specific guiding principles clearly set out in the plan of implementation at
the Summit. They should also adhere to a multi-stakeholder approach and
promote the three pillars of sustainable development. Mechanisms and means
of implementation should be established. She said Greece strongly believed
that regional partnership initiatives were of great importance to the
promotion of sustainable worldwide. It was therefore exploring ways of
launching new initiatives to address regional needs, such as desertification
and the promotion of renewable energy.
The representative of Barbados strongly supported "Type 2" initiatives,
which provided a range of possibilities, but only as a supplement to Type 1
activities. Governments should not be allowed to abrogate their
responsibilities through a shift of emphasis to the Type 2 initiatives,
which had less specificity in terms of deadlines and funding. That lack of
specificity had helped lead to the failure of meeting the goals of Agenda
21. She said there should be stronger promotion of cooperation at the
South-South level and between Small Island Developing States (SIDS). As
such a State, her country urged ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which
identified many kinds of partnership activity. Effective partnerships were
not possible without funding, genuine capacity-building, and follow-up.
Also important to SIDS were partnerships to combat HIV/AIDS. The
representative of Italy said his country had increased the funding available
for development partnership initiatives and supported many international
agreements in that regard, helping to launch international initiatives for
good governance and technology transfer. Italy also participated in such
partnership projects as the development of a satellite land mapping systems
for fighting desertification in Africa. His country was ready to play its
part in creating the right balance between sharply defined initiatives and
efforts toward general goals and principles.
The representative of Japan said there were diverse views on partnerships
that had served to prolong the deliberation on the implementation plan of
action. It was crucial that the document was finished during the Bali
meeting, with a focused discussion for that purpose. He also stressed the
importance of the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and described the kind
of international partnership that Japan favoured, such as its partnerships
with African countries in the areas of water, forests, health, education and
other areas. Concrete partnership projects should be created in those areas
before the World Summit took place. The representative of Syria said his
Government was attempting to fulfill its obligations in accordance with
international agreements in the areas of anti-desertification, among
others. A number of problems had been faced by his country, including the
lack of scientific and technological resources. The continued occupation of
the Golan also had a negative impact on sustainable development, and peace
and security constituted prerequisites for sustainable development. Israel
should withdraw from the occupied Arab territories and comply with the
relevant United Nations resolutions, he stressed. He was referring, in that
regard, to partnerships for peace. He said the United Nations should allow
for a just sharing of water resources among all peoples to ensure a
partnership in which all interests were taken into account. Means and
mechanisms to implement Agenda 21 with clear time frames should be set up.
He stressed the importance of developed countries fulfilling their
obligations under the principle of shared but differentiated
responsibility. The representative of Ghana said while he welcomed the idea
of partnerships, in some areas they could not replace the plan of
implementation. Partnership initiatives should have a regional aspect. It
was important to ensure that partnerships did not become a substitute for
existing resource commitments. The comments of participants must be clear
and tied to tangible resources and rewards. The establishment of
partnerships in the areas of water, energy, agriculture, sanitation,
education and health were supported by his Government. The representative of
Nauru, for the Pacific Islands Forum Group, said the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) had placed a focus on
oceans, which the Group supported. The small island developing States
chapter in the implementation plan articulated many pressing concerns for
the Group, which took seriously the effective and timely attainment of
sustainable goals in the Pacific. He urged the adoption of concrete
timetables and targets. The Group had been actively engaged in further
developing Type 2 initiatives, which were largely built on regional policies
and concerns. The representative of Botswana said no country could go it
alone. Africa had therefore come up with the New Programme for African
Development (NEPAD) -- a partnership of African governments to work for
sustainable development. Governments could not achieve the implementation
of Agenda 21 by themselves. That was why she supported the idea of
partnerships. Consultation was one of Botswana's national principles -- it
permeated all levels of government. Botswana belonged to the Southern
African Development Community, a subregional arrangement that promoted
development within its member countries. Partnerships should not only be
between and among governments, but also between governments and civil
society stakeholders. Partnerships should not be one-sided. They should
complement government commitments -- not replace them. The representative of
Canada said that "type 2" partnerships should complement "type 1"
initiatives and should not substitute for them. He emphasized transparency
and respect for all partners and described Canada's efforts to form
partnership on a range of issues. Good governance, he said, was
particularly important for the success of partnerships. The political
declaration for the World Summit should include strong support for
partnerships. The representative of Saudi Arabia supported the statement by
Venezuela on behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China and
described many areas in which partnerships were needed, stressing
particularly in the fight against desertification and water pollution. The
representative of Namibia also supported the statement made by Venezuela on
behalf of the Group of 77. He stressed that type 2 partnerships should
complement type 1 partnerships and not be a substitute for them. All
partnerships needed to reinforce existing commitments. They all needed to
relate clearly to poverty eradication, livelihood security and the
protection of the environment. Formulation of partnerships should include
all partners to ensure ownership. A representative of the Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) underlined the role of
regional commissions in promoting partnerships. It was important in
promoting Type 2 outcomes that the developing countries be active players.
The regional commissions had developed type 2 outcomes with strong
subregional and regional dimensions aimed at alleviating poverty and
promoting sound management of resources and the environment. The
initiatives promoted participation by the major stakeholders. The
representative of Lebanon said sustainable development must be achieved by
all nations, developing and developed. Partnerships were an important
principle to be adopted with a view to realizing common development
programmes. Lebanon had made progress through partnership with local
governments and the private sector. Despite difficulties over the past
decade, progress has been made in environmental protection and health and
education through Type 2 outcomes. Despite obstacles, he said, Lebanon
remained committed to partnership initiatives for development. The
continued foreign occupation of part of his country's land, with its
negative impact on civil society and the private sector, impeded the full
realization of social, economic and environmental progress. The
representative of India said his country had taken sustainable development
very seriously and had a lot to feel satisfied about at home. It had shown
progress in all spheres and had maintained its strong adherence to the
principle of sustainable development. Partnerships were nothing new to the
developing world, but they must evolve from the implementation plan and must
answer the priorities of national governments. They should not repackage
existing agreements and should not be a substitute for government
initiatives. What was needed was time-bound action for already negotiated
documents. The representative of Norway called for forward movement on
commitments already made and stressed that they should not be renegotiated.
Responding to the question, "Why are we here"? she said, "we should be here"
for one reason -- to bring action in sustainable development forward for the
benefit of the poor and the environment. That required an implementation
plan that provided for exactly that. It was not too late -- it could still
happen, but she was very concerned.
The Summit should concentrate on ensuring substantial deliveries in the key
areas set out by the Secretary-General, she said. A structuring process
must be established to ensure such delivery, and it must be established in
Bali. A difference could be made if such a framework was put in place.
Grave injustice to the world's poor and to future generations was being
faced. Decisions made today would determine whether the injustice would
continue or be averted. The representative of the United States said that
partnerships, that is, cooperative efforts, should harness the best
capabilities of all sectors. A new dialogue between key sectors could
therefore prove fruitful for potential partners. Important principles for
partnerships were transparency, accountability and a direct relation to the
goals of sustainable development. In follow-up, the Commission on
Sustainable Development could serve as a focal point for lessons-learned
through partnerships. The representative of the Philippines said that
partnerships must have the correct emphasis. Capacity-building and
transparency could give a boost to sustainable development efforts in
developing countries. He stressed that details of partnership initiatives
should be clear to the lowest levels of government so that community
participation could be included. The representative of Togo said that
partnerships could be effective if they took into account the needs of all
partners and were created on a sound legal basis. He hoped that many of
such effective partnerships would be forged through the Johannesburg
process. A representative of the Common Fund for Commodities said 2.5
billion people in developing countries were engaged in agriculture, and many
earned income from the export of commodities. Many were also engaged in the
extractive-mineral industries. Partnerships were therefore needed in those
areas. The Fund was preparing partnerships in the areas of productivity
improvement, diversification and value added in a sustainable way, market
development and market access.
The representative of Tajikistan, on behalf of the countries of the Central
Asian region, said those countries were afflicted by the Aral Sea crisis and
high rates of disease, among others. A long-term approach to the problems
afflicting the area, with the support of the international community, was
key. Projects had been undertaken with ESCAP to achieve the objectives of
Agenda 21. Regional and subregional programmes were being planned to deal
with the problems being faced. The World Bank and the Global Environment
Facility (GEF) were among the partners in those initiatives. The
representative of Zambia said his Government recognized the important role
to be played by partnerships. Such initiatives had already been started,
including NEPAD. In Zambia, partnerships had been launched in the areas of
water, health and management of wildlife, among others. The terms of
reference for partnerships should be mutually agreed, and type 2 outcomes
should complement Type 1 outcomes. The representative of Thailand said that
with the proper guidelines, effective partnership initiatives for
sustainable development could move forward. He emphasized partnerships for
forest issues and other areas. The representative of Australia strongly
supported the partnership approach that had been developed thus far in the
preparatory process. Not all partnerships, he said, had to be
multilaterally agreed upon. Some could be created for specific needs in
specific areas. Type 2 outcomes should contain flexible mechanisms for
concrete action. Those outcomes needed to include many voluntary elements,
and much should not be overly predetermined, in order to allow maximum
innovation. His country was most interested in Type 2 proposals related to
oceans, working with Pacific Island partners and other coastal countries, as
well as a range of other issues. The representative of El Salvador said that
Type 1 partnerships, to advance Agenda 21, should come out of Johannesburg.
A participatory approach involving all stakeholders was fundamental. She
hoped that new alliances, national alliances linked with international
alliances, would be forged at the Summit to further the sustainable
development of developing countries, with such priorities as trade access
and disaster relief. The representative of Bolivia said his country had made
great advances in sustainable development in recent years. He noted the
role played by the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt initiative in
alleviating poverty in his country. Such partnerships could be extended to
other areas of international cooperation focused on sustainable
development. He said partnerships should make it possible to discuss market
access. Noting the challenges of moving from illegal to legal trade, he
stressed that countries such as his needed access to the markets of
developed countries for their agricultural products. The Framework of
Amazon Cooperation had put forward a declaration in support of sustainable
development, which would be conveyed to the Committee. The representative of
Maldives said because of the weaknesses of SIDS, voluntary international
arrangements tended at times to bypass them. The benefit to SIDS of Type 2
outcomes could therefore be problematic. To benefit from partnership
arrangements, capacity-building in the SIDS had to occur. He urged all
countries that had not done so to replenish the GEF. He also urged
countries that had not done so to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The
representative of Romania said setting up partnerships was an appropriate
way to realize the Millennium Development Goals. The private sector,
especially transnational corporations, had proved to be an important actor
in globalization. Encouraging public-private partnerships was important.
To set up such partnerships, innovative ideas were needed. Besides global
partnerships, regional and subregional partnerships should be encouraged.
The recent summit on environmental development in the Carpathian region had
been an important contribution to the discussion on partnerships, he noted.
The representative of the Marshall Islands said that sustainable development
was a long time concern of his people; all sectors had recently participated
in a summit on the topic. It had resulted in a programme called "Vision
2018". He strongly supported type 2 outcomes, which could support that
programme's goals in sustainable development, and all international
initiatives that supported such community-generated initiatives. As a
small-island developing State, his country also urged ratification of the
Kyoto Protocol.
United Nations Press Release
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb16-e.htm
The need to move from ideals to actions to achieve sustainable development
was stressed by speakers this afternoon in Bali as the ministerial segment
of the fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit
for Sustainable Development continued its interactive dialogue. During the
debate, which was focused on the theme "preparing for implementation",
speakers emphasized the importance of producing a strong, action-oriented
outcome to the Summit that would promote implementation of and build on
commitments made for sustainable development. Lack of funding to implement
Agenda 21 -- the plan of action adopted at the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio -- access to safe
water and health services and measures to ensure more favourable trade
conditions for developing countries were among the issues highlighted over
the course of the meeting. The representative of Brazil said poverty stemmed
from a world order that accentuated regional imbalances. Without an
effective overhaul of the subsidies policies of wealthy countries, among
other measures, combating poverty would remain an "empty letter" and
solutions proposed would be limited in scope. A balanced agenda was needed
in which all problems and concerns relating to sustainable development could
be reflected. The time for good intentions and proposals was gone -- clear
goals must be set in the fields of basic education, health and sanitation.
It was not enough to commit to implementation of existing agreements --
there must be forward movement, the representative of Finland stressed.
Reduction of poverty and changing patterns of production and consumption was
key. His Government was firmly committed to implementing the agenda agreed
on at the World Trade Organization meeting in Doha and was also committed to
increasing its level of official development assistance (ODA). The outcome
of the Summit must be action-oriented, he stressed. Uganda's representative
noted that lack of funding had played a role in impeding implementation of
Agenda 21. In that regard, he cited the lack of resources to support the
Convention to Combat Desertification -- one of the most important treaties
for Africa. He called on the international community to support the New
Programme for African Development (NEPAD) and to take action to address the
problems facing least developed countries (LDCs). The representative of the
United States said sustainable development began at home. National action
with international assistance was crucial -- through good governance, and
investment in education and health care, along with sound market and
monetary policies. No plan of action, by itself, would accomplish any of
those goals. Partnerships at all levels were the best means for concrete
improvements in social and economic conditions. Statements were also made by
the representatives of Bhutan, Nigeria, Romania, United Kingdom, Iceland,
Samoa, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Sweden, Malaysia, Cote
d'Ivoire, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan (for the Central Asian countries), Czech
Republic, Iraq, Morocco, Iran, Mauritius, Niger, Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, Andorra, Algeria, Cuba, Portugal, Armenia and Kenya.
Representatives of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
and Natural Resources (IUCN), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and also spoke.
The ministerial segment is scheduled to meet again tomorrow morning at 10
a.m. to continue its deliberations.
STATEMENTS
The representative of Bhutan said that capacity building in human and
institutional resources was key for sustainable development. Without
assistance in those areas, small countries had difficulties in meeting
commitments. Sixty-two per cent of his country, for example, was now
protected forest area, and that was important but difficult to maintain. In
addition, he said that mountain ecosystems, being particularly vulnerable,
should be specifically referenced in the political declaration, and strong
support should be given to the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The
representative of Nigeria said that much of the know-how and will to deal
with problems in sustainable development was now present. Now was the time,
therefore, to move with deliberate speed to set concrete goals and actions
and implement them. It was particularly crucial for Africa, where many
economic factors hindered the implementation of Agenda 21. Among priorities
should be desertification, health, water sanitation, and protection of
coastal and marine environments. Many countries in Africa were doing their
best with these problems and needed international support to advance
further. The representative of Romania said a strong monitoring system, for
the next decade, was necessary to ensure follow-through on sustainable
development commitments. Regional centres for that purpose could be
useful. In the short and medium term, it was necessary to strengthen the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); in the long-term, an
international institution might be set up to concentrate on these problems.
The representative of Uganda said despite the many conferences held and the
adoption of Agenda 21, environmental degradation continued. The United
Nations General Assembly had taken steps to ensure that agreements were
fulfilled, among them the creation of the global ministerial environment
forum. Action now was required. Lack of funding also impeded
implementation of Agenda 21. In that regard, he cited the lack of resources
for the Convention to Combat Desertification -- one of the most important
treaties for Africa. Climate change was a "nightmare" for Africa. Poverty
and hunger could not be eliminated if droughts and floods occurred season
after season, he said, calling for commitments by the international
community in that regard. He also called on the international community to
support the New Programme for African Development (NEPAD) and to take action
to address the problems facing least developed countries (LDCs).
The representative of Brazil said poverty stemmed from a world order that
accentuated regional imbalances. Without an effective overhaul of the
subsidies policies of wealthy countries, among other measures, combating
poverty would remain an "empty letter", and solutions proposed would be
limited in scope. Brazil had confronted the problem within its own borders,
he noted. He gave his Government's firm support for NEPAD. A balanced
agenda was needed in which all problems and concerns relating to sustainable
development could be reflected, he said. The opportunity provided by this
meeting was not maximized, as there were attempts being made to renegotiate
commitments made in Rio in 1992. The time for good intentions and proposals
was gone -- clear goals must be set in the fields of basic education, health
and sanitation. The representative of the United Kingdom stressed the need
to build on the agreements already reached in the area of sustainable
development. How to take forward the Doha development agenda and the Kyoto
agreement must be addressed. The huge impact of trading relationships far
outweighed direct aid programmes. It was important to get the balance
right. The overall approach to sustainable development was what must be
dealt with in Bali, she said. Many had pointed out that there had been many
fine words in the past -- what was needed now was concrete action. Targeted
action with timetables for implementation was needed. There must be targets
for sanitation and for renewable energy. She stressed the importance of
focusing on the implementation plan. The representative of Iceland said
women's issues were central to sustainable development, particularly the
education of women and girls and the strengthening of their decision-making
capabilities. In addition, marine resources were especially important in
the fight against poverty. Oceans had not yet been given the priority they
deserved, partly because knowledge of them was poor -- a comprehensive
assessment was needed. Her country was strongly behind the Kyoto Protocol
and committed to renewable energy and cleaner fuels. A strong signal on
renewable energy must be sent in Johannesburg. The representative of Samoa
said there must be no retreat from the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED). What should be done was clear -- the
commitments and resources needed to be provided. The Global environment in
many cases was worsening. Small island States were particularly vulnerable
and were unable to respond to the dangers of climate change. Effective
action must be taken. The Kyoto Protocol must be brought into force, and
assistance in adaptation must be provided for small island nations that had
contributed so little to the problem. In addition, the GEF should be
supported as an effective tool to tackle many such problems at the regional
level.
