The World Summit on Sustainable Development will be the biggest United Nations conference the world has ever seen. The Summit will bring together world leaders, civil society activists and business representatives from around the world to work on a global agenda sustainable development.
It will involve four different events, all in Johannesburg:
An Ubuntu Village is being created at the Wanderer's cricket ground. This will be the transport and logistics centre for the Summit and will also host an exhibition on sustainable development.
While the summit is on, Johannesburg will also host to many different 'side events'. These are workshops, seminars and conferences that do not form part of the 'official' Summit programme, but which take place at the same time 'on the side'.
It will only be world leaders (Heads of State and key Ministers and officials) who will attend the official UN summit in Sandton. Business organisations representatives at country level will attend the Business Summit and local government representatives will attend the local government summit.
The People's Forum will be open to all Civil Society organisations, although there will be fee to attend. We should all encourage progressive NGOs and other people's organisations to attend the People's Forum.
"We do not inherit the earth, we borrow it from our children"
The WSSD will take place ten years after the Earth Summit held in Rio, Brazil in 1992. The Rio Summit was important because it brought a new understanding of development, called sustainable development. Sustainable development means joining together:
The definition of sustainable development adopted at Rio was: "Sustainable development is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." At Rio the leaders of the world agreed on this concept and also on a programme of action to achieve sustainable development called 'Agenda 21'.
But, 10 years after Rio, international progress in implementing Agenda 21 is very disappointing. Reporting on the implementation of the programme, Kofi Anan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, said, "progress towards the goals established at Rio has been slower than anticipated and in some respects conditions are worse than they were ten years ago".
Among the main problems are:
At Rio it was agreed: "All States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to decrease disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world."
But today, ten years later, over one billion people worldwide live on less than one dollar a day (or R10-00 a day). At the same time many countries of the North have the highest levels of economic prosperity in the history of the world.
Also, the gap between rich and poor has grown wider. In 1993 around 25% of the world's people got 75% of the world's income. In that same year, the US population (which is 250 million) had an income greater than the poorest 43% of the world's people (which are 2 billion).
Kofi Anan's report says that:
"During the 1990's, the overall poverty rate in developing countries, based on an income poverty line of $1 per day, declined from 29 per cent in 1990 to 23 per cent in 1998. The total number of people in income poverty declined slightly from about 1.3 billion to 1.2 billion. There has been substantial progress in reducing poverty through rapid economic growth in East and Southeast Asia, and some progress in reducing the poverty rate in South Asia and Latin America. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, where almost half the population live in poverty, there has been no progress in reducing the poverty rate, and the number of people in poverty has increased substantially."
The rich developed countries have not gone far enough in fulfilling promises they made in Rio - either to protect their own environments or to help the developing world defeat poverty. Poor countries are still unfairly denied access to the markets of rich countries.
The problem of debt has not been resolved and the rich countries have not increased their financial assistance to poor countries - instead it has decreased.
At discussions on global finance and the economy, the environment is still treated as an unwelcome guest. At the same time the rich countries do not want the WSSD to discuss issues related to the global economy. Instead they want it to focus only on environmental problems.
The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which sets targets for the reduction of pollution. This is an example of how the rich countries are refusing to change the way they produce and consume the world's resources
It is the poor who suffer most from environmental problems since it is they who have inadequate access to natural resources, and live in degraded environments. More than 1 billion people are without safe drinking water. Twice that number lack adequate sanitation. And more than 3 million people die every year from diseases caused by unsafe water. The biggest cause of death in children under the age of five is now acute lung diseases, caused largely by our world's pollution problems.
The state of the world's environment is still fragile. It is predicted that by 2032, half the world will be short of water, 70% of our land surface will be urbanised, and there will be another 2 billion mouths to feed. Already at least 33% of the planet's fish stocks have been depleted.
So, although the Rio Earth Summit agreed on the Agenda 21 programme, the world continues to face the problems of poverty, inequality, unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and environmental injustice. In some respects things have actually got worse than they were ten years ago. In this context the objectives of the WSSD will be to:
- Reflect on the implementation of sustainable development strategies since the Rio conference 10 years ago
- Define how we make sustainable development work, especially for the poor, over the next 10 years
The WSSD provides a unique opportunity for governments, UN bodies, business, civil society and the Development Finance Institutions to agree on the mechanisms and resources required to meet sustainable development targets at global, regional, national and local level.
The issues of development in an international context cannot be 'won' or 'lost' in one meeting. Building international consensus around progressive concepts of sustainable development is a long-term project - a long climb of which the WSSD is one stage. That is why we need to maintain our own momentum towards sustainable development well beyond the summit - for decades to come.
Eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, particularly for developing countries. The WSSD will be concerned with how to take forward these actions and is therefore an important forum, especially for the poorer countries of the world.
But the negotiating process within the UN is complex and difficult. No conference, by itself, can solve problems and what people and governments do after they have made the agreement in the conference is perhaps more important that the conference itself.
