Feature

[Thipawun Ketkaew/UNEP/Still Pictures]

Fayen d'Evie

In August 2002, the world's attention will be drawn to Johannesburg, South Africa, where tens of thousands of people, including many heads of state, will converge for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The Johannesburg Summit will be an important milestone in the international community's progress toward securing a safe, just and sustainable future for the Earth and its people.

The Summit is taking place at a significant moment in history: 30 years after the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972) ushered in a new era of environmental consciousness; and 10 years after the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio in 1992 directed both the global political and the popular spotlight onto the goal of sustainable development.


UN Conferences

The Stockholm Conference, the first global environmental conference, was concerned with the need to preserve and improve the human environment, including safeguarding natural resources and wildlife, as well as halting toxic pollution. It launched important environmental initiatives, including a worldwide environmental education campaign, annual national "State of the Environment" reports and an annual World Environment Day (June 5), and saw the creation of the United Nations Environment Program. It also marked the beginning of international cooperation to control "transboundary" air pollution.

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit was a watershed event that went beyond the human environment focus of Stockholm. It dealt with rethinking the whole process of development, and looking for ways the nations of the world could collaborate to reverse environmental destruction and degradation, and to protect and restore the health of the planet. It emphasized our interdependence, and reinforced the goal of "sustainable development"--development that meets the current world population's needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Although this idea had already been popularized in some academic and political circles, the Earth Summit brought the concept to the attention of policymakers and the general public worldwide--through the assistance of more than 8,000 journalists from over 110 countries who reported daily from the Summit. 

The Earth Summit ushered in a new era of inclusiveness for the United Nations, bringing together more than 35,000 people, including delegations from 172 countries and over 100 heads of state and government. At the same time, more than 1,000 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) participated, including around 300 from developing countries. As one NGO participant recalls, "More delegations than ever before had NGOs on them. Access to official sessions was expanded significantly. We were everywhere . . . ." The outcomes of the Summit reinforced the continuing need to encourage "the broadest public participation and the active involvement of the NGOs and other groups" in order to achieve sustainable development. 

After 12 days of debate and negotiation at the Earth Summit, agreement was forged on the cornerstones of a new partnership between North and South nations for the global good: first, a general declaration of principles (known as the Rio Declaration) to guide the international community in its efforts to achieve sustainable development; second, a special declaration of principles to guide the conservation and management of forests; and finally, Agenda 21, an ambitious and comprehensive plan of action for implementing sustainable development at the global, national and local levels. 

Agenda 21 set out the basis for action: objectives, activities and means of implementation for program areas ranging from combating poverty to changing consumption patterns, from protecting the oceans to managing hazardous wastes. Agenda 21 reinforced the need for a fundamental reshaping of countries' decision-making systems to achieve integration of environment and development concerns, by considering them holistically and balancing economic, social and environmental factors, which had traditionally been treated separately. It also reinforced the need to develop new forums for dialogue that would help integrate the interests, perspectives and visions of national and local governments, industry, science, agriculturalists, environmental and social justice groups, and ordinary citizens. 

Two other important outcomes of the Earth Summit were the Convention on Biological Diversity, which confronted the dramatic rate at which species have been disappearing due to pollution and habitat destruction, and the Convention on Climate Change, aimed at reducing the accelerating impact of human activities on concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

The 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development is not aimed at discarding the Rio Agreements or creating a brand-new global blueprint for achieving a sustainable world. However, as Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the Rio Earth Summit, said in his opening address at that time: "The Earth Summit is not an end in itself but a new beginning. . . . Thus, the results of this conference will ultimately depend on the credibility and effectiveness of its follow-up." Herein lie critical questions for us now: Have we truly maintained the momentum of Rio, and how successful has the follow-up, or implementation, of the Rio Agreements been? 


Record of Success

There have been many success stories. Over the past decade, Agenda 21 has spurred the development of a multitude of global, regional, national and local projects that have helped forge a more sustainable pathway of development and a cleaner, safer environment. A raft of national laws, as well as regional and international treaties, have been signed since 1992 on issues from protecting marine resources to banning the manufacture and use of toxic pollutants. A number of countries have established National Strategies for Sustainable Development. Over 6,000 local councils have developed Local Agenda 21s to achieve sustainable development goals in their communities. Key sites rich in biodiversity have been declared protected areas. Industry innovation has led to energy-efficient and clean energy technologies, eco-efficient building design and expanded market access to energy from renewable sources.

However, there has also been widespread inaction, and broken promises on the part of many governments. Some governments have begun to shy away from talking about "sustainable" development and argue returning the focus simply to development, measured in the purely quantitative terms of GDP growth. Others ignored their earlier commitments to increase their aid to developing countries to assist them to develop sustainably. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan remarked recently, " . . . there is a feeling of loss of momentum. As our attention has been focused on conflict, on globalization or, most recently, on terrorism, we have often failed to see how these are connected to the issue of sustainability. That word has become a pious invocation, rather than the urgent call to concrete action that it should be." 

A crowded street in India  [PLANetWIRE/Raghu Rai]

As a result, we now find ourselves, a decade after Rio, facing a world where 5 million people die each year from polluted drinking water, over 800 million people suffer from chronic malnutrition, 2.6 billion kilograms of pesticides known to be toxic to humans is applied to our soils each year, and 1.3 billion people are struggling to exist on an income of less than US$1 a day. 