The representative of the United States said that all further work must be
toward concrete action to make a difference in people's lives. Her country
would work hard for a consensus outcome on development goals, including
those of the Millennium Declaration, such as halving by 2015 the percentage
of those without access to clean water and with incomes less than a dollar a
day.
National action with international assistance was key, she said.
Sustainable development began at home, through good governance and
investments in education, health care, and sound market and monetary
policies. No plan of action would accomplish any of those goals.
Partnerships at all levels were the best means for concrete improvements in
social and economic conditions, and the United States was actively pursuing
them. Future generations were owed nothing less. A representative of the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)
said much more had been agreed than was being implemented. The credibility
of the Summit would depend on whether or not there was added value to the
commitments already made. It would be difficult to attract the interest of
civil society for an agenda that was aspirational but offered little of
credible added value. The recognition of the fundamental indicators on
sustainable development that had brought governments together continued to
point downwards -- the Summit must address that phenomenon. The Summit must
also address the discomfort with the current pattern of globalization.
Answers must be given by the Summit to citizens and major groups as to why
progress was very difficult. It was clear that a political declaration in
itself would not be enough -- credible actions were essential. The
representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea also stressed
the need for an action-oriented outcome to the Summit. An appraisal of what
was hindering sustainable development must be undertaken. Poverty must be
addressed, as should destruction of the environment. To implement Agenda
21, realistic solutions should be sought out. All countries should display
the necessary political will to promote sustainable development and
conditions must be created for sustainable development in the developing
countries. Positive steps aimed at eradicating poverty, such as
cancellation of foreign debt and implementation of official development
assistance (ODA) commitments must be undertaken. He also called for the
elimination of discrimination and the promotion of equity in trade. The
representative of Finland said it was not enough to commit to implementation
of existing agreements --- there must be forward movement. Reduction of
poverty and changing patterns of production and consumption were key. His
Government was firmly committed to implementing the Doha agenda and was
committed to increasing ODA. Globalization could support poverty
reduction. Finland had proposed a 10-year work programme to break the link
between economic growth and environmental degradation. That meant producing
more with less resources and energy. The outcome of the Summit must be
action-oriented, and the role of women in promoting sustainable development
could not be overemphasized. The question of indigenous peoples was also
key. The representative of Sweden said the thought of 30,000 children dying
from water-born diseases could be a basis for the ethics of sustainable
development, as well as a spur to the action that was crucial.
Unfortunately, all implementation measures, in the plan were still under
negotiation. Concrete proof of commitment had to be shown and comprehensive
action systems had to be developed. The single most effective thing that
could be done would be to reduce subsidies for unsustainable economic
activities. It was known with certainty that fossil fuel consumption had to
be cut -- alternatives must be promoted. Pressure on resources had to be
relieved while the welfare of people was increased. International
accountability must be developed along with a belief in the future. Quoting
Bruce Springsteen, he said, "No retreat, baby, no surrender". The
representative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) said his organization was working to identify market-based
instruments that could overcome obstacles in the implementation of
sustainable development, along with harmful subsidies that needed to be
removed for those purposes. It also provided a forum to share best
practices between member countries and develop a framework for peer review
processes. The OECD was also deepening its cooperation with non-OECD
countries in the pursuit of sustainable development. The representative of
Malaysia said that recent instabilities in regional economies had been
particularly dangerous for sustainable development. International policies
to prevent such instability needed to be put into place. In addition,
programmes to combat poverty must be coordinated with programmes to protect
the environment. The representative of Cote d'Ivoire said that the efficacy
of structures for poverty reduction and a more equitable distribution of
wealth along with North-South cooperation on a range of issues were
essential. His country agreed that a concrete programme of action was
needed, but it must be based on consensus. The representative of Bangladesh
said the eradication of poverty and hunger and the promotion of livelihoods
were central to sustainable development. Promotion of sustainable
agriculture and rural development was key. Sustainable development could
not be achieved without changes in the way industrial societies produced and
consumed. Urgent action must be taken to adopt policies in such societies
to change those patterns.
Water was central to life in his country and needed appropriate planning and
management. Sustainable development would remain a dream if water-related
problems were not addressed. The unique ecosystem of the region's wetlands
was under threat, and steps were being taken to address the problem. He
urged the world community to help those countries under threat from climate
change and also stressed the need to ensure that developing countries were
not marginalized by globalization. The representative of Uzbekistan, for the
countries of Central Asia, said those countries had been actively involved
in preparing for the Summit. Plans of action had been undertaken by the
countries in the area of sustainable development. He reaffirmed their
commitment to Agenda 21. The establishment of favourable international
conditions for development and the implementation of commitments undertaken
by developed countries was key. In that regard, he noted the decline in ODA
since UNCED in Rio. Mechanisms had not been perfectly elaborated for the
transfer of technology. His country had in recent years felt the importance
of addressing environmental problems -- in that regard, he cited the
disaster afflicting the Aral Sea. The representative of the Czech Republic
said effective and sound implementation was the only way to bridge the gap
between rhetoric and action. Democracy, social stability and economic
prosperity were important elements for achieving sustainable development.
All countries should take steps to reduce their reliance on foreign
assistance. Strong enforcement and good governance remained challenges and
urgent work on overcoming obstacles to sustainable development was needed.
Precautionary principles should be applied to protect the environment. "We
are not in a position to wait -- we must go ahead now", he said. He
underlined the great importance of education and science.
The representative of Iraq said that foreign occupation and international
sanctions were a major challenge to sustainable development, as witnessed by
the situations in the Middle East and Iraq respectively. Nations must be
freed from such constraints, and influential powers must be stopped from
imposing their will in that regard. The representative of Morocco supported
the proposals of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China on ways to
achieve decent living conditions and preserve the environment.
Multilateralism, along with an action programme that combined words and
deeds, was a sound approach that would ensure success. The Ministerial
Declaration of the Seventh Session of the States Parties to the Convention
on Climate Change held in Marrakech integrated approaches on climate change
with those on sustainable development. Both required international
cooperation at all levels and genuine political will. He urged countries to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol and institute strict rules to limit greenhouse
gasses, and he stressed the importance of partnerships in all areas. The
representative of Iran supported the positions of the Group of 77,
underlining urgency for action. Implementation of the Rio Declaration
should be improved but it should not be renegotiated. The access of poor
communities to affordable energy was essential. In all areas, a consensus
commitment to overcome obstacles was needed. In that regard, the importance
of financial contributions and technological transfer should not be
overlooked -- there must be an equitable approach to globalization. In other
areas, Type 2 commitments should not weaken type 1 partnerships, and good
governance should be extended to the international level, with a
multilateral approach as opposed to the exertion of unilateral influence.
She stressed the importance of dialogue among civilizations in the Political
Declaration of the Johannesburg Summit. The representative of Mauritius said
the outcome of the Summit should be action-oriented and time-bound. Despite
progress made in negotiations on the implementation plan, the situation
remained locked with regard to the most fundamental issues related to
sustainable development. Negotiating partners did not want to hear about
new and additional financing or the transfer of technology -- the balance
was tilting towards the developed countries. There must be a full
commitment to provide the means of implementation of Agenda 21. The plan of
implementation should rest on firm political will and commitment. The GEF
should be declared the financial mechanism for the anti-desertification
treaty, which was of fundamental importance for Africa. The debt of the
heavily indebted poor countries should be cancelled. Globalization should
be made to work for developing countries, he stressed. The representative of
Niger said food security in Africa had deteriorated to a critical threshold
- 200 million were now undernourished. As could be observed, the geography
of poverty often coincided with areas afflicted by desertification and soil
degradation. He also underlined the importance of the GEF in that regard.
He welcomed the excellent relations between his Government and the United
Nations and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in particular.
Africans were glad to see the support being extended for NEPAD.
The representative of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia said that in
the past few days negotiations had been undertaken on the Bali commitments
-- however, there were still more paragraphs in bold than those agreed.
Many delegations had noticed that "we should continue and upgrade on" recent
conferences, such as the trade summit held in Doha. There must be a way
found to adopt a document that would have the development agenda as its main
focus. It must have a realistic timetable for accomplishment of the main
goals, such as poverty eradication and global economic development. Debt
relief for countries in transition and those affected by conflict was very
important. Private investment and foreign direct investment should be used
efficiently -- to that end, good governance at the national and
international levels was key. He urged governments to come to an agreement
before the end of the meeting.
The representative of Andorra said her country wished to join the
sustainable development process and the global movement for the
environment. Sustainable development lay at the centre of the debate. It
was a complex subject. The negotiations on the implementation document had
demonstrated that. She stressed the importance of not moving backwards on
commitments already undertaken. She supported establishing specific targets
and was grateful for the reference made in the text to mountainous regions.
The representative of Algeria said that means must be provided to implement
commitments, and sustainable development must be the heart of any actions of
the international community. Algeria had instituted a national plan for
sustainable development with considerable funds allocated. He invited the
international community to support such efforts and called for strengthening
the governing council of UNEP, along with other follow-up mechanisms, and
more focus on Africa. Equity and sustainability were the principles that
should underlie the Johannesburg summit, where negotiated solutions among
responsible parties must be found. The representative of Cuba gave his full
support to the statement of Venezuela on behalf of the Group of 77. He said
that it must be ensured that results were forthcoming on sustainable
development. Among crucial action, in that regard, was raising the level of
ODA, debt reduction, technical and financial assistance, sharing of clean
technologies and assistance in capacity-building. Cuba was participating in
South-South assistance according to its abilities. He also advocated an
assured, adequate use of the GEF, and said the Johannesburg Summit must have
its own outcomes and not just repeat the aims of other conferences that had
not yet been implemented. Developed countries must contribute serious
efforts in that implementation. The representative of Portugal supported the
position of Spain on behalf of the European Union. He said his country had
developed a realistic policy on sustainable development. Similarly, the
World Summit must take on a realizable approach. In addition, he said that
Africa must be integrated into the world economy, and he welcomed
partnerships in that regard that incorporated current efforts of African
nations. Integrated management of river basins was essential, and he urged
countries to ratify agreements on non-navigational uses of bodies of water.
Integrated management of oceans and coastal areas was also crucial for both
development and environmental protection and could be the subject of many
levels of partnership. The representative of Armenia said it appeared that
the agreements reached in Bali would create a solid basis for the Summit.
The outcome document should therefore clearly reflect the key elements of
equal partnerships between the private sector, governments and civil
society. The text should constitute a basis for States to elaborate
national programmes for sustainable development. In a globalizing world, a
common effort to achieve sustainable development must be undertaken. The
time had come for concrete action. The representative of Kenya said the
Summit would invigorate the commitment of the international community to
achieving sustainable development and would lead to a new vision based on a
concrete plan of action. Despite domestic and international actions, the
implementation process had been constrained by old and emerging issues.
Developing countries were facing many challenges, including poverty--
deliberate corrective and positive measures must be taken in the Summit's
plan of implementation. He also noted issues related to health, such as
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Funds were needed to combat such
epidemics. He therefore called for increased financial commitments.
Inadequate access to energy services and the need to provide adequate
resources to improve agriculture must also be addressed. Efforts must be
made to deal with the burden of debt on developing countries. The
representative of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) said that her
organization had held many debates on issues of sustainable development and
had encouraged parliaments to become closely involved in issues related to
the World Summit, particularly on how efforts on sustainable development
could be handled throughout national governments. In the view of her
organization, more pro-active policy measures should be included in the
implementation plan, which currently relied too much on voluntary and
market-based actions, as opposed to needed regulation.
JOWSCO
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.joburgsummit2002.com/NewsMedia/05062002.asp
5 June 2002:
Preparations are currently underway at the Wanderers Club, where Ubuntu
Village is to be positioned, for the arrival at the end of June of Tensile
One, the largest temporary mobile structure of its kind in the world hired
to house the Ubuntu Exhibition.
Major construction
will begin later this week, with a geo-technical survey to confirm the land
and resource capacity of the area. Later this month, work will begin to
remove exotic vegetation and plant life to make way for construction. "We
found it necessary to upgrade the infrastructure of the site and remove some
of the alien vegetation in the area for the construction and infrastructural
upgrade for the erection of Tensile One. Since the vegetation was in any
event alien, its removal is in keeping in line with government policy," says
Ingrid Blignault, Chief Operating Officer for the Johannesburg World Summit
Company (JOWSCO).
A comprehensive
environmental management plan is being developed to ensure that all
construction and renovations are in line with legislation and best practice.
Following the Sydney Olympics, the structure will be utilised in its
entirety for only the second time during the United Nations World Summit on
Sustainable Development that takes place in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4
September. Measuring a massive 10 000 square metres in total, the structure
will house café and bar facilities and the main SABC broadcast studios and
editing suites. Ubuntu Village will host a variety of events, including the
Ubuntu Exhibition, SA Pavilion, a conference centre, the Arts and Craft
Imbizo, and a cultural programme housed at the Theatre @ the Village. Ubuntu
Village will serve as a place for Summit participants and members of the
public to unite on common ground. Ubuntu Village will also be the central
transport interchange for participants in the Johannesburg Summit. Ubuntu
Village will be open from 10 August to 10 September. "We're expecting an
interesting visitor profile of local and international media, schools, the
public, Summit participants and tourists. It will serve as the service and
recreational hub for the Summit," Blignault adds. An integral part of the
Village is the Ubuntu Exhibition, open from 17 August to 7 September. The
exhibition will showcase best practice examples in sustainable development
from around the globe, including themes and issues being discussed at the
intergovernmental summit. The exhibition, a first of its kind to accompany a
UN Summit, will act as the ideal platform for networking among all
stakeholders where people can unite to stimulate dialogue and maximise
partnership opportunities. Some of the themes of the exhibition will be
water, education, health, rural development, agriculture, food security,
urban development, waste management, transport, energy and technology.
Particular attention will be paid to combating poverty, promoting
sustainable livelihoods and protecting ecosystems.
It is envisaged
that exhibitors will come from the world's leading institutions that drive
sustainable development issues across all sectors of society, including: UN
member states and intergovernmental organisations. Five regional
Cooperation for Development Agencies (Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe
and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Western Asia).
The nine Major
Groups as identified by the UN Summit Secretariat (women, youth, indigenous
peoples, NGOs, local authorities, trade unions, business and industry,
scientific and technological community and farming community).
Blignault further
comments that the exhibition will also display South Africa's culture and
heritage, adding, "An appealing assortment of South African arts and craft
will be displayed in a live flea market, called the Arts and Craft Imbizo.
In addition, a world-class media centre and a commercial business centre
will provide printing, photocopying, secretarial and general business
services for the media and Summit participants." Theatre @ the Village is a
cinematic theatre where film productions, live performances and
presentations linked to the broader Summit themes will be presented. A
state-of-the-art information centre will supply information on the Summit,
daily programmes, general tourism information and a database on
Johannesburg's value-added services, such as business centres, Internet
cafes, banking and postal services.
The NEWS (Monrovia)
via All Africa
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200206050199.html
United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan says population growth, poverty and wasteful
consumption habits have continued to threaten the earth's ability to achieve
sustainable development. Dr. Annan also pointed out that population, rapid
urbanization growth demands for water and energy have placed intense
pressure on the planet's life support system. The UN Secretary General's
comments were contained in his message on the World Environment Day. World
Environment Day is celebrated each year on June 5. This year's celebration
is being held under the theme "Give Earth a Chance." He indicated that there
is little chance pf protecting the environment without a greater sense of
mutual responsibility, especially in an age of interdependence. Dr. Annan
expressed hope that all states and stakeholders will come together at the
pending World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. The
Secretary General said sustainable development rests on economic growth,
social progress and the protection of environment and natural resources. For
his part, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment
Protection (UNEP), Mr. Klaus Toepfer, said World Environment Day is an
occasion to pause and reflect on the state of the environment. He said the
theme: "Give Earth A Chance" urges the world to looks at the daily impact on
the planet and its peoples, and to take action to improve the environmental
behavior. "On this World Environment Day, let us all begin to act for the
environment and work together to give the earth a chance," Mr. Toepfer said.
