At the Johannesburg Summit it was clear that the world is changing. Slowly, and sometimes
chaotically, humanity is responding to stress—and is changing its ways.
.As an implementation-
focused Summit, Johannesburg did not produce a particularly dramatic outcome— there were no
agreements that will lead to new treaties and many of the agreed targets were derived from a
panoply of assorted lower profile meetings. But some important new targets were established, such
as:
- to
halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015;
- to
use and produce chemicals by 2020 in ways that do not lead to significant adverse effects
on human health and the environment;
- to
maintain or restore depleted fish stocks to levels that can produce the maximum
sustainable yield on an urgent basis and where possible by 2015;
- and
to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity.
But Johannesburg also marked a major departure from previous UN conferences in many
ways, in structure and in outcome, that could have a major effect on the way the international
community approaches problem solving in the future.
"The question is, will Johannesburg make a genuine difference?" asked Summit Secretary-
General Nitin Desai. "That has to be the test for an implementation conference.
For the first time, outcome documents were not the sole
product of the Summit. While the
negotiations still received the lion's share of attention, the Summit also resulted in the launch of
more than 300 voluntary partnerships, each of which will bring additional resources to support
efforts to implement sustainable development. These partnerships, tied to the government
commitments, provide a built-in mechanism to ensure implementation.
And there was a new level of dialogue in Johannesburg between all the stakeholders, especially
between governments, civil society and the private sector. Beyond speeches and platitudes, the
participants in the Summit were forced to confront the needs and the arguments of other actors in a
truly interactive dialogue.
"Johannesburg gives us a solid basis for implementation and action to go forward," Desai said.
"Although the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation is only some 50 pages long, in many ways it
is more targeted and more focused than Agenda 21. We have agreed on global priorities for action
and we have agreed to take action."
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the press on the last day of the Summit, "I think
we have to be careful not to expect conferences like this to produce miracles. But we do expect
conferences like this to generate political commitment, momentum and energy for the attainment of
the goals."
Commitments were made in Johannesburg— on expanding access to water and sanitation, on
energy, improving agricultural yields, managing toxic chemicals, protecting biodiversity and
improving ecosystem management— not only by governments, but also by NGOs,
intergovernmental organizations and businesses, who launched over 300 voluntary initiatives.
Follow-through on these commitments will be the yardstick of success or failure, according to Mr.
Annan. "We invited the leaders of the world to come here and commit themselves to sustainable
development, to protecting our planet, to maintaining the essential balance and to go back home
and take action. It is on the ground that we will have to test how really successful we are. But we
have started off well. Johannesburg is a beginning. I am not saying Johannesburg is the end of it. It
is a beginning."
By any indication, there was substantial interest in the Summit. One hundred world leaders
addressed the Summit and all in all, more than 22,000 people participated in WSSD, including
more than 10,000 delegates, 8,000 NGOs and representatives of civil society, and 4,000 members
of the press.
"We knew from the beginning of the Johannesburg process that the Summit would not produce any
new treaties or any single momentous breakthrough," Desai said. "But the results of the Summit
have been far more comprehensive than any previous outcome. We have put together not only a
work plan, but we have identified the actors who are expected to achieve results."
"People forget that there was no agreement on energy at Rio and issues such as production and
consumption almost did not make it into Agenda 21, and— although it did— it was only a very
general statement. At Johannesburg, we agreed on a 10- year programme on production and
consumption, a concept that not only will affect the developing countries, but the development of
the richer countries as well."
"We have also achieved a high level of specificity in the outcome document, particularly with
regards to the targets and timetables," Desai said. "I know some may have wanted more, but
fulfilling these commitments will require new and additional resources."
Desai also cited the partnerships as an important outcome of the Summit. "One of our major
challenges is making sustainable development go to scale, to make something that has worked in
a dozen places work in a thousand places." Desai said the partnerships offer a way to get away
from the donor-driven frameworks of the past, and allow representatives from developed and
developing countries to sit down together to formulate plans when something has to be done.
"For those of you who have worked in developing countries, you are always at the receiving end
of
prescriptions and conditionalities. We need a shared programmatic structure framework and the
partnerships help meet this need."
"Some people have said that the partnerships are corporate-led," Desai said. "This is
not true. The
vast majority are led by non- governmental and intergovernmental organizations. But even if there is
corporate involvement, that is not a bad thing. We will not be credible if we don't have the
participation of business. We need to bring the energy of corporations into our agenda if we are
going to make good on our commitments."
Desai warned, however, that the partnerships were not a substitute for government responsibilities
and commitments and that the partnerships are solely intended to deepen the quality of
implementation.
Not everyone was pleased with the outcome of Johannesburg, particularly some NGOs who felt the
Summit did not go far enough in setting targets for increasing the use of renewable energies.
Jonathan Lash, World Resources Institute President, said, "We have missed an opportunity to
increase energy production from non-polluting sources like solar, biomass, and wind, and to provide
the many companies taking action to reduce emissions with a secure framework for their actions."
But Lash noted, "This Summit will be remembered not for the treaties, the commitments, or the
declarations it produced, but for the first stirrings of a new way of governing the global commons —
the beginnings of a shift from the stiff formal waltz of traditional diplomacy to the jazzier dance
of
improvisational solution-oriented partnerships that may include non-government organizations,
willing governments and other stakeholders," said Lash.
From governments, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who is currently President of
the European Union, said, "The conference has concluded a global deal recommending free trade
and increased development assistance and had committed to good governance as well as a better
environment." He added, "Now the time has come for implementation, at the national and
international levels. It is time to deliver."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Chairman of the Group of 77— which represents 132
developing countries — said he would have liked the Summit to achieve much more. Because of
time restraints, he said, the generalities that had been set out could be seen as retrograde. He
would have preferred emphasis on human rights, such as the right to housing, health, drinking
water, life.