The decision-making process in the UN is very complicated. Decisions must be carefully analysed in terms of the implications they may have for each country. The issues on the agenda at the Summit have been preceded by some other key international agreements, in particular:
These agreements provide a sound basis for agreement in Johannesburg on concrete programmes for poverty eradication, especially in Africa. The WSSD must contribute to the achievement of the UN Millennium Declaration of poverty-related goals, including the reduction by half by 2015, of the proportion of people whose income is below $1 per day, the number of people suffering from hunger, and the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. It must also change unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, and protect and better manage the natural resource base of economic and social development
The Secretary-General of the UN has proposed that the following actions by the international community should follow the WSSD:
Provide access to at least one billion people who lack clean drinking water and two billion people who lack proper sanitation.
Provide access to more than two billion people who lack modern energy services; promote renewable energy; reduce over-consumption; and ratify the Kyoto Protocol to address climate change. We need to make clean energy supplies accessible and affordable. We need to increase the use of renewable energy sources and improve energy efficiency. And we must not flinch from addressing the issue of over consumption - the fact that people in the developed countries use far more energy per capita than those in the developing world.
Address the effects of toxic and hazardous materials; reduce air pollution, which kills three million people each year, and lower the incidence of malaria and African guinea worm, which are linked with polluted water and poor sanitation.
The links between the environment and human health are powerful. Toxic chemicals and other hazardous materials are basic elements of development.Yet more than one billion people breathe unhealthy air, and three million people die each year from air pollution - two thirds of them poor people, mostly women and children, who die from indoor pollution caused by burning wood and dung. Tropical diseases are closely linked with polluted water sources and poor sanitation. Conventions and other steps aimed at reducing waste and eliminating the use of certain chemicals and substances can go a long way to creating a healthier environment.
Work to reverse land degradation, which affects about two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands. As a result, agricultural productivity is declining sharply, while the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. In Africa, especially, millions of people are threatened with starvation. We must increase agricultural productivity, and reverse human encroachment on forests, grasslands and wetlands.
Reverse the processes that have destroyed about half of the world's tropical rainforest and mangroves, and are threatening 70 per cent of the world's coral reefs and decimating the world's fisheries. About 75 percent of marine fisheries have been fished to capacity. 70 percent of coral reefs are endangered. We must reverse this process - preserving as many species as possible, and clamping down on illegal and unsustainable fishing and logging practices - while helping people who currently depend on such activities to make a transition to more sustainable ways of earning their living.
To eradicate poverty, fundamental changes are required in the relationships between the rich countries of the North and the poorer countries of the South.
African countries have proposed a New Partnership for Africa's Development, which aims to shift these relations. African countries want a shift away from AID to TRADE access with developed countries. Knowledge partnerships are necessary to close the technology gap between developed and developing nations. Africa is calling for strong partnerships to support capacity-building initiatives, as well as affordable and accessible sustainable development technologies. Africa would like to see a transformation in existing financial mechanisms as well as increased access to them. Debt relief, particularly for heavily indebted poor countries, is recognized as a valuable contribution to the fight against poverty.
The agreements of the WSSD must agree on new parameters for these relationships, ensuring in particular:
These programmes must ensure that the poor have greater access to productive assets and skills. They must be designed to ensure that gender and racial inequality are addressed as a matter of priority. They must be associated with increasingly open and democratic governments and with improved systems for managing national and regional conflicts.
In addition to addressing global economic relationships between the North and South, the agreements of the WSSD will require specific social and environmental interventions. These will include social and economic programmes to deliver improved access to good quality education, healthcare, water and sanitation facilities, food security, energy services, shelter, safety and security and land. The agreements of the WSSD must ensure targeted measures to deal with communicable diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, cholera, T.B. and malaria. It will also require far reaching environmental programmes to build on the legacy of Rio in areas like desertification, biodiversity and atmosphere and protect the environmental rights of the poor. It should also address issues related to oceans and coasts, marine biodiversity, management of chemicals and waste.
These outcomes are what we, as a country, would like to see. They will be heavily contested at the summit.
The preparations for the WSSD have involved intensive negotiations between countries at the UN.
Everyone is agreed that that the Summit must be about the implementation of measure to realise sustainable development. Everyone is in agreement that poverty eradication should be the central focus of the summit. Everyone is in agreement that the Summit should emerge with a set of concrete, measurable, resourced and time-bound action plans in, among others, the following fields: water and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture and food security, and biodiversity. Everyone is agreed that these massive challenges require a partnership between governments, civil society and the private sector.
There is less agreement on the financing of sustainable development and on measures that would promote economic development. Without economic growth, sustainable development is unsustainable. Some of the biggest obstacles to poverty eradication are unsustainable levels of national debt, the lack of a fair and equitable global trade regime and the lack of market access. Producers in poor countries, especially farmers, are not able to sell their produce to consumers in rich countries because of agricultural subsidies in developed countries.
Aid from the rich to the poor is important and must be increased. Of equal, if not greater, importance is the need to remove obstacles to economic activity in developing countries. Today, developing countries lose far more as a result of trade barriers that they gain in the form of aid... While some of these matters must be negotiated in the World Trade Organisation, a summit on sustainable development cannot be silent on such obstacles to poverty eradication.