He added that an unpolluted environment is vital to survival which, can only
endure if the earth is given a chance. He underscored the need for urgent
environment ethics for the 21st century based on equity, fairness and
respect for nature, adding that these values can be drawn from ancient
cultures, indigenous beliefs and all religions. The UNEP boss observed that
environmental conservation is often found in ancient cultures around the
world.
Xinhua News Agency
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FD20020605370000028.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
DENPASAR
(Indonesia), Jun 5, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Hundreds of ministers and
government officials from over 120 countries gathered Wednesday on the
resort island of Bali, the venue for the 4th Preparatory Committee Meeting
for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to forge the common
interests among different countries towards global sustainable development.
United Nations Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette said: "We are here
today because we face great challenges on both sides of the
development-environment equation. Three billions of our fellow human beings
suffer the dehumanizing conditions of poverty.. . living on less than two
dollar a day." She added that the upcoming world summit in Johannesburg
would be meant to find another way -- a path that improved standards of
living while protecting environment. The relationship between human society
and the natural environment would become the core concern of Johannesburg.
South African Minister for Environment Mohammed Valli Moosa said that since
the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro of
Brazil, it had become clear that successful sustainable development required
progress on the social, economic and environmental fronts. Kjell Larsson,
minister for environment of Sweden called on delegations in Bali to identify
and provide more specific means for pursuing sustainable development. Water
crisis is among other specific issues that become major concerns of the
delegations. Nigerian Minister of Water Resources Precious Ngelale argued
that poverty reduction began with water issues. He stressed Bali meeting had
to be remembered as a conference that squarely confronted the water and
sanitation crisis.
Similarly, the
representative of Japan affirmed that water issues were a great challenge. A
coordination information system must encompass those problems since Japan
had many projects in that area. Meanwhile, Chairman of the Preparatory
Committee Emil Salim underlined poverty alleviation as an essential element
of sustainable development. In Addition, unsustainable patterns of
consumption and production must change and natural resources must be managed
in a way that supported social and economic development. "Those three
facets must be merged into one -- that is sustainable development," the
chairman said.
BuaNews (Pretoria)
via All Africa
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200206050329.html
The South Africa
Police Service (SAPS) says it is well prepared and ready to ensure the
safety of thousands of delegates expected to attend the forthcoming World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg. The announcement
comes amid intelligence reports hinting the absence of any threat to the
gathering or dignitaries. At least more than 60 000 delegates, including 130
heads of state and thousands of journalists, are expected to gather at the
Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4 September.
They will thrash out some global issues that impact on sustainable
development, socio-economic and environmental issues, and poverty
eradication in developing countries. The United Nation's largest gathering
will also discuss global inequalities in accessing water, food, energy and
education, amongst others. National police commissioner Jackie Selebi's
office says the delegates, visiting dignitaries, Gauteng residents,
businesspeople and commuters need not worry about their safety. 'A large
number of police officials will be deployed in the environs of the Summit
and normal policing will continue in Gauteng as well as in all other
provinces,' said Mr Selebi's office. The SAPS said due to the enormity of
the task, it has since established a national priority committee, chaired by
the elite VIP Protection Service, to coordinate and plan all operations
necessary to ensure that appropriate security measures are in place during
the event. At its monthly meetings, all information gathered by the
intelligence community is closely monitored and plans made and altered
accordingly. 'Precautionary measures for any eventuality have been put in
place, including routine problems encountered at large gatherings of this
nature such as traffic congestions, illegal gatherings and marches.' As part
of security measures, police will shut down strategic areas and roads,
especially where the presidential motorcade would be passing through.
Meanwhile, South African security agencies have in the past shown a good
track record of pulling out international gatherings of this magnitude with
ease. Such previous events included the Non Aligned Movement summit, World
Conference on Racism in Durban, the Rugby World Cup, and the African Cup of
Nations. 'We will again prove that we are one of the most efficient and
committed police services in the world,' the SAPS said confidently
UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks via All Africa
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200206050003.html
An additional
public investment of US $24 billion must be made each year in poor countries
to halve the number of hungry people by the year 2015, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday. Without this investment, FAO
fears that there would still be 600 million hungry people in 2015, and the
target of halving the number of hungry people from 800 to 400 million, set
by the World Food Summit in 1996, would not be reached, the agency said in a
news release. It stressed that public investment should be accompanied by
sufficient private resources. Halving hunger is expected to yield additional
benefits worth at least US $120 billion a year, resulting from longer and
healthier lives for all those benefiting from such improvements, FAO said on
Tuesday as it proposed a new global Anti-Hunger Programme. "Fighting hunger
is not only a moral imperative, it also brings large economic benefits", FAO
reiterated, adding that almost one person in seven does not have enough food
to eat and that most of the hungry people live in South Asia and sub-Saharan
Africa. Heads of state and government, international agencies and NGOs will
meet in Rome on 10-13 June at the 'World Food Summit: Five Years Later'
conference to take stock of progress made towards ending hunger and to
identify ways to accelerate the process. FAO noted that more rapid progress
in cutting chronic hunger in developing countries was possible if the
political could be mobilised, adding that enough was known on how to fight
hunger. The Anti-Hunger Programme combines investment in agriculture and
rural development with measures to enhance direct immediate access to food
for the most seriously undernourished, the release said. It focuses mainly
on small farmers and aims to create more opportunities for rural people,
representing 70 percent of the poor, to improve their livelihoods on a
sustainable basis. The FAO "Anti-Hunger Programme" can be found at:
http://ww.fao.org/worldfoodsummit/english/index.html
Further information
on the World Food Summit: Five Years Later is available at:
http://ww.fao.org/worldfoodsummit/english/index.html
United Nations
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/feature_story14.htm
5 June, BALI, Indonesia- Indonesia, together with Australia and Papua New
Guinea, today received the World Wide Fund for Nature's highest award, the
"Earth Certificate of its "Gift to the Earth," programme, for efforts to
protect important and threatened wetland areas in the three countries. The
three nations signed a new memorandum of understanding yesterday to continue
and intensify their joint programme, the "Tri-National Wetlands Initiative,"
which is working to preserve over three million hectares of wetlands through
the joint projects, shared skills and the exchange of staff. At an awards
lunch today, Indonesian Minister of Forestry, Dr. Ir. Muhammad Prakosa,
hailed the initiative as a collaborative approach to address the problems
faced by the wetlands. The initiative, he said, allowed all stakeholders,
including governments, community groups, non-governmental organizations,
researchers, and universities, to participate in activities aimed at
achieving wetland management. The wetlands include Kakadu National Park in
Australia, Wasur National Park in Indonesia, and the Tonda Wildlife
Management Area in adjacent Papua New Guinea. Speaking at the awards
ceremony today, Australian Minister of Environment and Heritage Dr. David
Kemp announced that the Australian Government will increase its contribution
to the Initiative by a $250,000 over a five-year period.
"This is a very appropriate way to observe World Environment Day," Kemp
said. One of the world's great natural phenomena, Kemp said the wetlands
were part of the Australasian Flyway, the route taken by millions of birds
on their semi-annual migration. But the wetlands, he said, were threatened
by intrusive weeds, fire, and feral animals. "We have a great deal to learn
from each other," Kemp said, adding that the WWF award was important in
building support for these types of projects in Australia and in other
countries. "Papua New Guinea recognizes that this is the beginning of a new
challenge and not the end," according to Dr. Wari Iamo, Secretary of the
Department of Environment and Conservation for Papua New Guinea, and added
that it was significant that the award was presented during the PrepCom for
the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The Initiative recognizes the
rights of the local people and communities to serve as custodians of the
wetlands, and utilizes their traditional knowledge and methods as primary
tools to preserve the landscape. Still, new ideas and technique are also put
to use. All three wetlands suffer from an invasion of water hyacinth, a weed
with a beautiful flower that chokes waterways that people rely on for
transport, and crowds out other native plant species. But Jamie Pittock, WWF
Programme Director, says that a beetle can play a major role in eliminating
the nasty weed, and now local communities are growing the beetle. According
to Pittock, the Earth Certificate is the highest accolade issued for
achievement in the Give to the Earth Programme. "We want to recognize
outstanding achievement and we also seek to mobilize funding for this and
other programmes. He said the Tri-National Initiative is a practical
example of a government commitment that leads to a systematic result. In
this case, the Initiative is a direct result of government commitments to
the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, which provides the framework for national
action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of
wetlands and their resources. According to Delmar Blasco, Secretary-General
of the Ramsar Convention Bureau, there are presently 131 Contracting Parties
to the Convention, and 1173 wetland sites, totaling 101 million hectares,
have been designated for inclusion in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of
International Importance. "This is a very significant example of
conservation in action," Blasco said. Calling the Initiative "impressive,"
he said the programme was noteworthy for the work that had already been
carried out and would continue into the future
United Nations
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/otherstories_bali_highlevel.htm
5 June, BALI, Indonesia- In the final phase of the final PrepCom for the
World Summit on Sustainable Development, more than 100 ministers from around
the world began three days of deliberations in Bali to generate high-level
political commitments for action.
The Summit will be an historic opportunity to mobilize governments, people,
institutions, and resources for sustainable development, and will take place
in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September. At stake in
the Bali ministerial-level meeting is the strength of government commitments
in Johannesburg to set up programmes aimed at improving living conditions
worldwide while preserving the natural ecosystem on which people depend. The
results of the ministerial discussions will provide the basis for the
political declaration that Heads of State and Government will adopt at the
Johannesburg Summit. The other key issue for discussion during the
ministerial session is the linkage between partnerships and the government
commitments in the Johannesburg outcome. "The Summit in Johannesburg is
truly a chance to set a more hopeful course of development for all of
humanity," United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette told the
118 ministers attending the Preparatory Committee meeting. "The challenge,
as ever, is to match aspiration with action, and promise with positive
change in people's lives. We know what needs to be done. Now, let's move
ahead." Fréchette, in her address, said, "Johannesburg is meant to find
another way, a path that improves standards of living while protecting the
environment." She added, "That relationship-between human society and the
natural environment-is the core concern of Johannesburg, and is what sets
Johannesburg apart from other UN conferences and summit." In welcoming the
ministers, Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri said the Bali meeting
could influence the Johannesburg Summit by helping to build a strong
foundation for sustainable development, and make a "real contribution to
humanity." "Ten years have passed since we adopted Agenda 21," she said. It
is time for us to follow it up with concrete programmes and activities."
The Johannesburg Summit will result in a political declaration, a programme
of implementation, and voluntary partnership initiatives by and between
governments, citizen groups, and the private sector that will actually carry
out sustainable development projects. Negotiations on a programme of
implementation-the Bali Commitments-that will serve as the guiding plan for
an action-oriented agenda that brings measurable results, are expected to
conclude on Friday. While the two-week PrepCom has already produced
substantial agreements on promoting activities across a broad range of
sustainable development activities, negotiations on the remaining areas of
disagreement have proved difficult. According to PrepCom Chairman Emil
Salim, the tough negotiations are not unexpected. "Everyone wants to keep
their cards close to their chest until the last moment. But for me, this is
normal." In fact, in Salim's view, the real negotiations have just begun.
But he emphasized that the document would be completed in Bail. "We will be
finished in Bali. After Bali, we will prepare the ground to make
Johannesburg successful."
Progress has been made and many parts of the document are free of bracket,
or text where there is still disagreement. Johannesburg Secretary-General
Nitin Desai said "the key elements have all been agreed upon," adding that
judgement of the text should not be made until the very end, when the final
differences are bridged. But beyond reaching minimum expectations, Desai
said, "What we're aiming at now is much more. We're aiming at a good, strong
programme of action, and we will push these concerns as far as we can take
it." Salim said the Bali Commitment would contain new time-bound targets.
"It is a realistic plan and it is not 'pie in the sky.' But to implement it,
we all have to be committed." Over 4,500 people from 173 countries are
attending the Bali meeting, including a large contingent of non-governmental
organizations, which Salim said have played a major role in lobbying
government delegations for a stronger agreement
Voice of America
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=D2DC4F0D-58B3-4858-95FAF46A1DD125CD&title=Trade%20and%20Finance%20Issues%20Hold%20Up%20Economic%20Summit%20in%20Bali&catOID=45C9C785-88AD-11D4-A57200A0CC5EE46C
Environment and
economic ministers from around the world are meeting in Bali to study a plan
to boost sustainable development and ease pollution. It appears they are not
close to an agreement. Since last week, experts have been meeting to draft
a plan to promote development that does not damage the environment. Now 118
government ministers have joined the conference on the Indonesian island of
Bali to finalize details. U.N. member nations are to vote on the plan in
August at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South
Africa. However, the delegates remain far apart on many key issues, and
there are fears only a weak agreement will be approved at the Bali
conference. Achim Steiner is director general of the World Conservation
Union, an umbrella group of private environmental and aid groups around the
world. "I think if you walk the corridors here at the moment, you will find
more skepticism and despondence, simply because of this very protracted
negotiation process, that is one step forward, one step back," Mr. Steiner
said. The plan's chief goal is provide more people with clean water and
sanitation. In addition, delegates want to help poor countries use natural
resources wisely, without depleting them, and they want wealthy countries to
reduce pollution. Achieving these goals, however, will be expensive. Mr.
Steiner said two issues - trade and finance - prevent an agreement. Wealthy
nations want conditions on aid, such as commitments to cut corruption, which
they say erodes development aid. Developing countries, however, want more
aid and they want rich nations to give them greater access to markets. Mr.
Steiner thinks that even after the Bali conference, governments will need to
continue talking and negotiating on some points over the next two months.
Without further work, he says, the ultimate accord at Johannesburg will be
too weak to be effective. Mr. Steiner, however, does not think the situation
is hopeless. He said governments realize that developing nations need help
to use resources wisely to optimize economic benefit and enhance global
trade. "Therefore, I believe in a number of capitals over the next few
weeks, there will be some very deliberate and focused action to try and give
Johannesburg a credible outcome. So in that sense I remain an optimist," he
said. U.N. officials are pressing for solid progress before the conference
wraps up Friday.
Xinhua News Agency
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FE20020605610000044.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
NAIROBI, Jun 5,
2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Tree planting, clean-ups, gatherings and
exhibitions were among the various activities carried out throughout Kenya
on Wednesday to celebrate the World Environment Day (WED). At the United
Nations Nairobi Office, a campaign was launched to stop the use of leaded
gasoline in all Kenya-based United Nations agencies, and a workshop on the
phasing out of leaded gasoline in East African countries was opened. The
Kenyan government officials and UN staff also attended a grand gathering at
the U.N. compound to express their determination to protect environment. In
a message to the gathering, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the
theme of this year's WED -- Give Earth a Chance, is meant to convey a
message of urgency about the state of the earth and the broader quest for
sustainable development. "Latest readings reveal a planet still in need of
intensive care," he said, adding that poverty, pollution, population growth,
wasteful consumption habits and growing demands for water, land and energy
continue to place intense pressures on the earth's life support systems,
threatening mankind's ability to achieve sustainable development. "I hope
that all states and all stakeholders will come together at the World Summit
on Sustainable Development in South Africa later this year, and that the
breakthrough this time, ten years along the path from Rio, will be real and
tangible," he said. Kenyan Environment Minister Joseph Kamotho said that
the quest for higher standards of living does not justify environmental
degradation. "There is therefore a need to strike a balance between
development and environmental protection if we are to save our environment
from further deterioration," he noted. Also speaking at the gathering,
Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Du Qiwen said that China, being the largest
developing country with 1. 3 billion people, has made strenuous efforts for
environment protection and improvement in its modernization drive. He
pledged that the Chinese government will work more closely and effectively
with the United Nations Environment Program, the entire UN family and all
countries in the world for the attainment of the World Environmental Agenda.
The activities in Kenya are part of worldwide celebrations centered on the
annual WED of June 5. More than 100 countries are marking this day with this
year's host city being Shenzhen in China.
