PRESS CONFERENCE ON PREPARATORY WORK FOR ASSEMBLY SESSION ON AGENDA 21 BY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE ON PREPARATORY WORK FOR ASSEMBLY SESSION ON AGENDA 21 BY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION
19970410
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
At a Headquarters press conference yesterday afternoon, Mostafa Tolba (Egypt), Chairman of the current session of the Commission on Sustainable Development, told correspondents that the ministers taking part in the high- level segment of the Commission's current session and the agreements they reached would be held accountable by future generations.
At the Commission's high-level segment, which began on Tuesday and ends today, ministers for environmental affairs and other areas were giving input into the preparations for the special session of the General Assembly to review and appraise the implementation of Agenda 21, to be held in New York from 23 to 27 June. Agenda 21 is the programme of action adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.
Also appearing at the briefing with Mr. Tolba were the following: Margaretha de Boer, Minister for the Environment of the Netherlands, which is currently holding the Presidency of the European Union; Mytusa Waldi Mangachi, of the Permanent Mission of the United Republic of Tanzania, currently Chairman of the "Group of 77" developing countries; and Eileen Claussen, United States Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, International Environment and Science.
Mr. Tolba said he could safely say that the Commission had started on the right foot. During the past two days, he had not sensed the normal confrontation, and the Commission was moving faster than he expected. It was becoming increasingly clear that the ministers were expecting concrete goals and targets to be included in the report or the plan of action to be agreed. The ministers from both developed and developing countries were expecting a very strong declaration or political statement, and there were also expectations that heads of State and government would be attending the special session of the Assembly.
If heads of State would be attending the special session, then the Commission could not simply agree to a slim, thin, weak declaration and expect it to be signed, he continued. Negotiating a strong declaration with a number of concrete commitments was also going to be the most difficult part of the session. The Commission was not willing to simply repeat what had been said
and agreed to in Rio. The Commission must move forward towards something that was measurable in the next five years.
Mrs. de Boer said it was absolutely necessary that the Commission give new impetus to the process of sustainable development. When addressing the high-level segment, she had proposed that for the coming year the Commission should give priority to freshwater resources and energy problems. Also, the overarching theme for the coming years should be the subject of eco- efficiency. The European Union was ready to devise concrete proposals for action programmes for those three subjects. The key issue of the next century would be how to increase the productivity of energy.
In June, the European Union expected a clear political signal from world leaders to put sustainable development high on the political agenda again, she continued. During the past five years, the environmental quality in a number of fields in the industrialized countries had improved, but there had been far too little progress on subjects like the fight against poverty, technology transfers to developing countries and implementing financial commitments. As far as climate change was concerned, the European Union wanted a political statement from world leaders that they wanted the session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan, in December to be a success and that they wanted to reach an agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases. The twentieth century had been focused on improving labour productivity, and now the international community must focus on improving energy productivity, she said.
Mr. Mangachi said that at this stage the Group of 77 had reached consensus on several cross-cutting issues, on which there was no divergence in opinions. The first such issue was financial resources, and there was a feeling that the promises of Rio in that area had not implemented. Therefore, a major issue was how to mobilize resources for sustainable development. Secondly, the Group believed very strongly that without transfer of technology, specifically environmentally safe technology, to developing countries, nothing could be achieved in the way of sustainable development. The Group of 77 was advocating the creation of regional technology centres that would be involved in technology development and dissemination as a way of addressing that problem.
The third issue was the creation of a conducive international economic climate, Mr. Mangachi said. Instead of granting aid to developing countries, the international community could help to emancipate those countries economically, so they could generate their own resources and then undertake both development and environmental tasks on their own. The way the international economy was currently structured made it very difficult for small countries, particularly those that depended on commodities, to make any progress. Countries in both the North and the South also agreed on the importance of poverty eradication. Finally, the Commission needed to revive
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the spirit of partnership and international cooperation which had been part of the UNCED process but had been largely eroded over the past five years.
Ms. Claussen said she agreed with a great deal of what had been said by the other three speakers. She agreed with Mr. Tolba that the mood was very positive and that there was a convergence on how the Commission should move forward to the special session and beyond. She certainly agreed with the European Union that freshwater and energy were the two most important issues in formulating an agenda for the Commission in the next several years. They were issues that had not been dealt with in a constructive way, before Rio or since, and ways of dealing with them had to be found. She agreed with the view of the Group of 77 that the international community had to get a handle on the issue of foreign direct investment to make sure that that investment was environmentally sustainable. The international community had not done a very good job dealing with technology transfer, and a new way had to be found to tackle that issue, which she said could be counted as one of the failures of the follow-up to Rio.
In addition to those subjects, there were at least four other important issues on which the Commission should formulate concrete suggestions and decisions, she said. One of those issues was climate change. There must be a way to breathe new energy and a new decisiveness into that topic, and perhaps the special session could be used to do just that, she said. Forestry was an area that had been discussed a great deal without a resolution, and now the agenda must be narrowed to initiatives countries were committed to carry out. The same could be said in the area of fisheries, where there existed international and regional agreements, but in the end there were diminishing resources. Finally, she hoped that the heads of State at the special session would take up the institutional issue. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had not been as effective as it ought to have been in the past few years. It must be transformed into an institution that could really work for the next 20 years, rather than one that limped along, as it had for the last five.
Asked if she could elaborate on the subject of patterns of production and consumption, Mrs. de Boer said the international community must find a formula for having economic growth and trying to reduce environmental problems. That might sound a bit paradoxical, but it was a problem that could be solved through technical improvements and a breakthrough in the re-thinking of production processes. Also, the international community must face the problem of changing consumption patterns, which was a much more difficult problem. It was very necessary that patterns of energy consumption and raw material consumption also be changed, which would increase economic health and, at the same time, reduce environmental problems.
Mr. Tolba said there was individual and national consumption. There were ways and means of insuring that the North would start making some changes
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in the overall amounts of consumption of raw materials and energy, possibly through better production and education. In the meantime, in the developing world there were tremendous variations in consumption patterns, and that issue also had to be addressed very carefully.
A correspondent asked if the United States believed that it had any commitment to provide more assistance, outside of private money, for sustainable development. Ms. Claussen said her Government had a very strong commitment in that area, and it could be seen in the budget it had submitted to the Congress and the statements it had made. It was quite committed to the entire area and to the particular question raised.
A correspondent said that the panellists seemed to be emphasizing that technology was the answer, but at Rio people seemed to be saying that technology was the problem, and could they speak to that. Mr. Mangachi said there were many technologies that could be made available in the South that could reduce the pressures which were applied against the environment. Those included simple technologies, like reducing deforestation by supplying peasants with alternative energy resources to heat their homes, and there were other practical alternatives which had not been undertaken in the past five years.
Ms. de Boer said technology, if widely used, could be part of the solution. She believed that there were four instruments which were needed for conquering environmental problems, and technology improvement was one of them. Technology was needed for a breakthrough, or a re-think, of production processes.
Mr. Tolba said he doubted that participants at the Rio Conference had stated that technology was the problem. Nor had any of the panellists today said that technology was the solution. In both cases what was said was that bad technology or badly used technology or polluting technology was a source of the problem and had to be stopped. Cleaner production, better technology, less resource use and less energy intensive technology were part of the solution.
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