Governments & NGOs
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.
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