Department of
Foreign Affairs, South Africa
5 June 2002
Internet:
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SOUTH AFRICA'S
FOREIGN MINISTER, DR. NKOSAZANA DLAMINI ZUMA'S STATEMENT ON THE STATE OF
READINESS TO HOST WSSD, 5 June 2002
In not so a distant
future, the international community will one more time, have an opportunity
to meet in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August - 4 September 2002 for
the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). As South Africa, we are
indeed ready to welcome, receive and host this largest gathering of the
family of nations to deal with the most important issues facing humanity
today - eradication of poverty and under-development. The PrepCom IV meeting
in Bali should therefore be seen as constituting an important step forward
in the irreversible march to the Summit in Johannesburg and the goal of
pushing back the frontiers of poverty and under-development. The WSSD in
Johannesburg should also be seen in the context of various other processes
that are part of the building blocks towards the Summit such as the
Financing for Development Conference held in Monterrey, Mexico and the new
WTO round that began in Doha, Qatar. The road to Johannesburg has seen
preparations at both national and regional levels through PrepComs I, II,
III and indeed Bali today for PrepCom IV. Accordingly, we express our
gratitude to the Government and people of Indonesia for the hospitality and
leadership with which they have received us and guided us through the
processes. As South Africa, we are greatly honoured and privileged to have
been given the responsibility by the UN to host the Summit. Therefore, on
behalf of the government and the people of our country- we declare to the
world that we stand ready to host the largest gathering of humanity-WSSD. In
hosting this Summit, South Africa will continue to draw inspiration from the
experience it has gained over the years in hosting such major international
events such as the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), the Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and the Non-Aligned Movement meetings.
South Africa has both the political will, the necessary expertise and
infrastructure to host the Summit. Today in Bali, our government is
represented by five cabinet Ministers and a Deputy Minister which is
indicative of the commitment SA has towards to PrepCom IV and the entire
WSSD process. Logistical preparations for the Johannesburg Summit are well
advanced and remain on course. We stand ready to welcome and host all to the
Summit.
European Union
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/02/826|0|RAPID&lg=EN
According to a
special Eurobarometer Survey carried out in the fifteen Member States
released by the European Commission to coincide with World Environment Day,
concern about the future of the environment remains high among European
citizens. The survey shows that the vast majority of Europeans are worried
about trends in areas like environment and health, nature and wildlife
protection, waste and climate change. 7.500 citizens from all 15 Member
States were interviewed for the survey between 6-15 April 2002. EU
Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström commented: "The signal from
European citizens is crystal clear: they want politicians to do more both
locally and globally - to protect the environment and to pave the way for
genuinely sustainable development in the world". The survey results reveal
that 89% of Europeans surveyed are concerned about future trends in the
field of environment and health (environmental pollution, chemicals, etc.).
86% are apprehensive about trends with regard to the use of natural
resources and waste generation. 82% are concerned about trends relating to
nature and wildlife. 72% of respondents are concerned about climate change.
EU citizens are also concerned about the state of the environment in their
local community. Most common among the complaints was the problem of
"traffic congestion and over-reliance on cars," which worried 50%. In
addition, "damage done to the landscape" (40%), "the quality of water for
swimming lakes, rivers, seaside" (40%) and "noise" (36%) also give cause for
concern. According to the results of the survey, the state of the
environment is the factor that has the greatest impact on the quality of
life of the Europeans surveyed, followed by the economy and social factors.
73% of Europeans surveyed believe that the environment influences very much
or quite a lot quality of life compared to 64% who indicated economic and
social factors. However, Europeans believe that public policy-makers do not
attach the necessary importance to environmental policy compared to other
policy areas. For example, 75% of EU citizens feel that policy-makers do not
think enough about the environmental dimension when deciding policy in other
areas such as the economy and social policy. 86% agreed that public
policy-makers should consider environmental policy just as important as
economic and social policy, and hence strengthen the environmental component
of the Sustainable Development equation. World Environment Day 2002 is
marked by the meeting of world environment leaders gathered in Bali to
prepare the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South
Africa in August/September this year. "In an economically globalised world,
the need to take environmental action at the international level is even
more pressing", said Commissioner Wallström today at a Ministerial Meeting
in Bali. The world is watching and expects us to deliver a focused agenda
for change in Johannesburg. Mrs Wallström added ". The question world
leaders have to answer at Johannesburg this Summer is how do we harness
globalisation for the good of all, especially for the poorest and for the
planet? The EU must continue to play a leading role in devising
international responses. We have to put our own house in order, because we
consume a major share of the planet's renewable and non-renewable
resources.The Commission is determined to make a constructive input to an
ambitous outcome in Johannesburg to move the world agenda forwards and
deliver on the promises of Rio." The full results of the Flash Eurobarometer
"Sustainable Development and environmental concerns of Europeans" are
available on the web site of DG Environment: http://europe.eu.int/comm/environment/barometer/index.htm
Australian
Associated Press
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4455333%255E1702,00.html
PRIME Minister John
Howard today used World Environment Day to flatly quash any talk within
government ranks of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Mr Howard said it was not
in Australia's interests to ratify the protocol to combat climate change, a
stance he shares with the United States. Environment Minister David Kemp
appeared to contradict coalition policy by saying the government has not
decided whether to support the Kyoto Protocol. In an interview with the
Australian Financial Review in March, Dr Kemp said the government was still
considering its position and awaiting an inter-departmental analysis of
economic impact before making a final decision. European Union nations and
Japan are the latest to ratify and Australia is under pressure to follow
suit in line with its trading partners. But Mr Howard refused to consider
it. "The reason it is not in Australia's interests to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol is that because the arrangements are currently, and are likely
under present settings to continue to exclude both developing countries and
the United States, for us to ratify the protocol would cost us jobs and
damage our industry," Mr Howard told parliament. "That is why the
Australian government will continue to oppose ratification." Dr Kemp spent
World Environment Day in Bali at international environmental talks, where he
claimed Australia was playing a constructive role in reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. However, at home, his colleagues were talking down Kyoto.
Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said industry and jobs would suffer if
Australia ratified the protocol in its current form. The Government has
long argued the protocol is flawed because it fails to order developing
countries to contribute to a cut in the emissions blamed for global
warming. In speech notes to a minerals industry conference, Mr Macfarlane
said he could not support the protocol while countries like China and India,
which were major emitters, were outside the agreement. Australia and the US
have been accused of being climate spoilers by rejecting the protocol. Labor
said World Environment Day offered the government an opportunity to deliver
on its rhetoric. Opposition environment spokesman Kelvin Thomson urged the
government to make good on its environment spending promises, ratify the
protocol and protect the Great Barrier Reef. "Japan agreed to ratify Kyoto
yesterday, the European Union signed on May 31; 71 countries have now
ratified the Kyoto Protocol," Mr Thomson said. "This is a clear signal that
the Kyoto Protocol, with its legally binding targets and timetables, is the
only effective international framework for combating global warming."
Environmentalists also continued to pressure the government to follow
Japan's lead. Australian Conservation Foundation chief Don Henry said the
government should ratify in line with its major trading partners. "The
biggest present Prime Minister John Howard could give to Australians,
particularly our kids, is a change in his position," Mr Henry said.
United Nations
Press Release
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb15-e.htm
Success at the
fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development would be possible because everyone believed in a
life of dignity for all, with respect for the diversity of cultures and
harmony with surrounding nature, Megawati Soekarnoputri, President of
Indonesia, said this morning in opening the Committee's ministerial segment.
To achieve those goals, each nation managed its development differently, the
President continued. Some nations were able to enjoy a high quality of life
by developing their human resources and their capabilities in science and
technology. Among those were nations who could effectively manage their
natural resources for development and in harmony with nature. They were
models that could inspire other nations. She called for international
cooperation to help developing countries utilize resources in a sustainable
manner. The tendency to blame one another had become part of any discussion
of sustainable development; conflicts and instability had often resulted.
But, she said, closely cooperative endeavours were the only answer.
Interdependence, in the global village, was real. Deputy Secretary-General
Louise Fréchette said, "We are here today because we face great challenges
on both sides of the development-environment equation". Johannesburg was
meant to find another way -- a path that improved standards of living while
protecting the environment, "a path that works for all peoples today and
tomorrow". The relationship between human society and the natural
environment was the "core concern of Johannesburg, and is what sets
Johannesburg apart from other United Nations conferences and summits". The
Secretary-General had proposed five key areas for particular focus -- water
and sanitation, energy, agriculture, biodiversity, and ecosystem management
and health, she said. It was important to have firm goals and timelines in
those areas, as well as concrete commitments to generate real momentum for
action. She stressed the need for a credible political declaration that
committed leaders to act and inspired all actors to recognize their own
responsibilities. Progress towards implementation would depend on actions
by all actors, separately and jointly, by way of partnerships, she added.
Progress would also depend on the availability of resources. The Summit was
truly a chance to set a more hopeful course of development for all humanity,
she stressed. "We know what needs to be done. Now, let us move ahead."
Also this morning, participants were briefed by the co-Chairs of the Global
Environment Facility (GEF) of the Ministerial Round Table on Financing for
Environment and Sustainable Development: Kjell Larsson, Minister for the
Environment of Sweden, and Mohammed Valli Moosa, Minister for Environmental
Affairs and Tourism of South Africa. A statement was also made by the
Minister of State of Water Resources of Nigeria, Chief Precious Ngelale, on
behalf of the African Ministers Conference on Water. Following the opening
statements and reports, Ministers engaged in a dialogue on the various
issues at hand. In his opening statement for that part of the meeting, Emil
Salim (Indonesia), Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, said that in the
next 10 years, poverty eradication would be an essential element of
sustainable development. In addition, unsustainable patterns of production
and consumption must change, and natural resources must be managed in a way
that supported social and economic development. Those three facets must be
merged into one -- sustainable development. The speaker for Japan stressed
that that a respect for nature must be passed down to the next generation;
conservation was essential for the survival of mankind. Japan would
continue its efforts in that regard. The representative of Venezuela, for
the "Group of 77" developing countries and China, said the principle of
shared but differentiated responsibilities between developed and developing
countries for the implementation of Agenda 21 was fundamental. Johannesburg
must be approached with a spirit of solidarity. The representative of
Spain, for the European Union, said the Union sought a coherent policy for
implementing Agenda 21 as a global pact. All actors must work closely
together towards agreed-upon, concrete goals. Transfer of information and
technology was important, as was the realistic financing of programmes
involved. Statements were also made during that segment by representatives
of Norway, Colombia, Egypt, Libya, China, Slovakia, Dominican Republic,
United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Germany. The observer for Switzerland
also spoke, as did the President of the Economic and Social Council.
BACKGROUND
The fourth and
final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable
Development this morning began its ministerial segment, during which
Ministers are expected to discuss follow-up to the Bali implementation plan,
partnership initiatives and elements for the political declaration to be
adopted at the Johannesburg Summit.
STATEMENTS
United Nations
Deputy Secretary-General LOUISE FRÉCHETTE recalled the "set of specific,
time-bound objectives", known as the Millennium Development Goals, which had
been adopted at the 2000 Millennium Summit of the General Assembly with the
aim of fighting poverty, securing people from violence and armed conflict
and protecting the environment. She said, "We are here today because we
face great challenges on both sides of the development-environment
equation". Three billion people suffered the dehumanizing conditions of
poverty and the latest report of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) depicted a world at risk. She said Johannesburg was meant to find
another way -- a path that improved standards of living while protecting the
environment, "a path that works for all peoples today and tomorrow". The
relationship between human society and the natural environment was the "core
concern of Johannesburg, and is what sets Johannesburg apart from other
United Nations conferences and summits". The Secretary-General had proposed
five key areas for particular focus -- water and sanitation, energy,
agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem management and health. It was
important to have firm goals and targets in those areas and specify concrete
commitments so that real progress could be made in the implementation of
Agenda 21 and the Millennium Declaration. The five areas were widely
considered to be central to sustainability, she said. They were intricately
connected -- "call it a multiplier effect or a virtuous circle" -- that
progress in one would generate progress in another. Important progress had
been made thus far by the Committee, but some critical work remained to be
done over the next three days. Full agreement must be reached on a solid,
specific implementation plan with targets "before we leave Bali", she said.
Only then would a firm foundation have been established for the vital work
that remained to be done between Bali and Johannesburg. She then stressed
the need for a credible political declaration that committed leaders to act
and inspired all actors to recognize their own responsibilities. The
declaration was the place for commitments to action in key areas, global and
local, and for providing a sense of values that underpinned the concept of
sustainable development and instigated action. Noting the important role to
be played by governments in ensuring sustainable development, she appealed
to them to ratify the treaties that underlay efforts to achieve such
development. She then noted that sustainable development would not be
achieved without non-governmental organizations (NGOs). She also underlined
the role to be played by the private sector and international
organizations. Progress towards implementation would depend on actions by
all actors, separately and jointly by way of partnerships, she said.
Progress would also depend on the availability of resources. Governments
must sustain the momentum generated by the Monterrey Conference on Financing
for Development, particularly in the area of official development assistance
(ODA). Governments must also make good on their commitment at the World
Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Doha to make the new negotiations on
trade a true "development round" that opened markets to developing-country
goods and allowed them to compete fairly. The Summit was truly a chance to
set a more hopeful course of development for all humanity, she said, adding
"We know what needs to be done. Now, let us move ahead".
MEGAWATI
SOEKARNOPUTRI, President of Indonesia, welcomed participants and thanked the
United Nations for showing confidence in her country by holding the
preparatory meeting there. Indonesia, she said, was determined to do its
utmost for the success of the meeting. Such success, she continued, was
possible because all believed in a life of dignity for everyone, with
respect for the diversity of cultures and harmony with surrounding nature.
Towards those goals, each nation managed its development differently. Some
nations were able to enjoy a high quality of life through developing their
human resources and their capabilities in science and technology. Among
those were nations who could effectively manage their natural resources for
development and in harmony with nature. They were models that could inspire
other nations. However, she said, the majority of nations were endowed
neither with well-developed human resources nor the capabilities to master
and implement technologies. Human resources development was a priority for
those nations. No judgments were being made on this occasion, however some
nations were able to extract the maximum benefit from their resources while
others sold off the raw materials themselves. The political reality of
developing nations presented a dilemma that often led to the exploitation of
natural resources in an unsustainable way. She called for international
cooperation to help such countries utilize resources in a sustainable
manner. The tendency to blame one another had become part of any discussion
of sustainable development; conflicts and instability had often resulted.
But, she said, closely cooperative endeavours were the only answer.
Interdependence, in the global village, was real. For more than three
decades, she said, Indonesia itself had relied on the exploitation of its
natural resources for economic development, but the results had led to
reconsideration. It was realized that development must be a sustainable
process, which required long-term efforts to upgrade the capacity of human
resources to direct development in the best way. Many years ago, her father,
President Soekarno, had called for building the world anew. She now called
on the international community to build the world anew through sustainable
development, to make human life better through development and through
maintaining natural resources, which were the common heritage of mankind.
Saying it was time to implement Agenda 21 with concrete action, she declared
open the ministerial segment of the Preparatory Committee.
MOHAMMED VALLI
MOOSA, Minister for Environmental Affairs and Tourism of South Africa, and
co-chair of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the Ministerial Round
Table on Financing for Environment and Sustainable Development, said that in
the 10 years since the 1992 United Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil it had become ever more clear that
successful sustainable development required progress on the social, economic
and environmental fronts. He noted the lack of resources devoted to the
environment, which undermined the situation of the poor. The Summit would
provide a unique opportunity to ensure that environmental security was
integrated into programmes for sustainable development. The Facility had
sponsored a series of round tables to produce recommendations on the
subject, he said. A Ministerial Round Table had been convened to address
means to generate financing to promote environmental concerns. Among the
issues stressed at that meeting's first session was the need for developed
countries to provide additional resources for sustainable development
through increased official development assistance (ODA) and market access
for developing countries. At the second session, constraints and barriers
to achieving progress in the areas identified by the Secretary-General had
been examined. Lack of capacity, knowledge and skills in a country were
among the constraints identified, he said. It was also pointed out that the
cost of clean technologies could act as a barrier to the promotion of such
technologies, as could lack of financing. Addressing such constraints would
assist in providing the tools and mechanisms for developing countries to
address sustainable development needs. Participants had called for action
in the areas of finance policies, and partnerships had been called for.
KJELL LARSSON,
Minister for the Environment of Sweden, and co-chair of the GEF of the
Ministerial Round Table on Financing for Environment and Sustainable
Development, also gave a readout of the ministerial meeting. He said
sustainability could not be achieved by marginal financing or funding. All
actors had a critical role to play in providing financing. He said
governments had a lead responsibility to promote sustainable development.
