Desighen Naidoo from the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism outlined the South African Government’s preparations for the WSSD, which are shaped around the core objectives of eradicating poverty and redressing global inequality, at a recent SARPN debate
Amongst other things the government wants to ensure that the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) secures progress on the commitments to halve poverty by 2015 expressed in the Millennium Development Goals by various heads of state, including South Africa’s.
A Global Deal
Through internal deliberations and consultations with stakeholders, including civil society, business and labour, the South African government has put together a list of 22 priority areas to secure a global deal at the WSSD. The list represents six core areas focusing on basic needs and on furthering sustainable development through efficient use of resources.
Six Core Areas for International Negotiations on Sustainable Development
| Area |
Targets / action |
Focus / issues |
| Water |
Specific targets for the 1.5 billion people who don’t have adequate access at present
Halve the number of people without access to hygienic sanitation by 2015 |
Integrated water resource management
Protocols around shared basins |
| Energy |
Halve the number of people who don’t have access by 2015 |
International: energy efficiency and renewable sources
South Africa: access to energy, in particular modern energy services |
| Food security |
Reverse the mal-distribution of food resources around the world
Access to agricultural markets |
Africa: double food production |
| Health |
Communicable diseases and HIV/AIDS
Water borne diseases |
Holistic approach based on WHO’s Health for All strategy |
| Education |
Expanding access to education
Skills development and literacy |
Millennium Development Goals need to be more concrete |
| Technology |
Technology transfers through technology partnerships |
Develop and customise technology to avoid inappropriate transfers |
Through this initiative the South African government aims to bring greater balance to the discussion on sustainable development by giving the social and economic pillars the same weight as the environmental pillar. The Monterrey Conference on Finance for Development and the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation established that many of the solutions for sustainable development on the economic front lie in redressing current global economic inequalities. These include debt cancellation and relief, access to markets and transformation of the global financial system.
The government believes that to have a real impact on poverty the WSSD needs to produce ten-year action programmes in each of these priority areas. It also wants to see a political declaration on a global deal for sustainable development. In addition to governments the deal must include the other partners, namely business, civil society, the development finance institutions and the international financial institutions. Making the deal work calls for a more effective international forum for sustainable development governance.
A regional model for sustainable development
The South African government is also working with other African governments to present NEPAD as a regional model of the approach needed to implement a global deal on sustainable development. The government hoped to get strong support for this from the fourth PrepCom in Bali and to carry this momentum forward to Johannesburg.
The International Governance System
Saliem Fakir, Director of the IUCN’s South Africa Office, describes some of the workings of international governance institutions and the issues they pose for transforming the system
The Bloc System
In the UN system each country has an equal vote so decisions are made by consensus, but in reality countries have economic ties and aid relationships with more powerful countries. Although you have consensus based decision-making and a one-vote system, you have blocs of countries that try to make decisions, like the G77, which is most of the developing countries and China, trying to reach consensus on issues to drive within the UN system. Part of the strategy is to try to get maximum consensus within the different blocs and then to engage the other blocs so that any outcome that is decided on will also influence the flow of resources.
If South Africa tables a programme on energy and water, as part of a global deal, it would have to work within first SADC, the Africa bloc, and then the G77 and try to get consensus within that. The louder and more consolidated the voice within the G77, the more likely it is to influence the agenda.
The programme of action that the WSSD agrees on is important because if a programme on water and sanitation that meets the Millennium Development Goals is secured, countries can tap into resources to support national programmes. This is crucial for countries like Mozambique that depend on foreign revenue for up to 80 per cent of their government budget.
Is Change Possible?
The question is whether comprehensive change is possible in the international system without comprehensive structural change in the global or national economies. Shifting resources from rich to poor affects the interests of the rich and powerful and will encounter resistance. This raises the question of how to engage with the inequality of power between different countries in the global economy in national economies.
For example, Monterrey was successful in securing increased donor assistance but made limited progress on addressing fundamental structural issues around trade and the global financial system.
One reason is that different issues are discussed in different intergovernmental forums where different power relations prevail. Powerful countries with a major stake in the global economy will avoid discussing substantial trade issues in a forum like Monterey. The World Summit is likely to encounter similar resistance to making commitments on a range of issues including aid, trade and debt.
Free Markets Are Not Enough
There is now broad agreement in international circles that free markets and deregulation are not enough to secure development and that governments need to intervene to stimulate certain aspects of the economy. The work of economist Amartya Sen shows that these macro level interventions need to be complemented by individual initiatives to secure development, underlining the importance of improving human capabilities in developing countries. Giving individual members of a nation greater freedom to explore their full potential and worth requires better governance, less corruption and better democratic systems that will allow them to access resources to develop their own welfare and that of their families.
While these insights have encouraged a more participatory and holistic approach to development policy and strategy there are still important areas of concern. One of these is the role that transnational or multinational corporations play in influencing the policies, particularly the economic policies, of many developing countries. To date there is no global governance system that sufficiently regulates their behaviour, and forums like Monterrey and the World Summit have not paid enough attention to their impact on the global economy and on the ability of many countries to deal with development issues.
Empowering Communities
Sandile Ndawonde of the Green Network, an association of community based organisations, describes some community expectations of the WSSD
Searching For Solutions That Work
From a community perspective there are many environmental problems that relate to poverty including waste management, land use, flood control and water supply and sanitation. Communities are looking to the summit to provide examples and case histories of approaches that work and those that don’t. They also need better information and communication, technology transfer and support to build their capacity to undertake development initiatives.
