THE SITUATION TO DATE

Preserving the environment and pursuing the development of the South - this had been identified by the UNCED conference in 1992 in Rio as the common responsibility of the South and the North. UNCED was much inspired by the hope that the world's nations could cope with those central problems in a joint effort.

However, the challenges are still there. Ecological problems gain little interest in the recent years. Even if in the developed countries, there has been much progress with regard to visible ecological problems, the global environmental crisis is far from being over. Climate change is already wreaking havoc around the globe, forests are being cleared or burnt down, scarce freshwater resources are being degraded and wasted, sustained economic growth and the economic globalisation, that is increasingly driven by unregulated transnational corporations is leading to ever increasing resource use far beyond earth's capacities, biological diversity suffers from large scale destruction of entire ecosystems - a consequence of inequitable patterns of production, consumption in the context of globalisation that often is "exporting" the ecological problems to the developing countries. Conflicts on access rights over natural resources will become more frequent in the future and therefore need a far more sophisticated approach.

Solving the global economic, social and ecological problems is in first place a political challenge - to be tackled by transnational democratic systems and the active participation of the civil society. Democracy in our days, however, is threatened: religious, nationalist or ethnic fundamentalism on one side and the dominance of the economically driven globalisation on the other side seem to have formed an absurd alliance to abolish democracy.

The interrelation between poverty and environmental degradation is being referred to by many development strategies. Combating poverty is central for the formulation of sustainable development strategies, but often lacks success for not addressing the underlying causes of poverty that relate to equity and justice, resource access and use rights, powerlessness or discrimination. UNCED acknowledged how deeply environment and development are linked to each other. To effectively deal with environmental problems, so the argument, it is necessary to choose a new approach to tackle social and ecological problems jointly. In practice, however, environment and development are often being played out against each other.

Official development assistance has been decreasing globally. While private capital flows have been on the rise and are sometimes celebrated as the glorious way out, they go where the profits are high and not the needs. Development finance to help the poorest is on its brink. Instead, the debt crisis of the developing world, serious financial crises in Asia, the emerging countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America clearly show the destructive power of unstable financial markets. The financial systems are the most important pillars of economic development today. At the same time, they are extremely vulnerable and beyond control of the citizens affected by them.

THE JOHANNESBURG CHALLENGE

Many saw the Johannesburg Summit as the way out of the dilemma. With heads of state and government having attended the Johannesburg conference, it had a high profile that correspondingly demanded some substantial output. The summit was to assess progress on implementation of the results of the Rio Summit, in particular Agenda 21 and if countries had adopted National Sustainable Development Strategies as was agreed they would by 2002. And it was to identify new challenges that have come up over the past decade.

Many have demanded the summit to review why the action agendas resulting from numerous conferences and agreements regarding sustainable development are still awaiting implementation. Six conventions came out of in the aftermath of the 1992 summit:

1. The Framework Convention on Climate Change with the Kyoto Protocol
2. The Convention on Biological Diversity with the Cartagena Protocol
3. The Convention to Combat Desertification
4. The Convention on Persistant Organic Pollutants
5. The Convention on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks
6. The Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade

No new conventions were on the table for Johannesburg. Nonetheless, it is important that some of the still pending conventions are fully ratificatied in the member states so they can enter into force.

Apart from that, fighting poverty was to be another crucial focus of the Johannesburg Summit as the mutual enhancing of poverty and ecological degradation has been one of the main obstacles for achieving global sustainability. The summit was to develop programmes to eradicate poverty by addressing the underlying causes that relate to the principle of equity and an equitable access to resources, to opportunities and to decision-making structures on the one hand and debt relief programmes for the poorest nations on the other hand.

The (economic) globalisation is becoming more and more an issue affecting sustainable development and, as e.g. ANPED argues, is giving Transnational Corporations (TNCs) increasing influence over the livelihoods of ordinary citizens. NGOs demand that the WSSD needs to address this issue by starting a process leading to a system of corporate accountability making TNCs responsible for their social and ecological impacts.

Furthermore, there is an urgent need to strengthen the UN institutions working on sustainable development. Such a reform of the global environmental governance system would certainly need to address resolving conflicts between world trade rules and multilateral environmental agreements, controlling the social and ecological impacts of the globalised economy or influencing it so that globalisation and world trade would effectively contribute to sustainable development.

Among those belong for example the topics education, health, fighting poverty and also a number of linked issues as there are questions regarding the amount of financial resources which are needed, the transfer of technology and capacity-building, the meaning of gender democracy or governance structures at the international, regional, national or local levels. Fighting HIV/AIDS needs a special focus, as e.g. many African NGOs argue, since in Africa sustainable development cannot be discussed without reference to HIV/AIDS that has been identified to be closely linked to poverty.

UNCED acknowledged in its Agenda 21 that patterns of unsustainable production and consumption (mostly in the North) are the major cause for ecological deterioration all over the world. Yet little has happened. The WSSD must make the need to change those patterns an overarching priority during the whole summit.

Among several more issue related topics, freshwater and access to it as well as development finance seem to become more and more important. Covered by own UN conferences in the run up to the WSSD, these issues need to be addressed at the WSSD itself to ensure committed follow up and to start implementing the results. Similarly, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety needs to be developed and agreed into a recognised international agreement.

All this processes require the active involvement of civil society organisations and other key actors of society. To be effective, such involvement requires access to information, processes of decision-making and justice. The WSSD should take forward establishing these rights throughout the world, a process that has already been initiated in Europe through the Aarhus Convention.

As it is becoming clear that the international institutions in their current form are unable to address sustainable development properly, the WSSD also needs to look at possible reforms of UNEP and the CSD.