Substantial resources could be freed, and economic efficiency could be
improved. The creation by governments of enabling environments for private
investments was also key. Increasingly scarce external resources could be
used to leverage private financing for sustainable development. Better
mechanisms should be developed to tap into the interest of individuals to
invest in an environmentally sustainable future. Environmental impact
assessments should be included in all sustainable development packages.
There was much to be gained from the formation of partnerships among all the
relevant actors, he said. They would be most effective if they were
developed within a comprehensive framework. Synergies between development
aid and private financing should be strengthened. Dissemination of
information, lessons learned and best practices was key. The Bali
implementation plan provided an important framework for pursuing sustainable
development, but more specific means of implementation must be identified
and provided, possibly as annexes to the document. The GEF had been called
on to continue to provide leadership in the follow-up of the World Summit.
CHIEF PRECIOUS
NGELALE, Minister of State of Water Resources of Nigeria, on behalf of the
African Ministers Conference on Water, said the Summit must be about the
need for social progress, sustainable economic development and sound
environmental management. The Secretary-General had placed emphasis on five
areas, all of which had shown the centrality of water. The Summit must be
remembered as a conference that had squarely confronted the water and
sanitation crisis. There was an intimate link between the health of humans
and the health of the planet -- water and sanitation were key in that area
as well. He went on to demonstrate the central role of water in the other
areas of focus identified by the Secretary-General. He said poverty
reduction began with water issues, which in turn should be linked to gender
issues. Pro-gender action programmes to promote women's access to water and
sanitation services must be included in the Summit. The Summit was a unique
opportunity to demonstrate that water was at the crossroads of environment
and development. The ministers at the Conference on Water had agreed that
programmatic and institutional arrangements were needed to confront issues
related to water in Africa. It was hoped that the implementation plan of
the Summit would provide the necessary support. The political declaration
should also prominently address the lingering water and sanitation crisis in
the region and globally, he said. He invited others to join in partnership
initiatives with the Conference on Water. He drew participants' attention
to the Abuja Ministerial Statement on Water, which was being circulated.
INTERACTIVE
DIALOGUE SEGMENT
The Chairman of the
Preparatory Committee, Emil Salim (Indonesia) initiated the dialogue by
recounting the history of efforts for sustainable development and asking
what a Bali commitment could mean. Bali was the final harbour before
sailing into Johannesburg. It meant all necessary documents had to be
finalized here: most importantly, the implementation programme, with
partnership initiatives as a supplement. All elements of the political
declaration must also be developed. In the next 10 years, he said, poverty
eradication would be an essential element of sustainable development. In
addition, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production must change,
and natural resources must be managed in a way that supported social and
economic development. Those three facets must be merged into one -- that
was, sustainable development. Health, globalization, regional contexts, and
coordinated action at all levels were elements that must be considered in
the implementation document as well. The representative of Japan said that a
respect for nature must be passed down to the next generation, as
conservation was essential for the survival of mankind. Japan would
continue its efforts in that regard. Water issues, in particular, were a
great challenge; a coordination information system must encompass those
problems and those of deforestation. Japan had many projects in that area.
The representative of Norway said that environment and development had been
discussed in Rio -- in Johannesburg, environment for development would be
discussed. The upcoming Summit would be very important for implementing
treaties and agreements signed since Rio within clear time frames. He hoped
the meeting would not be about renegotiating the agreements already made.
He thought the text should "look forward" to how its provisions could be
achieved, rather than looking back. Democracy and good governance were
pre-conditions for making sure that globalization was a positive force for
all. The representative of Venezuela, for the "Group of 77" developing
countries and China, said the Group had been carrying on negotiations with
great expectations for a transparent discussion to achieve full
implementation of the Rio commitment. The Group couldn't believe that
agreement could not be reached. There must be a real commitment to act.
The principle of shared but differentiated responsibilities for the
implementation of Agenda 21 was fundamental. New and additional resources
and transparency were key. An international humanitarian fund must be set
up. More sustainable consumption and production patterns must be observed.
She also underlined respect for the special knowledge of indigenous
peoples. Johannesburg must be approached with a spirit of solidarity. The
representative of Spain, speaking on behalf of the European Union, said the
Union sought a coherent policy for implementing Agenda 21 as a global pact.
A gender-based approach must be taken into account, along with the three
pillars of social and economic development and environmental conservations,
with additional activities to ensure implementation. All actors must work
closely together towards agreed-upon, concrete goals. Transfer of
information and technology was important, as was realistic financing of
programmes involved. The Union had submitted proposals to the Chairman for
that latter purpose. There should be equitable distribution of the benefits
of sustainable development, with trade and other policies encouraging that.
In addition, regional approaches to issues were important, particularly in
Africa. The representative of Colombia supported the statement of Venezuela
for the Group of 77, saying that the international community was embarking
on a new endeavour, and there would be many challenges ahead. A new culture
had to be built to foster sustainable development, both for equitable
development and environmental stewardship. Those were ethical ideas.
Agenda 21 had referred to ethics, but that theme had not yet been well
developed. If ethics for sustainable development were nurtured, a culture
of sustainable development would follow. The representative of Egypt said it
was important to concentrate on implementation of ideas developed at Rio and
not to come up with new concepts. For implementation to occur, financial
mechanisms must be clear. Poverty must be fought, and sustainable
technologies shared. Previous conferences had laid foundations for a
structure on which to base future efforts. The agricultural sector should
be a priority -- coherent international action should be taken to improve
use of the land. Desertification must be give absolute priority;
Johannesburg must recognize the Global Environment Facility (GEF) as the
primary tool for that effort. In all efforts, civil society must be
integrally involved. A representative of Japan then took the floor again.
He supported the report made by the Minister of Nigeria on the Conference on
Water. The multiple facets of agriculture must be emphasized. The
principles of market competition had brought about mass consumption and mass
waste disposal -- that "status quo" must not be forgotten and should be
addressed. Japan upheld the basic ideal that forests and oceans were "home
to our lives". The representative of Libya said sustainable development was
a preoccupation for all. Solidarity against poverty and famine was highly
important. There must be real commitments undertaken to combat those
phenomena. There were more than 1 billion people without water, and half
the world was without sanitation, he pointed out. Financial resources had
not been granted for the realization of Agenda 21. Many were now caught in
the trap of external debt, which hampered efforts to achieve sustainable
development. There must a plan that had clear commitments with time limits
for implementation to realize the Millennium Goal of halving the number in
poverty by 2015, as well as other targets that had been set, he said.
Measures must be taken to, among other things, stop deforestation and to
protect fisheries, and adequate financial resources to promote sustainable
development must be forthcoming. A favourable international climate
addressing the negative heritage of colonialism must be instituted. All
States should put an end to their conflicts and take measures to eliminate
weapons of mass destruction. The representative of China said the rapid
development of globalization had brought with it great challenges and
opportunities. Realizing sustainable development on the global level was a
large challenge. Innovative methods to correctly handle the three pillars
of sustainable development had been put forward; however, there was still a
gap between ideals and reality. He cited the decline in ODA at the global
and the widened gap between the North and South and the East and West since
UNCED, among other constraints. Action must be taken to narrow the gaps, he
said. The whole world's attention would be focused on the Summit. The
political declaration must stress the basic principles of the Rio
conference, especially the principle of shared but differentiated
responsibilities to implement Agenda 21. The implementation plan must
contain clear and feasible measures and follow-up mechanisms. The
representative of Switzerland said that better multilateral relationships
and partnerships were basic for attaining goals in sustainable development.
The plan of action coming out of Bali must be based on a strong consensus,
with every delegation involved in negotiations. His country was ready to
make commitments and live up to them -- there should be no backing away from
commitments made in Rio and the Millennium Summit. Switzerland was ready to
increase its efforts to meet such commitments, along with raising its ODA to
0.4 per cent. International instruments must be ratified and implemented,
and forests and water must be protected through international rules.
Switzerland had enacted laws and constructed infrastructure in that effort
and was forming a partnership for sustainable development in mountainous
regions. The representative of Slovakia said his country supported all those
who had called for concrete action. Natural resources had to be treated as
one integrated unit, and that was taken into account in Agenda 21. Sectoral
policies still prevailed, however, and he urged the strengthening of
cross-sectoral integrative tools, and a comprehensive plan that ruled over
all sectoral plans. He also supported activities that aimed to lower
overhead for activities that directly benefited sustainable development,
with the primary goal of improving the state of the environment. The
representative of the Dominican Republic called for countries that had not
done so to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and other relevant agreements before
the Johannesburg Summit. A clear commitment must come out of that Summit to
implement all elements of Agenda 21. The representative of the United Arab
Emirates said common solutions must be found to solve the problems facing
humanity, such as poverty, debt, pollution and lack of access to water,
among others. Those problems must be addressed at all levels. Sustainable
development and the implementation of Agenda 21 required a secure
environment on the regional and international levels. In that context, he
cited the situation in Palestine as a result of the Israeli occupation. He
called for solutions to such problems, based on the principles of the United
Nations Charter and respect for international law. The stability of
development required certain confidence-building measures to be undertaken.
Cooperation was also key. He called on developed countries to reconsider
their protectionist and unilateral measures, which had an adverse affect on
international trade.
The representative
of Indonesia said the implementation document was now 78 pages long --
double the size of last Monday. Core to the process of sustainable
development was implementation. Financial resources had not been
forthcoming, he noted, particularly to implement Agenda 21. The Monterrey
Consensus and the Doha outcome must be built upon.
IVAN SIMONOVIC
(Croatia) President of the Economic and Social Council, said his prepared
statement would be distributed and he would restrict himself to making a
brief statement. Doha and Monterrey were the basis for forward movement.
At the recently established international forum for indigenous peoples, it
had been stressed that a reference to indigenous peoples should be included
in the outcome to Johannesburg. Between Bali and the Summit there would be a
substantive session of the Council, he said. Its high-level segment would
be devoted to the development of human resources, which was key to
sustainable development. The core of sustainable development was the issue
of coordination of various values and activities. Without the strengthened
role of the Council, it would be virtually impossible to coordinate the
various United Nations departments and commissions dealing with sustainable
development. The representative of Germany said Agenda 21 and other
international consensus documents should not be renegotiated; the problem
was the implementation of activities and principles. Concrete targets were
therefore essential in all areas including renewable energy, an area in
which his Government had already set targets and was therefore motivated to
meet them. Other matters had to be dealt with directly; foreign direct
investment could be more effective than ODA, for example.
Associated Press
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020605/ap_wo_en_po/indonesia_development_conference_5
BALI, Indonesia -
The United Nations on Wednesday urged environment and economic ministers
from around the world to commit to a plan that seeks to double the amount of
people with access to sanitation and drinking water by 2015. Approval for
the plan has been delayed over poor countries' demand for more aid and rich
countries' insistence that aid be linked to reducing corruption. UN Deputy
Secretary General Louise Frechette told more than 6,000 delegates from 173
countries, including 118 ministers, to call on their governments to provide
funds, ratify treaties and work with private organizations to make the plan
a success. Outside the beachside convention center on Indonesia's Bali
island, around 50 international and Indonesian green activists staged a
noisy demonstration, demanding delegates do more to protect the environment.
Providing clean water and upgrading sanitation are two of the most ambitious
elements in the 158-point draft that delegates have been debating for the
past week in Bali. Ministers are also scheduled to produce a political
declaration stating their governments' willingness to carry out the action
plan, which was supposed to be done by last weekend but has run into delays.
Both texts will be voted on by world leaders at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in August.
A major international environmental conference in Brazil a decade ago
produced far-reaching promises but has brought few results. "Governments
must make good on their commitments," Frechette told delegates. "The
challenge as ever is to match aspiration with action." The plan being
negotiated includes U.N. targets such as halving by 2015 the number of
people who face poverty and hunger, and the number who lack access to safe
drinking water and sanitation. Poor countries want more aid for the
programs, but delegates from rich countries want such aid to come with
conditions, including commitments to fight corruption, which is rampant in
much of the developing world. The United States and Japan have blocked
proposals calling for deadlines for implementing the action plan, saying
they were unrealistic. Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri urged
negotiators to work out their differences before the Johannesburg summit. "I
have the conviction that whatever agreement we could reach at this meeting
will significantly affect the final outcome of the conference in South
Africa," she said in her opening speech. Some 50,000 delegates are expected
in Johannesburg in what will be the largest ever U.N. gathering. The
meeting, dubbed "Earth Summit 2," will coincide with the 10-year anniversary
of a summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, where the first global agreements on
environmental protection were reached. However, critics say many of the
governments did not to carry out the programs they agreed to in Rio.
The Associated
Press
5 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4454753%255E1702,00.html
ON World
Environment Day, the United Nations and leading scientific institutions
launched the first internet atlas of the world's oceans to monitor and
hopefully heal the waters that play a critical role in sustaining life on
earth. After a decade of planning and more than two-and-a-half years of
development, the UN Oceans Atlas is online. It initially has 14 global
maps, links to hundreds of others, and over 2000 documents on 900 subjects
ranging from climate change, fishing areas and ship piracy to poisonous
algae, offshore oil and recreation activities. Project manager John Everett
said today's launch culminates a unique partnership between the public and
private sectors to bring an encyclopedic resource to a wide cross-section of
users - from school children to policy makers and scientific experts. "The
oceans play a crucial role in sustaining life on earth," said Jacques Diouf,
director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation which led the
initiative with primary funding of $US500,000 ($875,657) from the United
Nations Foundation, started by media mogul Ted Turner. "This important new
tool ... will help co-ordinate and harmonise the work underway in various
parts of the UN and in national agencies, academic institutions and other
organisations, and will serve a major role in moving the world toward the
sustainable use of oceans for food security and human development," he
said. The need for an atlas was identified during the 1992 UN earth summit
in Rio de Janeiro in response to a call to address the world's greatest
environmental challenges. Everett said the atlas would better spotlight
acute marine issues from over-fishing and destruction of coastal areas to
the effects of climate change on ice cover and pollution from industry,
farms and households. "Ocean-related issues will almost certainly dominate
the international agenda later this century if, as predicted, the Earth's
continued warming accelerates sea level rise and adds up to one metre to the
height of our oceans," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN
Environment Program. Such a rise could affect over 70 million people in
coastal China, 60 per cent of the population of Bangladesh and the
Netherlands, 15 per cent of the people and 50 per cent of the industry in
Japan, 10 per cent of the population of Egypt, and a 17,000 square kilometre
area - the size of Connecticut and New Jersey combined - in the United
States. In low-lying countries like the Maldives or the Marshall Islands,
the entire population would be at risk, the UN agency said. "Now we have
the ability to see information on all the areas of the ocean, coming from
all the reliable sources, through the United Nations, so there will always
be a reliable control," said project director Serge Garcia, who heads the
FAO Fisheries Resources Division. The website will be supplemented by a
CD-ROM. Documents, maps and other material will also be published in
co-operation with Cinegram Multimedia to reach audiences and regions where
internet access is difficult, said Everett, who is on loan to the project
from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National
Geographic Society is making its map-producing machine and marine
information available to the atlas and the Census of Marine Life is
contributing its assessments of the diversity, distribution and abundance of
marine organisms, he said. Both organisations are based in Washington.
Garcia said the online atlas has the capacity to hold 100,000 documents and
thousands of maps, and will be constantly updated. "If we're going to solve
or prevent the world's biggest problems, the public and the private sector
have to come together and we've done so on the atlas of the oceans," said
former US Senator Timothy Wirth, who heads the United Nations Foundation.
"This is a very ambitious and important partnership for monitoring,
diagnosing and we hope helping to heal the great oceans of the world."