Given the focus of Johannesburg on implementation, many hope that it will give new impetus to Agenda 21 by generating concrete action proposals and establishing defined targets. As Kofi Annan has stressed, "Agenda 21 and all that flowed from it can be said to have given us the 'what'--what the problem is, what principles must guide our response. Johannesburg must give us the 'how'--how to bring about the necessary changes in state policy; how to use policy and tax incentives to send the right signals to business and industry; how to offer better choices to individual consumers and producers; how, in the end, to get things done."


Coping with a New World 

Some of the greatest challenges of the Johannesburg Summit will be in tackling issues that have changed the context in which we look at environment and development since 1992. These include: the pace of globalization, the broader political influence and market reach of transnational corporations, insecurity following the September 11 terrorist attacks, ramifications of new applications of genetic engineering, the information technology revolution and the dramatic changes in communication and access to knowledge brought about by the rapid spread of the Internet. 

Many organizations are also hoping that the Johannesburg Summit will endorse the Earth Charter, a moral and ethical framework to guide people's relationships with each other and with the Earth for sustainable living. The need for an Earth Charter emerged as people began to realize that sustainability will never be achieved if people just continue to live and act "business-as-usual." Instead, sustainability requires a significant transformation in our values, motivation and will. An Earth Charter was proposed at the Rio Earth Summit, but the resulting Rio Declaration, with its human-centered perspective, fell short of the hopes for a Charter that would have affirmed a respect for the Earth and its whole community of life. 

Since then, the Earth Charter has been redrafted, through an extensive worldwide public consultation involving hundreds of thousands of people. With such a large support base for the Charter going into Johannesburg, it is hoped that this time, governments will have the courage and vision to endorse the Charter in some way and put it into practice. 

River Cononaco, Ecuador [Adrian Warren/www.lastrefuge.co.uk]

Although NGOs were highly visible during the Rio Summit, many felt that their participation was of limited real impact in terms of influencing the final official declarations, treaties or Agenda 21. Over the past 10 years, spurred on by the challenge set at Rio, the UN has been opening up to greater and greater degrees of NGO participation. Many hope that Johannesburg will exemplify a new degree of access for NGOs in shaping the international community's approach to environmental protection and socioeconomic development--to the extent of shaping the language in which its conclusions and goals are framed. As NGO representatives declared recently: "We are convinced that this kind of equal partnership will lead to positive negotiated solutions, which have a much greater chance of being accepted and implemented by all." Even more fundamentally, many feel that for Johannesburg to be a success--for the actions recommended there to be embraced fully by communities worldwide--all people, not only those involved with NGOs, must be given a chance to have their say about what has worked, what hasn't worked, and where we should go to from here to secure a sustainable future. 


Mobilizing Public Engagement 

To propel the Johannesburg Summit to new heights of participation, some dozens of governments and thousands of NGOs have been busy for the past two years in raising popular awareness about the Summit, organizing local, national and regional public forums. The Earth Council, which has a unique bond to the process, is playing a key role. The secretary-general of the Rio Earth Summit, Maurice Strong, created the Earth Council in 1992 to promote the implementation of Agenda 21 and the other Earth Summit agreements. Since then, the Earth Council has focused on diverse programs and projects to support and empower people to build a secure, equitable and sustainable future--including promoting the Earth Charter. 

In the lead-up to the Johannesburg Summit, the Earth Council's National Councils for Sustainable Development Program has supported the efforts of some 80 countries in Africa, the Asia Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean to carry out assessments of progress in implementing the Earth Summit Agreement. These assessments brought together people from diverse walks of life, so that the analyses would benefit from an integrated perspective and the recommendations would be supported by all those involved. They examined the effectiveness of the countries' national strategies for sustainable development, as well as their efforts to strengthen integration and participation and to develop an education system which will promote sustainable development. 

The Councils also assessed their country's priority issues: for example, Suriname examined the issues of poverty, trade and the capability of its institutions, while Armenia tackled biodiversity, climate change and social justice. As well as highlighting successes, they looked at implementation problems, weaknesses and obstacles, and recommended action that could be taken to fix these. Finally, they presented a vision of their country's future, including targets that should be reached over the next five years.

Complementing these national assessments, the Earth Council's "Indigenous Peoples" Program has partnered with indigenous organizations in Costa Rica, Peru and St. Lucia, as well as indigenous youth in Panama. The purpose has been to assess progress in implementing sustainable development, and particularly Agenda 21, from an indigenous perspective. In Agenda 21, indigenous people are given special recognition for the historical relationship they have with their lands, and for the traditional knowledge of their environments that they have developed over generations. 


A Call to Action 

One of the major challenges for Johannesburg is to transform the common view of "sustainable development" as an irrelevant technical term into the insight that sustainable development is about every person's life and security. As Kofi Annan has stated, "Sustainable development may be the new conventional wisdom, but many people have still not grasped its meaning. One important task at Johannesburg is to show that it is far from being as abstract as it sounds. It is a life-or-death issue for millions upon millions of people, and potentially the whole human race." 

It is clear that with courage, vision and motivation, governments and individuals can make choices and take actions that will bring us all prosperity and security. It is crucial that we all get involved, in our businesses, schools, clubs, or at a national or international level. We can get involved by pressing our governments to take real steps to make sustainable development a reality--and by forming partnerships and taking action in our own lives and communities.

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