PRESS CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION NEGOTIATIONS
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION NEGOTIATIONS
19970422
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
At a Headquarters press conference yesterday afternoon, 21 April, the Chairman of the current session of the Commission on Sustainable Development, Mostafa Tolba (Egypt), briefed correspondents on progress in negotiations on the proposed document to be submitted to the special session of the General Assembly to review and appraise Agenda 21, to be held in New York from 23 to 27 June. Agenda 21 is the programme of action adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.
Mr. Tolba was accompanied by the Co-Chairman of the Commission's Ad Hoc Open-ended Inter-sessional Working Group, Derek Osborn (United Kingdom), and the Director for the Division for Sustainable Development, Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, Joke Waller-Hunter.
Until now, fortunately, there had been no "fireworks" in the process of negotiations, Mr. Tolba said. Very different points of view had been voiced by the "Group of 77" developing countries and China and the developed countries of the North in general. At the start of the negotiation process on Friday, 18 April, there had been no full agreement on socio-economic aspects. However, people had not jumped at "each other's throats", he said.
Yesterday morning, negotiations had begun on cross-sectoral and sectoral issues, he continued. The cross-sectoral section included socio-economic issues pertaining to poverty alleviation, population and health and was chaired by Celso Amorim (Brazil), the other Co-Chairman of the Commission's Ad Hoc Open-ended Inter-sessional Working Group. The section on sectoral issues was chaired by Mr. Osborn.
In addition, negotiations continued on forestry, where a difficult situation had emerged between governments which wanted a convention on forests and the ones which did not, he said. Probably by today, language capturing the concerns of each one of them would emerge. Further, discussions had continued on the role of institutions. For instance, what should be the role of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)? What should be the role of the Commission on Sustainable Development? What should be the relationship between the structures in the United Nations? And how should the Commission function in the future? There had been a series of informal consultations on those issues and they were continuing.
A draft declaration prepared jointly by him and Commission Vice- Chairperson Monika Linn-Locher (Switzerland) was "in the air", he said. It was a three page, hard-hitting and simply written document. Also, "in the air" were some of the issues which were likely to be contentious, like water, energy and financial resources. In addition, there was the proposal by Norway to have a top level meeting of heads of State and government and heads of major financial institutions during the special session for a couple of hours.
There had been some progress throughout the world on the issues of sustainable development, Mr. Osborn said. There was a growing awareness of the problem in all parts of the society, there were a number of initiatives and quite a lot of international action. However, a lot more needed to be done. In the meetings, there had been a particular focus on the challenge of poverty and on the ways of bringing about balanced economic growth and protecting the environment. The specific issue of freshwater had been focused on. For instance, what could be done about the parts of the world where water resource problems and water pollution were severe?
The question of oceans, collapse of fishstocks, the problems of overfishing and the depletion of marine resources had also been dealt with, he said. Also, there was the issue of making the enormous increase in energy consumption throughout the world more environmentally sustainable. In addition, there was the critical issue of forests and the question of how to move forward on that. Down the line on all of those was the debate on financial flows and how to make maximum use of both public official development assistance (ODA) as well as private investment flows so as to bring about the kind of development and changes everyone wanted to see.
One significant development of the last week was that there had been an extremely productive and useful series of dialogues with all of the major groups including the business and farming community and the non-governmental organizations, he said. All of those had put in extremely useful ideas which had been drawn on in enriching the text.
A correspondent asked how in a period of globalization, when there was pressure on governments to downsize, could they have a well-directed policy on sustainable development. Mr. Tolba said the role of government would not decrease in terms of policy. Globalization did not mean that the role of governments was vanishing. The role of government was probably decreasing in the area of influencing events directly, but various economic instruments would remain in the hands of governments.
Responding to the same question, Mr. Osborn said it was true that part of downsizing was that governments were expecting to restrict public expenditure and to allow more of the task of the modern economy to be done in the private sector. That applied to national as well as international flows to some extent. For sustainable development to occur, it had to be ensured
Tolba Press Conference - 3 - 22 April 1997
that the private sector operations both nationally and internationally were sustainable. That reinforced the need to have very good regulation, to make sure that conventions were properly enforced and developed. Also, economic instruments and incentives should be put in place to give additional pressure to industry and businesses to behave in the right way. There had to be less use of direct public spending and more use of regulatory and economic incentives and that was part of what was being explored by the Commission.
There were reports that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria had got the "Group of 77" developing countries to stop negotiating on some of the issues, like global warming and energy emissions, until some progress was made on the issue of financial resources, a correspondent said. Was that deadlocking the special session? she asked. Mr. Tolba said he did not think that there would be deadlock. It was important to remember that the Commission would not come up with the final word in the exercise. It was a preparatory process for the special session.
During the Assembly session, there would be a Committee of the Whole which would deal with some of the pending issues in the proposed final document, he said. Therefore, it was not essential that everything be finished. It was notable that there were differing positions within groups. Within the Group of 77, whereas the small island developing States wanted complete reduction in greenhouse gases, the oil producing States did not want any talk about climate change and carbon dioxide reduction because that was the source of their wealth, while for the other group, it was the "source of their death". However, there were still four more days to go.
Some delegates feared that the present Commission session would not be able to wind up on time and that it was falling apart, a correspondent said. Mr. Osborn said the morning yesterday had been spent in negotiating water, which was also regarded as a difficult issue. However, the negotiations had been very productive and the areas of disagreement had been reduced. Differences would dissolve if people negotiated in the constructive way that they were doing now.
Was it possible that there might be a need to prolong the present session of the Commission? a correspondent asked. Mr. Tolba said he doubted that because it was not in the Commission's authority. Moreover, there was no money available.
* *** *