NGOs Develop Strategies for Upcoming Summit on Sustainable Development

This week in Copenhagen, representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from 50 countries in every corner of the world met to prepare for a world summit on sustainable development called for by governments at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Their message was clear: The international institutional framework, as it is today, is not adequate to achieve sustainable development (defined as meeting human development needs while preserving environmental resources for present and future generations).

In May of this year, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development called for a new world summit on environment and development in 2002. The timing of this summit will come on the ten year anniversary of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro. The 2002 meeting will be the first time since the Rio conference in 1992 that heads of state and government from the world’s countries will gather to assess progress on sustainable development. Much work will have to be done to make this an event which is meaningful.

During and after the Rio conference, countries working through the UN developed an action agenda for achieving sustainable development, executed environmental conventions on climate, desertification and biodiversity, and world conferences on social development, population and habitat needs and women’s rights. United Nations’ agencies mandated to integrate development and environment are weak institutions. Most developed countries have not committed resources they pledged.

During the same period World Trade Organisation was launched with the sole intent to liberalise trade. Integrating development, social and environmental aspects of trade is not the mission of this new and much more powerful institution. In addition, the World Bank and the regional development banks continue to finance projects which foster large scale development with negative social and environmental impacts. Programs of these institutions moreover tie conditionalities that worsen social and environmental conditions in developing countries.

The NGOs at the meeting in Copenhagen, found that this imbalance must be addressed as part of the summit in 2002. The NGOs developed concrete proposals. They assert that some new arrangement redressing a widening imbalance between rich and poor countries must come out of a new summit. They assert that development and poverty eradication should be at the top of the agenda for the summit in 2002. They were of the opinion that sustainable development is not just about attending to a few environmental problems considered to be important by countries in the North.

The summit should arrive at action-oriented decisions aimed at solving problems important for people in the developing countries. These countries need clean water for all without exhausting water resources. People in their countries must be able to feed their populations and trade products without depleting the land base and without loosing small farmers. They must develop sustainable energy sources.. Most important, developing countries need the resources and institutional capacity at the national level to accomplish these goals. At the meeting, the NGOs developed concrete strategies related to these needs.

"This very first meeting in the process has been of great importance. The global civil society has rediscovered itself and its visions. NGOs from the South and from the North now have one agenda towards 2002: Sustainable Development with a capital D", says Mr. Martin Lidegaard, deputy secretary general at the Danish Association for International Co-operation.

The meeting was organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature (Denmark), the Danish Association for International Co-operation and other Danish NGOs working on environment or development.

For further information, please contact John Nordbo, Danish press liaison in connecting with the meeting, on +45 77 31 00 06.