Daily Telegraph
4 June 2002
Internet:http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$LFGXWZAAAKWUDQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2002/06/
04/wsumm04.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/06/04/ixnewstop.html&_requestid=559310
The 60,000
delegates to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg this September will produce
the same volume of greenhouse gases through air flights, ground transport
and hotel pollution as would half a million ordinary Africans in a year. The
British company Future Forests, which has been asked to devise a way of
offsetting the emissions, estimates that the summit, which is to concentrate
on alleviating the environmental problems of the world's poorest people,
will produce nearly 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide. This is the amount
produced annually by 44,000 Britons or 450,000 Africans. The summit's South
African organisers aim to raise £3.5 million to offset this pollution
through energy-saving school programmes, solar power schemes and bio-gas
plants. The savings, based on a scheme that offset the emissions from the
Salt Lake City winter Olympics, will be audited by an American company,
Carbon Neutral Network. Jonathan Shopley, chief executive of Future Forests,
said he was optimistic of receiving sufficient funding for the scheme from
companies and individuals. Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, left
for Bali yesterday with her husband Leo for the final preparatory conference
before the Johannesburg summit. This week's talks on drawing up a plan of
action to present to Tony Blair and other world leaders at the summit have
already run into trouble. British officials said at the weekend that America
was opposing plans to halve the number of people - 2.4 billion, two fifths
of the world's population - who have no sanitation. European and developing
nations want the world's leaders to agree to meet this target by 2015. Opec
countries are opposing plans to halve the number of people, currently two
billion, without any source of energy using renewable means. America,
Canada, Japan and Australia are opposing EU proposals to make energy
consumption more environment-friendly.
Australian
Associated Press
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4446588%255E1702,00.html
THE Federal
Government is under increased pressure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on
climate change amid a world rush to secure a pact to combat global warming.
All 15 European Union states have ratified the protocol to curb greenhouse
gas emissions, widely blamed for global warming. The ratification came as
the attitude of the United States took a surprise shift with President
George W. Bush's administration finally acknowledging the impact of
greenhouse gases. A report released by the US environment agency endorsed
the widespread view of international scientists that fossil fuels and
exhaust fumes from cars caused global warming. Until now the Bush
administration has largely rejected scientific arguments which blame
emissions for a hotter world. Today the Australian Democrats said Australia
was out in the cold and blind to the impact of unsustainable environmental
practices. "The Government says it is committed to meeting our Kyoto target
of an eight per cent increase on 1990 levels, but with a leaked report
indicating that our emissions could be 33 per cent above 1990 levels by
2010, this is highly unlikely," Democrats greenhouse spokeswoman Lyn Allison
said in a statement. The Government should ratify the protocol in the
lead-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Rio Plus 10, in
August, she said. Greenpeace is set to launch a new campaign challenging the
Government to support renewable energy and take action to prevent the worst
impacts of climate change. "Many governments around the world have woken up
to the threat of climate change and recognise that ratifying Kyoto is the
first step," campaigner Frances MacGuire said in a statement. "The
Australian Government, in contrast, continues to equivocate, hiding behind
the US position. "It's time the Government saw which way the wind is
blowing. "If we fail to ratify the protocol, Australia will lose out both in
terms of climate impacts and business opportunities in new carbon markets".
A total of 72 countries have ratified the protocol with more expected to
ratify soon. The protocol could be in force if Australia ratified in line
with other nations later this year. Prime Minister John Howard has refused
to ratify, long arguing that the protocol could not function without the US
or restrictions on developing nations to curb greenhouse gases.
CORDIS News
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.eubusiness.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=82630&d=101&h=240&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
The European Union
ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change on 31 May. The EU was
represented at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where the
ratification papers were deposited, by Jaume Matas, the Spanish President of
the Environment Council, and Environment Commissioner, Margot Wallstroem.
The agreement brings the protocol's entry into force, which requires
ratification by countries responsible for 55 per cent of industrialised
countries' emissions in 1990, a step closer. It also means the EU has
fulfilled its goal of enabling the protocol to come into force before the
World Summit on Sustainable Development, which begins in August this year.
Mr Matas, who is Spanish Minister for the environment, said ratification by
the EU 'is the expression of the conviction of the millions of citizens of
the European Union that the Kyoto Protocol is the best instrument available
for working together to achieve our common goal, and their commitment to
it.' Ms Wallstroem urged the EU's partners in the developed and developing
world to ratify the protocol as soon as possible. 'The scientific evidence
on climate change is stronger than ever,' she said. 'We all know that even
the targets in the Kyoto Protocol are only a first step if we want to
prevent the severe consequences that climate change could have.' Ms
Wallström also stressed the need for further action to cut EU emissions of
greenhouse gases. She said the European Commission has proposed measures to
reduce emissions at the lowest possible cost, including an EU-wide emissions
trading scheme to begin in 2005. But she warned that all Member States must
take responsibility for meeting their burden-sharing targets. The EU is
continuing to urge the USA to participate in global action to fight climate
change. The BBC reports that the USA has refused to change its position of
opting out of the Kyoto Protocol, despite acknowledgement by the US
government for the first time that man-made pollution is a key cause of
climate change. In a report submitted to the United Nations, the US
Environmental Protection Agency endorses the widely held scientific belief
that man-made greenhouse gas emissions from industry and transport are
largely to blame for global warming. The White House had maintained there
was not enough evidence that industrial emissions are to blame for climate
change. Philip Clapp, President of environmental group National
Environmental Trust, said the new report 'undercuts everything (President
Bush) has said about global warming since he took office.' The Japanese
cabinet approved ratification of the protocol on 4 June after the upper
house of parliament voted 229-0 in favour of it last week. Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi called for the USA to change its position on the protocol,
saying: 'The government of Japan will do its utmost to establish a common
rule, in which all countries including the United States and the developing
countries participate.'
Taipei Times
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/06/04/story/0000138869
Both the government
and several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are heading for the
upcoming United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in a
bid to promote Taiwan. The upcoming world summit, the 10th anniversary of
1992 Rio Earth Summit, is scheduled run from Aug. 26 to Sept. 4 in
Johannesburg, South Africa. More than 20 Taiwanese environmental groups are
trying to raise money so they can attend the conference and promote
awareness of Taiwan's democracy and sustainable development initiatives. "We
are sure that the environmental diplomacy carried out by Taiwan's NGOs can
demonstrate Taiwan's democratization to the world." Lee Chia-lun, project
manager of Taiwan Agenda 21, an environmental organization In addition to
the environmental groups, between 20 and 30 NGOs are trying to persuade
potential donors t o sponsor a number of projects totaling NT$4.6 million.
At a meeting held at the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA)
yesterday, NGO representatives presented their proposals to publicize Taiwan
in Johannesburg to the government, one of potential donors. More than 20
local environmental and cultural groups proposed topics that address the
environment, women, toxic waste, water resources, energy, aboriginal culture
and others. "We have to seize the chance to publicize Taiwan's achievement
of promoting sustainable development," said Juju Wang a sociology professor
at National Tsing Hwa University. Wang, a member of the Asian Pacific
Environmental Connection for Sociologists certified by the UN, argued that
choosing appropriate topics to speak for Taiwan was essential to making a
breakthrough in the international community. Wang said that Taiwan has been
forced by its difficult diplomatic situation to attend environmental events
held by the UN in names of diverse NGOs since it lost its UN membership in
1971. About 20 representatives of NGOs from Taiwan attended the 1992 Earth
Summit held in Rio, Brazil. Wang is one of the 20. As China's influence
grows, Taiwanese NGO's have fewer opportunities to participate in
international events. As the WSSD approaches, China reportedly tried to
influence the UN to downgrade Taiwan to the status of one of its provinces.
"We are sure that the environmental diplomacy carried out by Taiwan's NGOs
can demonstrate Taiwan's democratization to the world," said Lee Chia-lun),
project manager of Taiwan Agenda 21, an environmental organization. Niven
Huang secretary-general of Business Council for Sustainable Development,
Taiwan said that industry in Taiwan is adjusting to face the inevitable
challenges of corporate social responsibility, which is essential to a
society promoting sustainable development. Chen Lee-in a research fellow at
the Chung-hua institution for Economic Research, said that Taiwan should
focus on the five key areas mentioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in
May -- areas, water and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture, and
biodiversity, EPA deputy administrator Chang Chu-enn), the secretariat of
the government's task force for the WSSD, said that half of the groups'
demands might be allocated for their participation in the event after
conducting a cross-agency meeting later this week. "The feasibility of
environmental groups' projects will be one of our chief considerations when
talking about providing funds," Chang said. Sustainable development is one
of main concepts of Premier Yu Shyi-kun's policies. On June 5, World
Environmental Day, the Cabinet's committee for promoting sustainable
development will be established. The committee will be lead by newly
appointed Minister Without Portfolio Yeh Jiunn-rong one of the 20 attending
the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Yeh, a former law professor from National Taiwan
University, is expected to lead Taiwan at the WSSD.
The Jakarta Post
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20020604231148&irec=5
NUSA DUA, Bali
(JP): Reckless multinational companies cause havoc to the environment and
victims are unable to hold them responsible, according to a Greenpeace
report calling for a global body to monitor corporate accountability and
liability. Greenpeace's Corporate Crimes report highlights 37 cases where
mostly multinational companies have caused accidents that have damaged the
environment but largely escaped responsibility in the absence of a global
corporate monitoring system. Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace International
said on Tuesday protecting the environment and its surrounding community
from companies' reckless business practices necessitated the establishment
of international legal measures for multinational companies to comply with.
"Corporations need governments looking at these issues because governments
can set policies that will help clean industries to rise," Furtado said in a
press meeting on the sidelines of the Fourth Preparatory Committee Meeting
on Sustainable Development in Bali. The meeting is to draw up an action
plan, to be known as the Bali Commitment that world leaders will sign at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South
Africa, later in August and September. The Greenpeace report comes as
delegates debate on whether or not to tighten regulations around corporate
actions to ensure they comply with sustainable development principles.
Actions of corporations were behind a number of accidents causing the loss
of lives and environmental damage, Furtado said. The report by Greenpeace
covers cases involving chemicals, pesticides, nuclear materials, and those
in the genetic engineering, mining, forestry and oil sectors as well as one
ship breaking incident. Beginning its report with what Greenpeace called the
worst chemical disaster is the 1984 Bhopal accident in India. Gas leaked
from a plant owned by Union Carbide India Limited in Bhopal, releasing a
deadly amount of methyl isocyanate (MIC) into the surrounding area and
exposing 520,000 people to the poisonous gas. In the first three days, 8,000
people died. Eighteen years after, some 150,000 remain afflicted due to the
effects of the gas leak with reports of third generation victims still
suffering from various abnormalities. In total the gas leak is believed to
have killed about 20,000 people, with one dying every two days. The
Greenpeace report shows that behind this accident lies a history of poor
corporate decisions. According to the report, Union Carbide stored massive
amounts of MIC in a densely populated area, ignoring its own safety measures
and exceeding the permitted limit in Europe by over 100 times.
To cut costs, Union
Carbide stored the MIC in unsafe conditions, reduced its staff and slashed
the training programs for the remaining few. In 1989, the company paid
US$470 million in compensation but since its merger with Dow Chemicals,
demands for further compensation have been largely ignored. Dow Chemicals
itself is mentioned in three other chemical related accidents in the
Greenpeace report. "Governments have to be aware of what's going on, and
they have to protect people because people have the right to a clean and
just environment," Furtado said. Other non-governmental organizations have
also been calling for stricter control over corporate actions. The revised
Chairman's Text, now called the draft plan of implementation, includes a
phrase calling for an international framework for transnational corporate
accountability. But as the phrase is in brackets, its fate depends on the
ongoing negotiations, with most developing countries in favor of it. A
number of developed countries have reportedly rejected the phrase, arguing
that multinationals should be held accountable at national levels only.
Greenpeace said in its press release that governments were ultimately
responsible for public welfare, and should force corporations to uphold the
law and become more accountable to the public. "Our calls for the
governments to take this responsibility are not bad for the industries. But
the industries have a tendency of not wanting any regulations, saying that
they can run the world as they see fit and the market will fix everything,"
Furtado said
The Jakarta Post
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20020604231739&irec=3
NUSA DUA, Bali
(JP): International scientists lashed out on Tuesday at governments around
the world for their lack of commitment to supporting science and technology
programs for sustainable development. Instead of spending on scientific or
technological research, which could significantly contribute to sustainable
development, the governments preferred to pour their budgets into armaments
spending. It was ironic, as the preference clearly threatened sustainable
development, said the international scientists.
"The total cost of
four annual global programs on science and technology by the International
Council for Science is the same as the cost of the 10 cruise missiles used
by the warring parties in the Gulf War, which they used for merely one
hour," said Director of the Center for Resource and Environment Studies at
the Australian National University Robert Wasson. The discussion, which was
held at Putri Bali hotel here, was a parallel meeting to the ongoing
preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development. Wasson said it was ridiculous for developed countries to spend
huge amounts to finance their weaponry. Military expenditure by the world's
governments is running at more than US$2 billion a day. Outside the U.S.,
India and Pakistan were among countries that spent huge funds on armaments
instead of using them to finance research and technology, Wasson told The
Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a science discussion here. Senior adviser
for science for sustainable development with the International Council for
Science Gisbert Glaser said spending on research and development was very
small in most countries.
"Developed
countries merely allocate 4 percent to 5 percent of their annual budget for
research in science and technology. The figure is worse in developing
countries, as the government only allocates zero point something of their
annual budgets for science and technology development," he said. According
to Glaser, the lack of commitment by governments might be caused by their
narrow interests or short-term development goals, which science and
technology did not reflect, as the activities of the latter in those fields
needed time and often produced unexpected or unwelcome results
United Nations
Press Release
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb13-e.htm
Interdependence,
sustainability, participation, equity and an enabling political environment
were put forward late this evening by Emil Salim (Indonesia), Chairman of
the fourth and final Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on
Sustainable Development, as possible key elements for a political
declaration to be adopted by heads of State and government at the Summit.
The Chairman's
suggestions came as the Committee met on the eve of the session's
ministerial segment, during which Ministers from some 140 countries will
discuss follow-up to the Bali implementation plan, partnership initiatives
and elements for the political declaration to be adopted at the Johannesburg
Summit. During the discussion that ensued, representatives said the elements
for a declaration should provide an index -- a range of ideas that could
serve as a basis for the heads of State at the Summit. The elements should
make firm the commitments to sustainable development. Also this evening, the
Committee received a progress report on discussions held on the subject of
partnership initiatives. A full report would be made on the final day of
the session.
The session's
ministerial segment is scheduled to open tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.
STATEMENTS ON
PARTNERSHIPS, POLITICAL DECLARATION
EMIL SALIM
(Indonesia), Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, said the working groups
and the contact groups were still at work and were not yet able to provide a
complete report. Two items would be taken up during tonight's plenary -- a
brief explanation on the partnerships initiative and elements for the
political declaration.
JAN KARA (Czech
Republic) said that based on the work done on partnership initiatives at the
third preparatory committee a series of small-scale consultations had been
held in Bali on further developing "type II" outcomes. A number of
interesting comments had come out of the multi-stakeholder dialogue. A
meeting had been held yesterday, and participants were now in the process of
reviewing and elaborating guidelines on the subject. More consultations
would be held tomorrow afternoon. The issue continued to be the subject of
considerable interest. A report would be made on the final day of the
session.
Mr. SALIM then
informed delegates of his initial ideas for the political declaration. A
declaration was needed that would reveal the commitments of the heads of
State at the World Summit to provide an enabling political environment to
support the implementation plan. That plan could only be implemented if it
obtained a "political blessing" and the requisite political environment. The
focus of the outcome was on implementing sustainable development, he
stressed. The first question was "what do we want with sustainable
development"? It was clear that such development was a "mixture of the
three major ingredients" -- social development, economic development and
environmental development. The three pillars were merged into one in
sustainable development. Poverty eradication, he said, was an indispensable
requirement for sustainable development -- billions of people had no safe
drinking water and were living on less than $1 a day. For development,
there must be a change in unsustainable patterns of consumption and
production. All of that required protection and management of the natural
resource base. Those elements were the focus of "our Bali commitment".
Health, globalization, issues affecting small islands and regions like
Africa must also be addressed. The means of implementation and
institutional framework must be assured. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had
noted the gap between implementation and targets set at the 1992 United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), he continued.
Agenda 21 had been implemented in a fragmented way, the Secretary-General
had pointed out. He had also noted a lack of coherent policies between
finance and trade, among others. A process of change must be instituted.
The element of
interdependence was essential for sustainable development. Sustainability,
another key element, was backed up by the principle of diversity -- greater
diversity meant increased strength. Sustainable development involved all
people -- all stakeholders. That was why the preparation for this session
had started from below. Participation was thus another key element. For
participation to work, there must be equity. An enabling political
environment was very important to ensure those elements could be realized.
DISCUSSION
During the
discussion that ensued, representatives commended the Chair on his
presentation. The elements for a declaration should provide an index -- a
range of ideas that could serve as a basis for the heads of State at the
Summit. The elements should make firm the commitments to sustainable
development. Good, specific guidance from the governments at Johannesburg
was desirable. The Summit might provide an opportunity to firm up or
concretize commitment to the various aspects of sustainable development the
Chair had elaborated on. Delegates added that the upcoming Summit would
build on the outcome of UNCED, which had set out the major elements of
sustainable development. The question of participation, as set out by the
Chairman, was underlined as highly important. Technical, financial and
political support was also crucial -- that should be reflected in the
political declaration.
