THE POLITICAL DECLARATION
OF THE WORLD SUMMIT
"This feeble and watered down Political
Declaration is yet another betrayal of all those around the world who
looked to this Summit to tackle the environmental and social crisis facing
the planet. What a tragic missed opportunity this Summit has been - thanks
to the utterly obstructive tactics of the US and the free market ideology
of the corporations that pull political strings in the background."
Daniel Mittler, Friends
of the Earth ++ [ Political
Declaration + H2O = Hot Air; Friends of the Earth press release; September 4 ]
The Political Declaration is a wordy set of general political
commitments, reaffirming principles of the Rio
Declaration and the Millenium Declaration
as well as outlining additional principles. Its value is mostly political,
while the Plan of Implementation
is the more action oriented document (although it contains little concrete
action commitments, as NGOs heavily criticise). Both documents are referred
to as Type-I-Outcome documents in contrast to Type-II-Outcomes,
non-binding partnership agreements between
different stakeholdres such as business, governments or Civil Society.
Other than intended, the Political Declaration, was not negotiated
at the PrepComm IV. Instead, Ministers
in Bali drew up the outlines of such a declaration and commissioned PrepComm
Chair Emil Salim with drawing up a draft declaration fornegotiation at
the World Summit in Johannesburg.
The declaration reaffirms principles already agreed upon at the Rio
Earth Summit UNCED in 1992 and the UN Millenium
Summit in 1999. It recognises that poverty eradication as a key condition
for sustainable development, addresses cultural diversity, patterns of
production and consumption, health issues, armed conflicts, the new dimension
created by globalisation, gender issues and financing for development,
among others.
As NGOs anticipated that the Political Declaration of the World
Summit would be of a very weak nature, the so-called Earth
Charter Initiative, a global NGO body, tried to promote the
Earth Charter to be endorsed by the United Nations at the World
Summit. The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental principles
for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st
century. It contains principles clustered under the foci of respect and
care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic
justice and democracy, non-violence and peace.
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