Governments and UNCED
The imperative of national strategies for
sustainability of UNCED tended to focus on the global issues, and
Agenda 21 is an aggregation of action plans on the global level.
Yet it is on the national level that the precepts of Agenda 21 can
be made meaningful and operational. This is where there is
knowledge, concern, involvement, and the capacity to act. Only more
concerted action at that level can solve the global environmental
problems.
This is recognised in the Preamble to Agenda 21
and continues as a cross-cutting theme in many chapters. Chapter 8
calls on each government to "adopt a national strategy for
sustainable development". Chapter 37, 'National Mechanisms',
says that all countries should be "building a national consensus
and formulating capacity-building strategies for implementing
Agenda 21". Chapter 38, 'International Institutional
Arrangements'. states that "national-level efforts should be
undertaken by all countries in an integrated manner so that both
environment and development concerns can be dealt with in a
coherent manner". The chapter goes on to say that the aid
agencies "should make greater efforts to integrate environmental
considerations and related development objectives in their
development assistance strategies" in order to "better support
national efforts to integrate environment and development".
There are already a variety of approaches to
integrating environment and development in national plans. In his
statement to the conference the President of the World Bank
promised that the bank would do this in all its borrowing
countries. The World Conservation Union has a widely applied
approach to what it calls ''strategies for sustainability".
Various bilateral donors have their own methodologies.
NGOs and UNCED
The one generalization that can be made about
NGOs is a negative one: they are not government. NGOs include
business groups, trade unions, local government, scientists'
groups, the traditional non-profit peoples' organisations such as
local wildlife trusts and those, such as the Wildfowl and Wetlands
Trust, established through the vision of individuals, and even the
International Federation of Police Officers.
The fact is that, in UN terms, NGOs have had an
unprecedented opportunity to participate in and influence the
preparation of Earth Summits, but less chance to participate in the
events themselves.
Some of the toughest inter-governmental fights at
the first preparatory meeting for Rio concerned the rights of NGOs
to speak and make written submissions to the official plenary. NGOs
won this right, but of course were barred from actual negotiation.
NGOs were also granted discretionary rights to attend "informal"
meetings. Many NGOs were official members of government
delegations, with access to classified briefs and closed
negotiation sessions. Some actually found themselves in the awkward
position of negotiating and speaking for their governments. Others
were close advisers to the conference secretariat.
Many groups were organised in their own countries
to produce national sustainable development reports which were far
better than those of their governments.
In terms of influencing the actual texts, whole
sections of Agenda 21 can be traced to NGO drafting groups and
coalitions. One example is the section in the poverty chapter on
"empowerment", which completely changed the orientation of the
text. Another success was the recommendation for participation in
decision making, with a particular emphasis on the role of women.
Another theme, that of taking actions and making decisions as close
as possible to the people, was pushed by NGOs. The Commission on
Sustainable Development was given a significant boost by NGO
lobbying. Many other examples can be found, and it should not
forget that the fact that the Earth Summit was happening at all was
due, in some measure, to the persuasive skills of environment and
development organisations.
Chapter 27 in Agenda 21 deals exclusively with
NGOs, even establishing the objective that by 1995 "a mutually
productive dialogue" should have been established between all
Governments and NGOs on sustainable development. The chapter calls
on both UN agencies and governments to be more receptive to, and
supportive of, NGOs. In addition, chapter 38 on international
institutional arrangements underlines the role of NGOs in the UNCED
follow-up process. Given the initial resistance (notably from some
G77 countries) to a wide NGO participation in the UNCED process,
NGOs could hardly have hoped for a more propitious outcome.
The overall conclusion must be that for NGOs
concerned with environment and development, Rio represented a push
forward, a raised profile. and an added recognition by governments
and international organisations.