RESULTS OF THE CSD-9 MEETING, APRIL 2001, NEW YORK

Many of the attending NGOs but also quite a number of government officials criticised the results of the 9th session of the CSD as frustrating and by no means far-reaching enough with regard to the emerging global situation. One reason for that lies of course in the fact that for the first time "energy" was discussed at the CSD - a largely disputed and controversial topic. On the other side, strong national interests and narrow-mindedness characterised negotiations - after all, the preparations for the WSSD were also part of the agenda and nobody wanted to give up too much national sovereignty.

The delegates couldn't reach an agreement regarding finances for sustainable energy and transportation policies. The importance of good governance and capacity building was not discussed and questions on the development of indicators for sustainability, the transport of nuclear waste or the introduction of standards for energy efficiency didn't lead to concrete results but to the retreat to too-well-known national positions.

Eventually, delegates released a final outcome document - but all participants agreed on the weakness of the document regarding almost all of the raised topics. The unwillingness of most of the participating countries to differ from their protective national positions is made especially apparent by the fact that there are nearly no new impulses coming from the outcome document addressing for example the growing gap between South and North in the field of energy use, access to energy or the use of nuclear energy. The fact that delegates used agreed language within those areas where they couldn't reach an agreement also illustrates this.

The negotiation process at the CSD-9 also shows the necessity of a reform of the CSD as this Commission is barely able to give new impetus to discussion when national interests and limited natures are on top of the agenda. Many observers criticized the negotiations not only as an attempt to preserve sovereign interests, but also to limit the topics for the agenda of the Johannesburg Summit.

Especially representatives from the EU and the G77/China had words with each other, whereas Russia and JUSCANZ kept in the background. The EU, under the lead of the Swedish EU presidency, tried to use the CSD-9 as a vehicle to get a number of binding commitments for global sustainability on the agenda especially on an national level, whereas the G77/China didn't miss any opportunity to stress the special situation of developing countries to keep the danger of new international commitments for developing countries as minimal as possible. They only referred to the Rio agreements when they were hoping for new and additional finances or the importance of sustainable development for the fight against poverty.

As mentioned before, the USA kept a very low profile, which might be due to the fact that the new administration under President George W. Bush hasn't worked out a position in regard to sustainable development (not to mention the retreat out of the Kyoto Protocol or the recently released new energy plan…). Currently, there is an interministerial working group under the coordination of the US State Department, which meets once every week to discuss the possible agenda for the World Summit from the US perspective. The primary intent is to avoid new financial commitments to developing countries. Further topics on the US agenda include economic globalisation, new technologies and the importance of the private sector as a meaningful stakeholder in implementing sustainable development.