The Johannesburg World Summit will be an opportunity for the formation of a global partnership to roll back poverty. I am confident that world leaders gathered in Johannesburg will send a message of hope to the poor and destitute and thereby open a new chapter in human solidarity.
The main areas of disagreement that still have to be resolved, despite all the progress made in the preparatory meetings, are around trade and financing provisions.
Developing countries insist that a poverty eradication strategy should not ignore the most important causes of poverty, such as trade and in particular the lack of market access for agricultural products from poor countries. South Africa believes that a donor recipient paradigm in which the rich give handouts to the poor is not sustainable. We need real economic development that is sustainable. While aid is important and must be expanded, and debt must be reduced, it is more important for rich countries to do business fairly with poor countries, or to at least allow producers in poor countries a fair opportunity to compete with producers in rich countries.
So, it is impossible to predict now what will be the outcome of these complex negotiations at the summit, and even when the Summit is over, gains will have been made in some areas, whilst there will be ongoing struggles in other areas.
South Africa will remain committed to the principles of sustainable development no matter what happens at the Johannesburg Summit. Agenda 21 served to encourage and inspire our own democratic movement in South Africa to draft the Reconstruction and Development Programme. Therefore, many of the policies and programmes that we have put in place since 1994 are directly inspired by the outcomes of the Rio Earth Summit.
The Johannesburg Summit is relevant to South Africa in two ways:
Lets first look at some of the sustainable development problems we face in South Africa and then at what progress we have made to overcome them.
Global inequalities and patterns of poverty, perpetuated by unsustainable economic practices, are reflected in South Africa. We are one of the most unequal societies in the world and these inequalities reflect the racial and gender divisions created by apartheid.
The poorest 40% of our people receive 11% of the national income, while the richest 10% receive 40% of the total national income. Many South Africans continue to live without adequate water and sanitation. The majority of women in South Africa are unemployed, 48% of the women who are employed earn less than R500 per month and as many as 60% of female-headed households are classified poor.
The growth of about 23% of children under the age of 6 is stunted, indicating a lengthy period of under-nutrition. The most seriously affected children are those in rural areas whose mothers have relatively little education. The infant mortality rate is 8 to 10 times higher for Africans than for whites.
But what has this got to do with the environment? There are complex links between poverty, wealth and environmental degradation in South Africa, and this impacts directly on the quality of life of people. These include the following:
So, the themes of the WSSD are relevant to us in South Africa as well as the rest of the world. We must understand the relevance of sustainable development to addressing issues of poverty, democracy and quality of life. And we cannot address our development challenges in isolation of the global system.
But South Africa is not just a country where the problems of sustainable development are easy to observe. In addition, we are a country that, since 1994, has shown the world many innovative solutions to these problems. President Thabo Mbeki recently said
"The nations of the world elected to come to our country because they understand and appreciate what we have done in the last seven-and-a-half years to address within our own borders precisely the same questions that constitute the global agenda. They choose to convene in South Africa because they are convinced that we have something of value to contribute to the building of a new and more equitable world order that must surely emerge."
Since 1994, we have been implementing the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which reflects the objectives of Agenda 21. It is for this reason also that the WSSD is an opportunity to share both our successes and our failures in trying to achieve these complex goals with limited resources. We have many practical examples to draw lessons from that speak to the objectives of Agenda 21:
While South Africa has achieved much, we continue to face huge challenges of poverty and environmental degradation. These worsen with economic development that is not sustainable. In order to move forward on a sustainable basis, we must reflect on how we are consuming (depleting) and polluting (degrading) our natural resources. These are limited. Sustainable development means ensuring that we meet our natural resource needs whilst ensuring that out children will be able to meet theirs.
What we can do during the summit
What we can do after the summit
Mobilise the community for sustainable development
Remember that resources are limited and will not last forever
In order to make sure that the city of Johannesburg is prepared to accommodate the expected 60 000 guests, the South African government has established the Johannesburg World Summit Company (JOWSCO). It is the task of JOWSCO to co-ordinate all activities relating to the operations and logistics of the WSSD and its related events. This includes ensuring that transport and accommodation arrangements run smoothly. They can be contacted at:
Telephone: (011) 303 8200
Fax: (011) 303 8236
Internet: www.joburgsummit2002.com
E-mail: queries@wssd2002.com
The largest single event around the WSSD will be the civil society Global Forum in Nasrec. You can contact the WSSD Civic Society Secretariat using one of the many ways below
Telephone: (011) 403 4119 / 0763
Facsimile: (011) 403 4119
Internet: www.worldsummit.org.za
E-mail: info@worldsummit.org.za
| Post: | Physical |
| P. O. Box 31121, Braamfontein, 2017 |
16th Floor, Sable Centre, 41 De Korte Street, Braamfontein, 2017 |
The South African Government's Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) is leading our preparations for participation in the WSSD. They can be contacted as follows:
DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS AND TOURISM
Telephone: (012) 310-3911
Fax (012) 322-2682
Internet: www.environment.gov.za
If you have access to the Internet you may also find the following sites useful for general information.
International Institute for Environment and Development: www.iisd.ca/wssd
International Institute for Sustainable Development: http://www.iied.org/