For the first time in history, human society possessed the capacity and knowledge to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment, South African President Thabo said on Monday.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the World Summit of Sustainable Development (WSSD), he said the Johannesburg gathering had a responsibility to society to culminate in a meaningful global
plan of action.
“There is every need for us to demonstrate to the billions of people we lead that we are committed to the vision and practice of human solidarity, that we do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest.”
Tens of thousands of delegates will meet in Johannesburg over the next ten days in the biggest event of its kind ever in Africa.
They are expected to hammer out a plan for the future of the planet.
Mbeki said it was sad the world had made little progress in realising the grand vision of the previous Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero ten years ago, Agenda 21, and other international agreements.
“It is no secret that the global community has, as yet, not demonstrated the will to implement the decisions it had freely adopted.”
The result of this was the avoidable increase in human misery and ecological degradation, including the growth of the gap between the North and South.
“It is as though we are determined to regress to the most primitive condition of existence in the animal world, of the survival of the fittest.
“It is as though we have decided to spurn what the human intellect tells us, that the survival of the fittest only presages the destruction of all humanity,” he said.
A global society based on poverty for the many and prosperity for a few was unsustainable.
Mbeki said delegates to the summit had an obligation to respond with all seriousness and a sense of urgency to adopt a meaningful Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.
Human society now possessed the resources to eradicate poverty, but to do this all had to agree to the concept of a common but differentiated responsibility.
The world had grown into a global village and the survival of everybody demanded a universal consensus that there “is no longer any river that divides our common habitat into poor and wealthy parts”.
“The peoples of the world expect that this World Summit will live up to its promise of being a fitting culmination to a decade of hope,” he said.