The Secretary-General's report to Prepcom 3 stressed that Agenda 21 was essentially a modified version of action plans endorsed by past UN conferences. However, there were some significant differences arising out of the complex and comprehensive mandate for the conference in UN General Assembly resolution 44/228, namely that:

Even a cursory examination of the vast array of issues covered made it clear early on in the UNCED process that Agenda 21 would have to be a comprehensive and complex document. But its scope began to become apparent only late in the process, after Prepcom 3. In its final form, it has 40 chapters spread over some 500 pages. It covers virtually every important issue related to environment and development, some less helpful than others. It is a document negotiated by government civil servants, most of whom had little personal expertise in the issues involved. The political controversies were substantial, and final consensus was reached only with considerable difficulty. This is important to emphasise, since it explains many of the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the document.

The chapters are divided into four sections:

Section 1 covers major underlying cross-cutting issues (poverty, demography, trade, economics etc) and section 2 the sectoral issues (forestry, agriculture, oceans, atmosphere, wastes etc). The "major groups" in Section 3 include women, youth, farmers, and NGOs. Section 4 deals with issues like financial resources, technology transfer, capacity building and international institutions. A complete list of the chapters in Agenda 21, and their main contents, is provided in appendix 2.

Most of the chapters divide into programmes, although some chapters contain only one programme. For each programme there are sections on

The section on means of implementation contains subheadings on finance and costs, scientific and technological means,

human resource development and capacity building, with modifications as appropriate.

A key clause in the preamble says that Agenda 21 "reflects a global consensus and political commitment at the highest level on development and environment cooperation". In UN terms, short of tough language on real and binding commitment, "political commitment at the highest level" is the best you can get. In practice, national leaders will only be held accountable through peer and public pressure.

As a secretariat paper for Prepcom 3 put it, "although not legally binding in nature, approval of Agenda 21 by UNCED would represent a high degree of political commitment which would provide the basis for the necessary complementary and supportive action...". As with other UN consensus resolutions, Agenda 21 is only worth what national governments are prepared to make it worth.

The fundamental issues for UNCED were the inequities between rich and poor, wasteful consumption patterns, the population explosion, and the need to integrate environmental concerns into mainstream economic decision-making. This line of thought is clearly reflected in Section 1, the seven chapters on social and economic dimensions that provide the conceptual core of Agenda 21. This is arguably the most important part of the document.

The first chapter deals with international economic issues with the rationale that sustainable development will be difficult to pursue unless the international economic climate is supportive. The chapter therefore deals with trade, debt, financial flows and the macroeconomic policy framework. The main purpose here is to highlight the linkage between these issues and sustainable development.

The three following chapters dealing with poverty, consumption patterns and population provide the analytical centrepiece. Nitin Desai, the Deputy Secretary-General of UNCED, has suggested that "the objectives included in these programme areas represent the hard core of the transition to sustainability". He points out that, with regard to poverty. Agenda 21 seeks to combine two strands of development action, one which focuses attention on improving the access of the poor to the resources that they need for survival and development, and one which concentrates on management of these resources. These two strands need to be woven together to ensure that anti- poverty programmes have in them an element of natural resource management, and that resource management programmes include in them an element of improved access to these resources by the poor.

References to poverty and to the need to empower the poor to participate more actively in programmes to protect the environment recur throughout Agenda 21 and are one of its principal themes. The document therefore calls for a fresh look at approaches to deal with poverty and environment. There are in various chapters several references to "primary environmental care", a methodology to meet basic needs through empowerment of communities to protect their own environment.

The chapter on consumption patterns essentially recognises that this area presents problems for the global environment and that "all countries should strive to promote sustainable consumption patterns". Some first steps towards the assessment and tackling of this intractable problem are presented, but the text is weak. The United States, often supported by Japan, consistently tried to water it down even further to reduce the responsibility attributed to rich nations for unsustainable consumption patterns.

A key chapter on demographic factors follows. It emphasises that the growth of world population in combination with unsustainable consumption patterns places increasingly severe stress on the global environment, affecting the use of land, water, air, energy and other resources. This chapter contains concrete recommendations for integrated action programmes at the local level that are consistent with the approaches advocated to tackle poverty. Desai stresses that these three programme areas - poverty, consumption patterns, and demographic pressures - provide the organising principles for the sectoral chapters of Agenda 21, and are much reflected in them.

