A year from now South Africa will host Rio+10, the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Johannesburg World Summit Company CEO Moss Mashishi looks at an event that he believes will make the environment everyone’s business
Until recently South African media coverage of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD 2002)has been largely about scale. And of course scale is important; global environmental challenges require a global response.
We’ve known for a while that South Africa can expect between 110 and 193 heads of state, more than 50 000 representatives of national governments and NGOs, and perhaps 3 000 members of the world media. Such numbers certainly have symbolic significance. However, in establishing common purpose across the developed-developing world divide lies the real achievement.
Defined as “that which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”, the concept of sustainable development, on which global environmental governance is based, dates back at least two decades.
Throughout the history of sustainable development there have been two agendas, one for the developed world and another for the developing countries.
Typically, the first group’s main concerns have included acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change, population stagnation, drug abuse and the loss of biodiversity. Among the second bloc’s priorities have been land degradation, desertification, water quality and access to it, rapid population growth, civil strife and war.
Back in 1972 Indira Gandhi in a keynote address at the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, where the linkage between economic development and environmental protection was the core theme and the foundation of global environmental governance was laid identified poverty as “the biggest polluter of all”. To most developing nations poverty still encapsulates everything that is wrong with the world.
Although the most important complete outcome of the first Rio summit, Agenda 21, put the human being at the centre of environmental concern, it failed to address many problems that continue to result in large outflows of economic resources from developing countries and loss of opportunity for them.
These outstanding issues are structural adjustment policies, low and falling commodity prices, a trend of decline in terms of trade, and the poor position of developing countries in the world financial and trading systems.
In recent years these issues have come increasingly to the fore in different international forums, including major sustainable development events. In 1995, at the World Social Summit in Copenhagen, global consensus was reached on the need to create an enabling economic environment to promote more equitable access to sustainable development and on the eradication of poverty.
At the Johannesburg summit next year these issues will again be at the heart of deliberations.
The eminent Washington-headquartered think-tank, Worldwatch Institute, sees the challenge of the Johannesburg world summit as follows: “With many life-support systems at risk of long-term damage, the choice before today’s political leaders is historic, even evolutionary, in nature: whether to move forward rapidly to build a sustainable economy, or to risk allowing the expansion of human numbers, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of natural systems to undermine the economy.”
From a Southern and, specifically, African perspective, we must insert into that vision our own specific needs, sensibilities and objectives.
Among South Africa’s main objectives is to ensure that the plight of the developing world, especially Africa that in many ways mirrors what is going on in most developing nations is heard and addressed. Africa is seeking more than increased financial aid and rapid green technology transfer: our quest is to advance the initiative to reposition the continent in global economic relations.
Sustainable development thinking has come a long way and, as host of the next sustainable development world summit, South Africa benefits from lessons learned at previous events of this nature. What we at the Johannesburg World Summit Company and our organising partners are determined to do is to contain the polarity that marred them, as well as recent globalisation summits.
We’re confident of achieving this through articulation, in concert with all major groups, of a clear vision of what we propose the summit should achieve.
There will be multi-stakeholder sessions and active recognition of the business and NGO sectors in the environmental debate. There will be major NGO sessions, but we don’t see this as amounting to an “alternative” Earth summit, as at Rio.
Within the broad theme of poverty eradication, the following areas, besides the reforming of institutions of international environmental governance, require urgent global responses:
HIV/Aids;
Access to clean water;
Access to sustainable sources of energy;
Containment of waterborne diseases;
Access to affordable housing;
Access to primary education; and
Bridging the digital divide.
This list is not exhaustive, but reflects the scope of issues to be addressed. Part of the challenge of the agenda-setting process for Johannesburg is to reduce the list to a deliverable set of objectives.
This is presently happening through policy units in the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and the Department of Foreign Affairs. This list will be submitted for Cabinet approval and then taken to the Southern African Development Community, the Africa Forum, the G77 and finally to the last preparatory meeting in Indonesia in May/June next year.
An evident weakening of political will to honour environmental obligations in recent years further magnifies the challenge. This was epitomised by the United States pulling out of the Kyoto Accord on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. No doubt, such failure will continue to make the headlines, as it has done at past summits.
While the host country cannot control this, it can lead by example bringing its own achievements, failings and aspirations in sustainable development to the heart of the summit.
Imperfect though it was, the Reconstruction and Development Programme was South Africa’s first stab at sustainable development and in continuing poverty alleviation. And its spirit lives on.
It’s no accident that the concepts of African renaissance and the Millennium Africa Plan (MAP) have come out of South Africa in recent years. In many ways, post-apartheid South Africa has sought to translate sustainable development thinking into policy and action both renaissance and MAP have strong affinities with sustainable development.
This is also true of the New Africa Initiative (NAI), which combines MAP and a similar concept that has originated elsewhere in Africa. NAI has to do with the mobilisation of the African continent towards greater accountability, self-reliance and the reengineering of the institutional and economic relations between the North and South for a more sustainable future.
As CEO of the body entrusted with organising the biggest global indaba in a decade between the developed and developing worlds, I take heart from President Thabo Mbeki’s apparent success in championing NAI in the developed world.
At Rio, 10 years ago, our nation was preoccupied with its transition to democracy; although the government of the day did submit a report on the South African environment, it chose not to be officially represented.
Now we’re at centre stage in the World Summit process and uniquely privileged to advance the global sustainable development agenda while advancing our own. Implicit in our selection as host is a great deal of trust on both sides of the developed-developing world divide. A world in one country in more ways than one, we’re expected to act as a bridge in hosting the world.
To achieve our sustainable development objectives in the process vindicating the trust of the international community in an African nation to host the most important global event of the decade we need the active and constructive participation of all key groups.
Among these are business, civil society, women, youth, organised religion, labour, educational institutions, the media. Their contribution will ensure a South African flavour to the World Summit.