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) had also hoped for more. Julian Hunt, Minister of
International Trade and Civil Aviation of Saint Lucia, speaking on behalf of SIDS, said that small
islands needed more help to confront the trade aspects of globalization, and that efforts to promote
the use of renewable energy were frustrated by multinationals who demand a quick return on their
investment.
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell called the Summit a "successful effort."
He
said, "I think it shows that we have a shared vision of how to move forward. I think it
shows that the world is committed to sustainable development. He added, however, that the
real challenge "is not just what is said in the statement, but the actions that will take place
in the months and years ahead."
Summary
In summary, according to most assessments of the
official 54-page Plan of Implementation, is something
between a modest step sideways and a small step backwards.
One of the first things to be agreed to by World
Summit negotiators was that the world still has a long way
to go to achieve the substantial ambitions of the historic Rio treaties of 1992. Unlike at the earlier
Earth
Summit, there were no major treaties up for negotiation in Johannesburg. Instead, the focus was on
concrete steps for moving the Rio agenda forward.
Much of the debate in Johannesburg revolved around
whether the Plan of Implementation should include
new targets and timetables related to sustainable development—complementing and building on the
Millennium Development Goals adopted by heads of state in 2000. Despite opposition from the United
States, the Johannesburg plan did in the end include several date-specific targets, including halving
the
proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015, restoring fisheries to their maximum sustainable
yields by 2015, eliminating destructive fishing practices and establishing a representative network
of marine
protected areas by 2012, reducing biodiversity loss by 2010, and aiming by 2020 to use and produce
chemicals in ways that do not harm human health and the environment.
The lack of detail in these commitments and the
acrimony that preceded them left many Summit participants
pessimistic about the world's ability to move forward on the most important issues facing humanity in
the
twenty-first century. The severe North-South splits on financial and trade-related issues seemed deeper
than ever, and the U.S. government's opposition to virtually any substantive multilateral commitments
led
some to wonder whether a half-century of progress in forging a cooperative global community was about
to
dissolve in chaos.
These well-founded concerns can hardly be dismissed,
but they capture only part of what was going on in
Johannesburg. The government negotiators who were niggling over the wording and grammar of
deliberately ambiguous paragraphs were literally and figuratively surrounded by one of the largest
collections of civil society organizations in U.N. history—ranging from environmentalists and
farmers to
human rights activists, local officials, and labor union representatives.
More than 8,000 nongovernmental participants were
officially accredited to the Summit. In addition to
participating in the official summit meetings, nongovernmental groups sponsored a broad range of parallel
events, such as meetings of parliamentarians, Supreme Court justices, local government officials, and
trade
unionists. An estimated 20,000 people representing Africa's dispossessed marched from one of
Johannesburg's poorest areas to the posh neighborhood where the conference was held to protest what
they saw as the meeting's failure to address the concerns of the poor.
The corporate world was also well represented in
Johannesburg. According to Business Action for
Sustainable Development, an estimated 1,000 business representatives participated in the Summit—with
120
of them being CEOs or Board Chairmen. In comparison, there were 104 world leaders in attendance.
The substantial presence of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) at an official meeting of governments
may have pointed to a strategy for accelerating the process of global change. Because of their scale
and
because of the politics that surround them, governments and international institutions are often influenced
by archaic ideologies or beholden to entrenched economic interests. Outside groups with fresh ideas
and
representing new political pressures are often required to overcome the momentum of the status quo.
The coming together in Johannesburg of NGOs committed
to social betterment, environmental progress,
and the creation of new economic opportunities represents a powerful force for change. And the fact
that a
large portion of these groups came from the South is an even more profound indication that the world
is
changing. In response to the failure of governments to agree on any clear principles regarding access
to
information, NGOs set up a voluntary code of conduct that no^n-governmental groups, international
institutions, and even governments can elect to join.
It is in the area of 'global issue networks'
that Johannesburg may have yielded its most significant results.
In addition to the official agreements, the Summit produced roughly 280 "partnership
initiatives"—agreements among national governments, international institutions, the business
community,
labor groups, NGOs, and other actors to carry out sustainable development activities. These agreements
were a significant departure from earlier approaches, where the emphasis was on accords among nation-
states. Examples of the new initiatives include a partnership for cleaner fuels and vehicles announced
at the
Summit that will involve the United Nations, national governments, NGOs, and the private sector, and
a
European Union "Water for Life" project that will help provide clean water and sanitation
in Africa and
Central Asia.
The growing role of developing countries in setting
the international agenda was also clearly evident at die
Johannesburg Summit. While that fact made North-South gaps more prominent, it also provided a needed
focus on the fact that we live in a world where growing inequality is one of the most pronounced and
disturbing global trends.
South Africa, itself a hybrid of North and South,
provides a signal example of a country that is striving to
bridge such gaps. But it is also emblematic of one of the biggest advantages our globalized world presents
today: diversity. Diversity in South Africa is represented not only by its highly complex racial and
cultural
mixes but by one of the world's great
"hotspots" of biodiversity. The Cape Floral Kingdom in the
southwest is home to 9,000 plant species. Diversity creates tensions and conflicts, but if those
are
successfully managed, diversity also spawns innovation and resilience that will ultimately make South
Africa a stronger country—and has the potential to make the world sustainable. It is far too early
to know
whether the diversity and innovation that marked the Johannesburg World Summit will ultimately fill
the
gaps left by governments.