It is a pity that this grand design underlying Agenda 21 is not highlighted more clearly in the preamble, because it will be lost on many readers. The document certainly represents a very brave attempt to draw up a master plan for environment and development well into the next century. However, since it sets out to be all-encompassing, it inevitably becomes complex; and since it is a negotiated UN text, it makes for difficult and tedious reading.

The main achievement of Agenda 21 is that it provides a comprehensive inventory of the issues pertinent to sustainable development, highlights linkages between them, and suggests principal action programmes. As such, it provides an important framework and point of reference for future work. No doubt there will be attempts to refine its analytical approach in coming years and improvements on parts or all of it. Nevertheless, it constitutes a significant point of departure for intensified efforts to put the world on a more sustainable path of development. This is an important outcome, given the difficulties of steering this text through the negotiating process. Much credit goes to the conference organisers, primarily the conference chairman. Tommy Koh from Singapore.

It would be fatuous to try to list what Agenda 21 leaves out. Even if most major issues are covered, one can always claim that some aspect has been left out. One can argue endlessly about the coverage of individual chapters and about the perspectives adopted. Clearly, some chapters are better and less ambiguous than others, depending on the issues involved and on the controversies they caused during negotiations. For example, chapter 8 on the linkage between environment and economics was never controversial and is clear and succinct, while chapter 4 on consumption was much debated and is vague and unspecific. But some overriding points may be made.

First, from the point of view of the developing countries, Agenda 21 represents a climb-down and a disappointment in terms of the original conference objectives stated in UN General Assembly resolution 44/228. As Adil Najam has pointed out, "Agenda 21 is weakest on the very things that 44/228 stressed the most: financial arrangements, institutional arrangements, and technology transfer". He suggests that Rio did not take these issues any further than the UN environment conference in Stockholm 20 years earlier.

Second, the principal shortcoming of Agenda 21 is that it is not funded. Prepcom 3 requested the conference secretariat to provide full cost estimates, but it is doubtful whether this could ever have been done in a meaningful way. The cost estimated by the secretariat, in total some US $600 billion annually of which US $123 billion was to be covered by foreign aid, was a totally unrealistic figure in terms of the actual money which would materialise. Since all were aware of the wide error margins in these estimates, it was not a good basis for serious debate. The current political climate in the donor countries is not conducive to increased aid flows, let alone huge increases based on uncertain estimates. In that it is unfinanced, Agenda 21 can always be dismissed by critics as a meaning of paper.

Third, there is no attempt to priorities; everything seems equajimportant (a chronic shortcoming of UN documents). It is possible to surmise the priorities from the first chapters; certainly poverty eradication is obviously and very rightly held out as a priority. But these unstated priorities should have been stated and stated clearly. There is no attempt to define the relative scale of the issues involved nor of the action programmes proposed. This tends to reinforce the impression that it is a paper exercise, a plan in need of much more refinement before it can be called operationally useful.

Fourth, the emphasis on poverty leading to environmental problems obscures the fact that it is in many cases inequity and pursuit of wealth, often by the richer countries and societal groups, which cause more serious problems -including poverty itself. In the references to poverty-related programmes there is much use of the word "community" but little recognition of the conflict and the lack of homogeneity found within many communities.

Fifth, many of the statements concerning the need for redistribution of land to the poor and empowerment of communities are poorly grounded in practical experience and in the realpolitik of many countries. More equitable ownership of land would certainly be conducive to sustainable development but remains a pipedream in many countries. Further, many of the recommendations - for example on "accelerated afforestation and reforestation programmes" in arid lands - fly in the face of a largely negative practical experience. In the absence of any explicit recognition of implementation difficulties, the document at times gives an impression of naivety.

Sixth, there is great emphasis throughout Agenda 21, in chapter 38 and elsewhere, on the "unique position" of the UN system in implementing the agenda. It is useful to remember that bilateral disbursements of aid over the last several years have been 3-4 times higher than multilateral disbursement. As underlined by recent studies, the UN system is often inefficient, disorganised, and in dire need of improvement. Perhaps it is inevitable that Agenda 21 has a strong UN focus, but some recognition of the role and abilities of the UN system relative to other international and national actors would not have been out of place.

A concluding assessment of Agenda 21 would be that it should be seen as a valuable first step in a process to gradually refine international cooperation towards a more sustainable world. It may even provide an important framework for such work.