United Nations
Press Release
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb12-e.htm
As the fourth
Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable
Development entered its second and final week, Emil Salim (Indonesia),
Committee Chairman, and Nitin Desai, Secretary-General of the Summit,
briefed correspondents on the state of negotiations on the draft
implementation plan to be adopted by the Summit this September in
Johannesburg, South Africa. Mr. Salim expressed optimism that deliberations
on the text would be completed by the end of the preparatory meeting.
"Everyone has the same spirit that it will be finalized in Bali", he
stressed. To help realize that goal, he had asked the Ambassadors of three
countries "who are crucial in this whole exercise of sustainable
development" -- Brazil (host of the 1992 United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development known as the Earth Summit), Indonesia (host of
the current meeting) and South Africa (host of the Johannesburg Summit) --
to facilitate the negotiations on the plan. He said the so-called "bracketed
issues" in the text [those areas where agreement had not yet been reached]
were now being cleaned up. It was as he had expected -- negotiators had
kept their cards close to their chests and were now opening them. Among the
issues where progress had been made, he noted, was in the area of time bound
targets for implementation of the Summit outcome. "A great deal has been
achieved over the past 10 days," said Mr. Desai, stressing that the basic
goal of completing work on the plan remained. Negotiating the
implementation plan was not a matter for the ministerial segment of the
meeting, which will start tomorrow and run through Friday. That segment
would deal with how to implement the Bali commitments, the question of
partnerships and their role, and elements for a political declaration to be
adopted at the Summit. Speaking earlier at the daily briefing held by the
Department of Public Information, Lowell Flanders, a senior United Nations
official with the Summit Secretariat, noted that large areas of agreement
had been reached on areas of the text related to health, small island
developing States and Africa, among others. He added that it looked like
agreement could be reached on a 10-year programme to improve resource use
efficiency. The draft plan of implementation (see document
A/CONF.199/PC/L.5*) comprises an introduction and chapters on poverty
eradication; changing unsustainable patterns of consumption and production;
protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social
development; sustainable development in a globalizing world; health and
sustainable development; sustainable development of small island developing
States; sustainable development initiatives for Africa; means of
implementation; and an Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development.
So far, over 4,316 people from 173 countries are participating in the
preparatory meeting, including 1,794 government delegates, 1,324
representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and 181
journalists. A formal plenary meeting of the preparatory committee has
been scheduled for 8 p.m. tonight.
United Nations
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/otherstories_waterministers.htm
4 June, BALI,
Indonesia- At the time South Africa ended apartheid and became a democracy
in 1994, 14 million people out of a total population of 42 million lacked
access to clean drinking water. But in seven years, South Africa has halved
the number of people who lack access to safe water-ahead of
schedule-according to Ronnie Kasrils, South African Minister for Water
Affairs and Forestry, and if the present targets are met, he says everyone
will have clean water by 2008. Two years ago, however, the worst cholera
epidemic in the country's history broke out in the KwaZulu Natal Province.
Kasrils said, "It took us by surprise because we thought we were on the
right track by providing clean water." As a result, South Africa had to
reevaluate its strategy, and after meeting with the Water Supply and
Sanitation Collaborative Council, adopted a new approach that included clean
water, adequate sanitation and hygiene awareness. "We made an error,"
Kasrils said during a press conference. "By concentrating on water, we
neglected sanitation." Now, with a program that gives clean water and proper
sanitation equal weight, he believes every South African will have access to
proper sanitation by 2015. The WSSCC, together with the United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, has embarked on a programme of
launching initiatives that will deliver the infrastructure for basic water
and sanitation services to the poor in an effort to halve the number of
people, presently 1.1 billion, who lack access to clean water, and the 2.4
billion who lack proper sanitation. The programme, "WASH" for Water,
Sanitation and Hygiene launched its first programme in South Africa this
April, and will soon launch another in Uganda. WASH hopes to replicate these
efforts in 30 other countries.
According to WASH,
some 6,000 children die every day from diseases caused by a lack of access
to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. In the last
10 years, it says, more children have died due to diarrhoea than all the
people lost to armed conflict since World War II. Negotiations on water and
sanitation section of the implementation programme for the World Summit on
Sustainable have been substantially completed, with the exception of what
many consider the most essential element-a target for reducing by half the
number of people who lack access to sanitation by 2015. Negotiations over
whether the outcome document will specify a target are ongoing. United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that water and sanitation was
one of five areas where the Summit could achieve tangible and measurable
results using existing technologies and resources. "I believe in targets,"
Kasrils said. "The World Summit on Sustainable Development must agree on
targets."
Associated Press
Writer
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020605/ap_wo_en_po/un_oceans_atlas_1
UNITED NATIONS - On
World Environment Day, the United Nations and leading scientific
institutions launched the first Internet atlas of the world's oceans to
monitor and hopefully heal the waters that play a critical role in
sustaining life on earth. After a decade of planning and more than 2 1/2
years of development, the U.N. Oceans Atlas is online, initially with 14
global maps, links to hundreds of others, and over 2,000 documents on 900
subjects ranging from climate change, fishing areas and ship piracy to
poisonous algae, offshore oil and recreation activities. Project manager
John Everett said Wednesday's launch culminates a unique partnership between
the public and private sectors to bring an encyclopedic resource to a wide
cross-section of users - from school children to policy makers and
scientific experts. "The oceans play a crucial role in sustaining life on
earth," said Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization which led the initiative with primary funding of
dlrs 500,000 from the United Nations Foundation, started by media mogul Ted
Turner. "This important new tool ... will help coordinate and harmonize the
work underway in various parts of the U.N. and in national agencies,
academic institutions and other organizations, and will serve a major role
in moving the world toward the sustainable use of oceans for food security
and human development," he said.
The need for an
atlas was identified during the 1992 U.N. earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in
response to a call to address the world's greatest environmental challenges.
Everett said the atlas will better spotlight acute marine issues from
over-fishing and destruction of coastal areas to the effects of climate
change on ice cover and pollution from industry, farms and households.
"Ocean-related issues will almost certainly dominate the international
agenda later this century if, as predicted, the Earth's continued warming
accelerates sea level rise and adds up to one meter (3.3 feet) to the height
of our oceans," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N.
Environment Program. Such a rise could affect over 70 million people in
coastal China, 60 percent of the population of Bangladesh and the
Netherlands, 15 percent of the people and 50 percent of the industry in
Japan, 10 percent of the population of Egypt, and a 17,000 square kilometer
(6,630 square mile) area - the size of Connecticut and New Jersey combined -
in the United States. In low-lying countries like the Maldives or the
Marshall Islands, the entire population would be at risk, the U.N. agency
said.
"Now we have the
ability to see information on all the areas of the ocean, coming from all
the reliable sources, through the United Nations, so there will always be a
reliable control," said project director Serge Garcia, who heads the FAO
Fisheries Resources Division. The website will be supplemented by a CD-ROM.
Documents, maps and other material will also be published in cooperation
with Cinegram Multimedia to reach audiences and regions where Internet
access is difficult, said Everett, who is on loan to the project from the
U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National
Geographic Society is making its map-producing machine and marine
information available to the atlas and the Census of Marine Life is
contributing its assessments of the diversity, distribution and abundance of
marine organisms, he said. Both organizations are based in Washington.
Garcia said the
online atlas has the capacity to hold 100,000 documents and thousands of
maps, and will be constantly updated.
"If we're going to
solve or prevent the world's biggest problems, the public and the private
sector have to come together and we've done so on the atlas of the oceans,"
said former U.S. Sen. Timothy Wirth, who heads the United Nations
Foundation. "This is a very ambitious and important partnership for
monitoring, diagnosing and we hope helping to heal the great oceans of the
world."
For more
information please see:
http://www.oceansatlas.org
Associated Press
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020604/ap_wo_en_po/indonesia_development_conference_4
BALI, Indonesia -
Economic and environmental ministers will be asked to help push through
negotiations on the agenda of a much-anticipated U.N. environmental summit,
delegates at a preparatory conference on Indonesia's island of Bali said
Tuesday. The ministers began arriving in Bali on Tuesday to hold three days
of talks on a separate political declaration. For more than a week, around
6,000 international delegates from 189 countries have been negotiating an
"action plan" that will be voted on at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development to be held in Johannesburg in August. But they have so far
failed to finish the text of the plan because of disagreements over proposed
programs to help countries reduce poverty and protect the environment. The
plan had been expected to be completed last Friday night. Among the
disputes, poor countries want more aid for the programs but delegates from
rich countries want such aid to come with conditions, such as commitments to
fight corruption which is rampant in much of the developing world. In
addition, delegates from the United States and Japan have blocked proposals
calling for deadlines for implementing the action plan, saying they were
unrealistic. Emil Salim, the chairman of the Bali talks, said the ministers
would be asked to help with the negotiations. "There are tough issues to
cover," he told The Associated Press. Three representatives from South
Africa, Brazil and Indonesia have been chosen to hold informal talks with
the ministers to try to iron out the unresolved issues, Emil Salim said.
Delegates will make a last attempt to edit the action plan during a plenary
session slated for late Wednesday night. The action plan being negotiated
includes U.N. targets, such as halving by 2015 the number of people who face
poverty and hunger, and the number who lack access to safe drinking water
and sanitation. Some 50,000 delegates are expected in Johannesburg in what
will be the largest ever U.N. gathering. The meeting, dubbed "Earth Summit
2", will coincide with the 10-year anniversary of a summit in Rio De
Janeiro, where the first global agreements on environmental protection were
reached.
However, critics
say governments have failed to carry out programs needed to protect the
environment agreed to in Rio
Inter Press Service
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/oneworld/20020604/wl_oneworld/1032_1023197233
BRUSSELS, Jun 4 (IPS)
- The European Union is heading for a clash with the U.S. at a preparatory
meeting this week for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Ministers
from several countries will meet in Bali, Indonesia, from June 5 to 7 in
final preparation for the summit in Johannesburg from August 26 to September
4. The preparatory meeting in Bali began at the official level May 27.
Differences are evident already. The EU delegation tabled a proposal for
concrete targets and a timetable on renewable energy Friday in Bali. The
move is strongly opposed by the U.S. On Monday EU Environment Commissioner
Margot Wallstrom who will negotiate on behalf of the EU at the ministerial
meeting in Bali said "the challenge of the coming weeks, and of the meeting
in Bali, will be to prepare credible political commitments to sustainable
development backed by precise targets and deliverables." Wallstrom said:
"My objective for the meeting is that we agree on ambitious but realistic
political targets. I will also seek to rally partners around an agenda for
change based on a series of initiatives on water, energy, health,
sustainable patterns of consumption and production, globalization and trade
and governance. Partnerships for action in these areas can help resolve some
of the biggest problems on the international agenda." But as EU negotiators
move to set targets and seek partnership with developing countries, the U.S.
has already made coalitions with oil-producing countries to block any
reference to timetables or targets, independent observers point out. It is
perhaps no coincidence that the EU chose to deliver its ratification papers
on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change at the United Nations headquarters
in New York Friday, just days before the ministers meeting in Bali. The
U.S., the world's largest polluter, withdrew its commitment to Kyoto after
President George Bush took office. The first threshold for the Kyoto
Protocol to come into force has now been reached. Fifty-five countries were
required to ratify it, and 70 have done so. Japan plans to ratify the
protocol this week. "The ratification of the Kyoto protocol is one of the
most important political tools that the European Union can use in the
Johannesburg process," says Michel Raquet from Greenpeace International.
Greenpeace says it recognizes the positive stance taken by the EU in
comparison to countries such as the U.S., Canada and Australia, although it
would have liked the Europeans to go further. Raquet says EU proposals on
energy are too vague. The EU should make a commitment to "clean, affordable,
sustainable energy services" by 2015 to the two billion people without
access to modern energy services. In a declaration issued May 30,
environmental groups including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace and
Friends of the Earth International said: "The proposed 'plan of action'
watered down even further this week in Bali is a 'plan of inaction', a
recipe for social and environmental disaster." The groups blame the U.S.,
Canada and Australia for blocking progress. EU Commissioner for Development
Poul Nielson has admitted he is concerned over the state of the preparatory
meetings. "I am as worried as everyone else," he says. A meeting of the 15
EU development ministers agreed last week to achieving a results-oriented
outcome to the summit. "The EU is a progressive and constructive force, and
the rest of the world has big expectations on our performance," said Nielson
after the meeting. "We are committed to multilateralism, and this is where
we have a different approach to the United States." The EU text for
Johannesburg proposes a series of concrete initiatives in health, water and
energy "which should be grounded in the political declaration and program of
action to be adopted at the WSSD." The European Commission the executive arm
of the EU, will use the agreement to propose a series of concrete
initiatives. It plans, for example, to table a proposal to use satellite
systems to map the flow of logging and enable a clampdown on the illegal
timber trade. The EC wants to strengthen current monitoring systems by
funding controls on tropical wood at borders.
The EU proposals
are based on the Agenda 21 plan of action for the environment adopted by
world leaders at the Rio summit ten years ago, and the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce poverty. EU ministers reaffirm what they
see as the main aims of sustainable development: eradicating poverty,
promoting sustainable production and consumption, reconciling globalization
and sustainable development, conserving and managing natural and
environmental resources, and enhancing international environmental
governance. But divisions have arisen within the EU as well over subsidies
for agriculture and fishing. Northern states like Sweden want a commitment
to "reduce or as appropriate eliminate subsidies which have been assessed as
environmentally harmful." Southern European states such as Spain and Italy
blocked commitments on subsidies. The text agreed now proposes only to
"encourage reform of subsidies."
The Jakarta Post
4 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20020604232112&irec=2
NUSA DUA, Bali
(JP): Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa have been appointed to mediate
negotiations on an action plan aimed at balancing global economic
development with the environment, in an effort to break the apparent
deadlock three days before Friday's deadline. The appointment came amid
estimates by some delegates that a near standstill may force negotiations to
continue in the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, South Africa -- a notion the Indonesian delegates reject. The
chairman of the preparatory committee meeting in Bali, Emil Salim said on
Tuesday that the three countries would call in opposing parties to get them
to compromise on a number of unresolved issues in the action plan. An early
draft of the revised action plan was released on Sunday. It is called the
Draft Plan of Implementation for the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, and replaces the first draft known as the Chairman's Text. The
draft plan, once agreed upon, will be called the Bali Commitment, and will
serve as a blue print for sustainable economic development over the next
decade. Emil said that negotiations were already speeding up in the final
days of the two-week meeting in Bali. "Everyone knows that negotiations will
end on Friday, they know there will be no other day," Emil said. Delegates
worked in groups, and reported the results to the plenary meeting on Tuesday
night. One Indonesian delegate said groups that have not finalized talks
would be sent back to negotiate. Emil said that with the time pressure
starting to work, the three appointed countries must coax delegates to "show
their cards" and make deals. Their appointments, he said, were necessary as
he would be busy chairing meetings for the political declaration for
Johannesburg. South Africa has been appointed because it would host the
upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg next
August. Brazil hosted the first summit at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro, which resulted in the Rio declaration. Several delegates and non
governmental organizations have blamed the slow progress on the U.S.
delegation's tough stance and its dominating presence throughout all
meetings. Emil said the U.S. delegation consisted of experienced
negotiators who would not reveal their positions "early in the game". "The
question is now, what motivates them," he said. Emil said that one thing in
favor of the Bali Commitment was that current politics in the U.S. required
the Bush administration to at least appear proactive on environmental
issues. President George Bush's administration has come under fire from
environmentalists for the alleged heavy involvement of oil and gas companies
in drawing up the country's energy policy. Bush's efforts to open up areas
in Alaska for oil drilling operations and alleged interests of a U.S. oil
and gas company behind the war in Afghanistan have further tainted the
administration's image. But a senior U.S. delegate said that developing
countries were demanding too much from the U.S. and warned against pushing
the envelope. He said that sustainable development should start with
developing countries improving their law and order and guaranteeing economic
freedoms. "It takes two to tango ... We will lead the dance but don't step
on our foot," said one American delegate who refused to give his name. The
delegate also played down hopes by many in Indonesia that his government
would agree on additional aid for poverty reduction and environmental
conservation efforts, due to the fact that many developing countries failed
to obey laws and regulations. He also expressed his doubts that more
assistance would actually reach needy people or protect the environment.