Communities would like to see the WSSD leading to closer working relationships between government, communities and NGOs. A fundamental need is to improve decision making processes so that people on the ground whose activities have positive or negative impacts on the environment and on poverty become part of the decision making process. Information flows between stakeholders, and CBO capacity to inform people also need improving. In general CBOs and NGOs need training in environmental issues and in leadership and management skills to improve the good work they are already doing.
Networks like the Green Network play an important role in helping people to avoid repeating mistakes. They help to identify needs so that programmes and projects can be initiated to meet those needs. CBOs will need funding to continue their work after the WSSD as they fill an important gap left by the lack of communication between government at local, district and national level. This is also something that needs attention.
Issues Raised in Discussion at the Public Debate on the WSSD
- The use of inaccessible language in the international and national environmental debate limits participation. Lack of action on Agenda 21 was partly because people could not understand it.
Workers and Communities
- Communities were not adequately consulted on the WSSD and it was not clear that they would receive any real benefits apart from promises of access to international markets.
- Workers will choose to work for a polluting industry rather than see it closed down.
- Recent environmental issues go beyond issues like biodiversity to direst impacts on the health of communities and workers.
- Communities as well as workers are affected by pollution. Self-regulation will not work as we have seen in the case of asbestos mining. Communities and workers should put pressure industries to invest and change the technology. Then we can all live a better life.
The Global Governance System
- To get a deal you need the power to make countries change, what are the levers to do this?
- The only way to change North-South relations is to find common South-South issues.
- September 11th has made the United States recognise that it is very dependent on external security, making it more open to discussions on international monitoring systems if not global governance.
- Recognition of the impact of current unsustainable consumption and production patterns in the north, particularly in the EU is forcing people to engage with the developing world.
- Although each country in the UN system has an equal vote, in practice countries work in blocs to get maximum consensus and then engage the other blocs so that any outcome will influence resource flows. Changing things depends on how one plays politics in those constituencies.
- The progressive agenda in this era of globalisation should be striving towards democratically constituted global government. The UN should be strengthened and organisations like the WTO and the IMF should be subordinated to it.
Sustainable Development
- Unless people have food in their stomachs and have their survival needs addressed they won’t hear about issues like earth justice, and sustainability, and biodiversity, and climate change. But if they don’t hear about these issues it will be harder for them to find food.
- Although this is mainly about how to mobilise a global deal, government is talking about restructuring South Africa's policies to govern sustainable development in the country and for the first time there is a cabinet committee on sustainable development.
- We cannot enforce our own Environmental Management Act (NEMA) yet we are trying to resolve international issues.
Poverty Strategy In South Africa
- Government is preparing four Bills to provide the legislative authority to deal with these issues.
- South Africa has no formal anti-poverty strategy and no budget for poverty reduction. Some held that the RDP provides a guiding vision that is promoted through a range of national strategies and through integrated development plans (IDP) at local level. Others held that the RDP has been dropped and that lack of co-ordination, capacity and commitment to addressing planning for basic needs means that there is no effective strategy for poverty reduction.
Gender
- Most of the people who are grappling with poverty issues are women and they are just statistics. People need to be involved in developing strategies that will take them from project level to where they can sustain themselves.
- Getting the women's issue into WSSD text was very hard even within our negotiating bloc, the G77, and we relied on other blocs, like the EU, to bring it into the text.
Demilitarisation
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The WSSD agenda says nothing about the demilitarisation process, which affects people across the African continent. It comes into the clauses around peace, stability and security but there was resistance from many about being definitive.
SADC
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SADC preparations have been consolidated with the Africa process, when the five regions came together, and more recently through continuous engagement at SADC and Africa level in between the PrepComs. South Africa is hosting an Africa seminar in early May. More than anything else NEPAD is bringing the region and Africa together.
Commentary
The SA government position covers a wide range from international negotiations on trade through technology transfers to national programmes to combat disease, improved access to education and increased food production. Underlying these elements are the themes of governance and financial resource flows that have featured prominently in NEPAD. There are three areas in the flow of financial resources; improved terms of trade and particularly better access to markets in developed countries, debt relief and debt cancellation, and increased development assistance. Progress is unlikely to be straightforward in any of them. The recent farming subsidies announced in the United States point to the difficulties of getting developed countries to give equal access to their markets. On debt relief and debt cancellation there has been some progress though not enough to satisfy those demanding the wholesale cancellation of debt. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) offers the hope of relief to some poorer countries, although it has been criticised for being little more than structural adjustment dressed up in participatory clothes. The Monterrey Conference on finance for development brought promises of increased assistance from the United States and the European Union, but not at levels to satisfy all stakeholders, and it did not make the progress hoped for by developing countries on issues like trade and changes to the international financial system.
At a continental level NEPAD can offer the initiatives around its peer review mechanism as proof of its intentions to improve standards of governance on the continent, although they are still in the development phase and have yet to be tested in practice. NEPAD’s claim to serve as a regional model for implementing sustainable development at the WSSD has been boosted by the growing acceptance and support it is getting from the countries that dominate the global economy. Against this NEPAD is facing increasing criticism from civil society on two counts; that African people have not been adequately involved and that NEPAD’s programme relies too heavily on free markets and privatisation and lacks the direct engagement with the social, economic and environmental pillars needed to address the problems facing ordinary Africans and promote sustainable development. These issues point to some of the problems that surfaced at PrepCom 4 in Bali.
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