1997: REVIEW PROGRESS
UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY SPECIAL SESSION (RIO+5)

The UN Special Session of the General Assembly (UNGASS) Rio+5 was held in June 1997 at the headquarters in New York to review and appraise the implementation of Agenda 21. This UNGASS, which took place, made little progress in implementing Agenda 21, but rather identified a huge number of challenges for the future especially with regard to issues such as social justice or poverty.

Generally, little progress has been made at UNGASS due to:

+ Insufficient material to take stock of;

+ In the Southern countries, the realization was growing that the funding promised in Rio was not going to materialize. Instead, the EU and the USA initiated a "substitute debate" on the growing private investments from North to South.

+ The newly emerging debate on globalisation was overshadowed by the intransigent adherence to the structure of the agenda, which was focused too strongly on Agenda 21.

+ The heads of Government did not dedicate their speeches, nor the main focus of their consultations to the official subject matter, but rather to the preparation of the Climate Change talks in Kyoto to be held later that same year. The then German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, used his speech to present the concept of the World Environment Organisation. This idea was seconded by a rapidly assembled coalition between Brazil, Singapore and South Africa.

NGOs, together with most of the governments from Southern countries, criticised not only decreasing official development assistance (ODA) but also the increase of debts and the inability of industrialised countries to fulfil reach their commitments from Rio regarding technology transfer, capacity building or changes in their own production and consumption patterns.

Eventually, the delegates adopted the "Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21" - a working programme for the following five years until the next review conference ten years after the first Earth Summit.

The mistakes committed at the Rio+5 discussions must not be repeated in the preparatory phase of the WSSD. The most important point here is to take stock of the implementation process of Agenda 21. The WSSD process with its global, regional and national elements is designed to avoid similar mistakes -- in order to pave the way for the political discussions and new initiatives to be discussed in Johannesburg.