"The U.S. delegation insists that they will only reach a compromise when the
rest of the world considers the U.S. interests," he said.
Business Day via
All Africa
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200206030066.html
In keeping with the
theme of the summit, venues will make use of electricity from renewable
energy resources FOUR of the main venues to be used during the World Summit
on Sustainable Development which starts in August in Johannesburg the
Sandton Convention Centre, the Hilton Hotel in Rosebank, the Expo Centre at
Nasrec and the Ubuntu Village will be making use of "green electricity".
Although this is to cost the venues up to 35% more than conventional
electricity, their extra costs will be repaid by donors in the "green
electricity" sector. Green power is generated from renewable, sustainable
energy resources. This is seen as more environmentally friendly than coal or
nuclear power and commonly used in the UK, Australia, Germany and the US.
This power can be generated from wind, solar energy, certain types of plants
or heat from the core of the earth. At the moment less than a percent of
electricity in SA could be called "green", but this is expected to change
after the summit, according to a green energy service company, Agama. Agama
project leader Glyn Morris said negotiations on future tariffs for green
electricity in SA would be thrashed out with the National Electricity
Regulator at the summit. "It will be a chance to experiment with the
development of a green tariff, possibly a shadow tariff, that is not legally
binding. "While there is as yet no mechanism for trading green electricity
in a regulated market in southern Africa, a likely mechanism is green power
certificates certified and monitored by the National Electricity Regulator,"
Morris said. The higher cost of green power has to do with it being a new
technology with few users. The higher tariff also represents the "full" cost
of the product, which unlike coal and nuclear power, is not subsidised by
outside bodies. Health hazards and research are costs associated with
conventional electricity, said Morris.
Associated Press
Writer
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020603/ap_wo_en_po/indonesia_development_conference_3
JAKARTA, Indonesia
- International conference delegates raced to complete an agenda Monday
night for a much-anticipated U.N. summit, but they couldn't agree on who
will pay for programs to help countries reduce poverty and protect the
environment.
Poor countries want
more aid for programs expected to be approved at the upcoming World Summit
on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg in August. But rich
countries want such aid to come with conditions, such as commitments to
fight government corruption. Delegates at the preparatory conference "will
be working through the night" to finish the agenda before environmental and
economic ministers from their respective countries arrive Wednesday to
consider it, said Pragati Pascale, a U.N. spokeswoman for the conference.
The delegates had agreed on over 80 percent of the plan and were due to
finish it by Tuesday. But a U.S. delegate said some other countries were
holding the plan hostage to technical issues, such as the deadlines to
implement programs. Thousands of delegates have been meeting at the May
27-June 7 fourth preparatory summit meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali
to finish an "action plan" that is considered crucial to making the
Johannesburg conference a success.
Some 50,000
delegates are expected for what is being dubbed the "Earth Summit 2" in
Johannesburg. The meeting is timed to fall on the 10-year anniversary of the
first Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro, where the first global agreements on
environmental protection were reached. Critics say many of the environmental
protection measures that governments promised in Rio have not been achieved.
Three earlier preparatory meetings for the Johannesburg summit identified
five areas for negotiation: water and sanitation, energy, health,
agriculture and preserving natural ecosystems. Delegates at the Bali meeting
were expected to adopt official U.N. targets, such as halving by 2015 the
number of people who face poverty and hunger, and the number who lack access
to safe drinking water and sanitation. The United Nations estimates that 1.2
billion people around the world live in poverty. At least 1.1 billion lack
access to safe drinking water. Environmentalists at the talks have accused
wealthy nations - led by Japan and the United States _of blocking proposals
that would tie governments to a timetable for implementing the action plan
and providing money for development programs. Delegates from rich nations
urged those from poorer countries to address the corruption rampant in much
of the developing world through new good governance laws and stronger law
enforcement
European Union
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=MEMO/02/123|0|RAPID&lg=EN;
World Summit on
Sustainable Development: "Political commitment key ingredient for success in
Johannesburg"
Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström will head the European Commission
Delegation at the Ministerial Meeting in Bali 4-7 June. The meeting will
prepare the World Summit for Sustainable Development to be held in
Johannesburg at the end of August this year. Commissioner Wallström said:
"The results of the Bali meeting are critical for ensuring the success of
the World Summit. The launching of the Doha Development Agenda and the
successful outcome of the Monterrey Summit are important steps on the road
to Johannesburg but a successful outcome of Johannesburg is not yet assured.
The challenge of the coming weeks, and of the meeting in Bali, will be to
prepare credible political commitments to sustainable development backed by
precise targets and deliverables. Rio in 1992 was a breakthrough for
sustainable development but many of the actions agreed there have still not
been implemented. Johannesburg must move us from words to deeds".
Commissioner Wallström continued: "My objective for the meeting is that we
agree on ambitious but realistic political targets. I will also seek to
rally partners around an agenda for change based on a series of initiatives
on water, energy, health, sustainable patterns of consumption and
production, globalisation and trade and governance. Partnerships for action
in these areas can help resolve some of the biggest problems on the
international agenda". The European Commission has stressed on many
occasions that the European Union has a lot to offer in these priority
areas, in terms of experience, expertise, public funds and private sector
and civil society involvement. The Commission will use the Ministerial
meeting in Bali to forge partnerships to secure concrete deliverables at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and to bring all of the
elements of sustainable development together in a convincing plan of action
for the next decade.
BACKGROUND
The fourth
preparatory meeting (PrepCom4) for the WSSD takes place in Indonesia between
27 May and 7 June. The Ministerial meetings are scheduled 4-7 June. The
Indonesian chair has set three main objectives for PrepCom4: to adopt a
political declaration, an action plan and to identify partnerships to
deliver the agreed priorities. The European Commission believes that the
political declaration should signal a renewed commitment by all countries to
sustainable development. It should be clear, ambitious and realistic. The
action plan should have realistic targets and focus on concrete
deliverables, upon which countries can be held accountable. Partnerships for
action, involving all stakeholders should be formed to implement the action
plan. The EU's position is also that if partnership initiatives are to be
the main vehicle for implementing the outcome of the WSSD then they should
also be monitored in order to ensure that promises are delivered. In its
partnership initiatives the EU will pay particular attention to the needs of
Africa.
All Africa
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://library.northernlight.com/FD20020605500001144.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc
Geneva, Jun 03,
2002 (African Church Information Service/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX)
-- As the negotiations at the 4th Preparatory Committee to the World Summit
on Sustainable Development (PrepCom4 WSSD) proceed, one issue takes centre
stage: the consolidation and expansion of political and corporate power.
"It is time to acknowledge this," says Wendy Flannery from the Sisters of
Mercy. An ecumenical team of more than 15 people from World Council of
Churches (WCC) member churches and associated ecumenical organizations is
attending the PrepCom taking place in Bali, Indonesia from 27 May to 7 June.
The Summit itself will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August.
Sr Flannery was speaking as a team member at a 29 May press conference
jointly organized by the Government of Fiji, the WCC, the South African
Council of Churches, Christian Aid and the ecumenical team. The debt issue,
as seen from an ecological perspective, is high on the team's agenda. Martin
Robra from the WCC's "Justice, Peace and Creation" team, explains: "People
and Jubilee movements call for the cancellation of foreign debt. But we
should not only question the legitimacy of the foreign debt of indebted
countries in the South. We should also recognize what the North owes the
South after centuries of colonialism, slavery and exploitation of natural
resources, as well as the resulting ecological debt - a debt that
accumulated over the centuries and continues to do so at an
ever-accelerating speed." The ecumenical team recommends the identification
and quantification of the historical, social and ecological debts owing to
the peoples and countries of the South, not only in monetary terms, but in
terms of the contamination and destruction of the affected communities'
sources of life and sustenance. Shanthi Sachithanandam from Christian Aid
in the UK takes a critical look at the issue of energy: "Low-cost energy and
cheap access to resources are seen as fuelling economic development. Highly
industrialized countries gave those providing energy and other essential
resources of industrial production special privileges and power. The lessons
learned in the past about the dangers of global warming and climate change
and measures taken, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are being taken off the
agenda. They have been replaced by the naive promise of "energy for all"
without sufficient consideration for the need to move away from the carbon
and nuclear-based development path. Regarding energy the ecumenical team
recommends: o ensuring Indigenous Peoples' communities access to and control
of their land and resources, including the repeal or reform of unjust mining
policies and laws, and a moratorium on new applications for large-scale
extraction activities and land acquisition in Indigenous Peoples'
territories; oa global moratorium on exploration for new oil and coal
deposits; o phasing out of nuclear energy plants everywhere in the world; o
adopting and implementing the recommendations of the World Commission on
Dams with regard to hydro-power projects involving large-scale dams; o
giving priority in the generation and use of energy for appropriate,
affordable, ecologically-sustainable and accessible energy for the world's
poorest people, reaching a level of at least 10% of sustainable renewables
in 2007 and 25% in 2012. Looking ahead from Bali to the Summit in
Johannesburg, Sipho Mtetwa of the South African Council of Churches asks:
"While we are here negotiating text in Bali, the questions being asked back
home in Africa are: Who is the World Summit going to benefit? Will it
benefit the people of townships like Soweto and Alexandra outside
Johannesburg?" Communities in the global South have been and are
continually being plundered through various forms of extraction and
exploitation. More and more, the WSSD process is using the rhetoric of
partnership, a concept that is of value within the lives of families and
communities. True partnership is a relationship between equals. Regarding
corporate power the ecumenical team recommends: o a regulatory framework for
transnational corporations, as proposed in the vice-chairman's
implementation text, including mandatory compliance of transnational
corporations with principles of corporate social and environmental
responsibility, operational transparency, accountability, allowing access to
information, and conformity with enforceable codes of conduct; o
re-institution of the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations.
Regarding climate change the team recommends: o ratification of the Kyoto
Protocol by the time of the Johannesburg Summit and implementation
thereafter; o initiation at the earliest possible date of a new round of
negotiations on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
United Nations
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=3836&Cr=bali&Cr1=
3 June - Government
representatives negotiating a draft action plan for adoption at the upcoming
World Summit on Sustainable Development were working to resolve differences
over financing and trade issues, United Nations officials said today as
preparations for the forum entered its second and final week in Bali,
Indonesia. A senior UN official with the Summit secretariat said that some
of the issues that continued to be negotiated - such as financing, trade and
the launching of new programmes - were interlinked, so a new version of the
draft document was put together over the weekend to incorporate all the
cross-cutting issues into one package. The sticking points facing delegates
were similar to the ones faced at the end of last week, including various
aspects of the means of implementation of Agenda 21, such as trade and
finance, Lowell Flanders told a press briefing in Bali. Meanwhile, "fairly
good progress" had been made on the issues of oceans and energy, he added,
and most countries had it in mind to complete negotiations on the text in
Bali rather than hold them over until the Summit, which will convene from 26
August to 4 September in Johannesburg, South Africa. As for the upcoming
ministerial segment of the preparatory session, which will begin Wednesday,
Mr. Flanders said that the ministers would be focusing their attention on
discussing another major Summit output - the political declaration. The
ministers, he added, might also take up some of the political questions
underpinning the implementation programme.
United Nations
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/feature_story13.htm
03 June, BALI,
Indonesia- In the ten years since the Rio Earth Summit opened up the
decision-making process to include nine major groups from civil society, the
process of interactive dialogue has evolved in a manner that could serve as
a new model for future negotiations within the multilateral context. The
multi-stakeholder dialogues that concluded last week featured focused
discussions on the central objective of the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, which is to promote sustainable development activities that
will achieve measurable results on the ground. In separate sessions
covering sustainable development governance, capacity building for
sustainable development and the issue of partnerships, the representatives
of major groups voiced a wide-range of proposals to government delegates.
These ranged from the need for a legally binding convention on corporate
accountability to equal representation of women at all levels of economic
decision-making, and the need for prerequisites and principles for
partnerships. (See Chairman's Summary of the Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue).
The dialogues were noteworthy for the number of government delegates who
attended and participated, and PrepCom Chairman Emil Salim said the ideas
from the major groups are "important contributions and deserve our careful
consideration." The idea of allowing representatives of major groups-the
groups closest to people in society-to participate in the intergovernmental
discussion on sustainable development was radical when it was proposed, but
in its present incarnation of facilitated dialogues, it is even more
radical-representatives of major stakeholders can address their concerns
directly to each other, or to government delegates. As an answer to the
problem of dialogues becoming forums for lengthy statements and monotonous
monologues, the Bali multi-stakeholder dialogues used facilitators to keep
the discussions moving and on topic. "Negotiation in the multilateral
setting is broken and needs to be fixed," according to Paul Hohnen, one of
the facilitators. "Too much time, and too much money, is spent on achieving
too little." A good part of the dialogue in the sessions was interactive,
and delegations were put on the spot on occasion. But according to Ida
Koppen, the other facilitator, as long as the setting is so formal, it will
be hard to get away from people just making statements. "I was impressed by
the level of commitment by the representatives of the major groups," Koppen
said, but she added that there were widely varying degrees of preparations.
She noted that for many major groups, meeting beforehand was prohibitively
expensive. Many major groups, she said, enter the discussions from a feeling
of powerlessness, and consequently become defensive. But through
preparation, she said, there are ways to gain power, such as coming with
well-prepared proposals. Hohnen said the UN was showing leadership through
the multi-stakeholder dialogue, not only in raising issues, but also in
process. 'We covered a lot of ground in a short time. This is a road to go
down further in the decision-finding process." Both facilitators said that
dialogues could be enhanced if they could break down into smaller groups and
if the dialogues were not so closely tied to the formal negotiating
sessions. That, they said, caused many groups to assume postures from which
they could not budge in order to find common ground. In fact,
non-governmental organizations asked at one point during the discussion on
partnership, "where is this conversation going." The NGOs said that
discussing the partnership initiatives might make it seem as if they accept
the idea, when they reserved the right to reject it altogether if
governments fail to make serious commitments in the negotiated outcome
document.
The proposals put
forward by the major groups for consideration by delegations contain
suggested elements for partnerships and the means and mechanisms for
monitoring the follow-up after the Johannesburg Summit. The proposals call
for partnerships that are credible and have measurable objectives and
targets, can be monitored and have proper financing mechanism. They also
called for the partnerships to be guided by principles such as equality,
transparency, the precautionary and polluter-pays principles, and for full
participation at an early stage. The idea of respect for rights, and the
idea of equity between generations, were also stressed by the major groups.
United Nations
Press Release
3 June 2002
Internet:
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/bali/pressreleases/envdevb11-e.htm
As the fourth
Preparatory Committee for the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable
Development entered its second and final week, government representatives
continued their work on the draft implementation plan to be adopted by the
Summit this September in Johannesburg, South Africa. Speaking at the daily
briefing held by the Department of Public Information, Lowell Flanders, a
senior United Nations official with the Summit Secretariat, noted that some
of the issues that continued to be negotiated -- such as financing, trade
and the launching of new programmes -- were interlinked. With this in mind,
a new version of the draft had been put together over the weekend so that
the negotiators could see all the cross-cutting issues in one package. He
said the sticking points facing delegates were similar to the ones faced at
the end of last week, including various aspects of the means of
implementation of Agenda 21, such as trade and finance. "Fairly good
progress," he added, had been made on the issues of oceans and energy. Most
countries, he believed, had it in mind to complete negotiations on the text
in Bali rather than hold them over until the Summit. Discussing the upcoming
ministerial segment of the preparatory session, which will be held from 5 to
7 June, he noted that the ministers would be focusing their attention on
discussing another major Summit output -- the political declaration. The
ministers, he added, might also take up some of the political questions
underpinning the implementation programme. The draft programme of
implementation (see document A/CONF.199/PC/L.5*) comprises an introduction
and chapters on poverty eradication; changing unsustainable patterns of
consumption and production; protecting and managing the natural resource
base of economic and social development; sustainable development in a
globalizing world; health and sustainable development; sustainable
development of small island developing States; sustainable development
initiatives for Africa; means of implementation; and an Institutional
Framework for Sustainable Development. Also today, side events sponsored by
civil society and government representatives were held on such topics as:
partnerships for water, sanitation and hygiene and the New Partnership for
Africa's Development (NEPAD). As of Saturday evening, over 3,711 people are
participating in the preparatory meeting, including 1,458 government
delegates, 1,132 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and 150 journalists. A formal plenary meeting has been scheduled for 8 p.m.
tonight to discuss the draft programme of implementation.
