PRESS BRIEFING ON 2002 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SUMMIT

PRESS BRIEFING ON 2002 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SUMMIT

The preparatory process for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which began today, should enable the Summit itself to generate a sense of hope, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

Speaking as the Preparatory Committee for the Summit began its one-week organizational session, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Nitin Disai, said that a sense of disappointment existed, as a result of the failure to fulfil the expectations of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).  In order to generate a new sense of hope, the preparatory process for the Sustainable Development Summit had to come to an understanding of what people wanted.  Over the next six months, the Preparatory Committee had to listen for that.

The Sustainable Development Summit, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in the latter half of 2002, was called for by the General Assembly in December last year, to reinvigorate the global commitment to sustainable development agreed upon ten years ago at UNCED -– the “Earth Summit” -– in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and accelerate action on that Summit’s action programme, Agenda 21.

The newly-elected Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, Emil Salim (Indonesia) told correspondents that there was hope that the Summit’s preparatory process would lead not only to an assessment, but also to an indication of the major trends of change.

Asked what the outlook was for the Summit, seen against the last two weeks of contentious debate in the Commission on Sustainable Development, Mr. Salim said that until January lots of disagreements would come up, as a necessary and useful part of the process.  He hoped that such discussion would lead to common positions around January about how to further pursue sustainable development in the twenty-first century.  The process would start on the local, subregional and regional levels, and he hoped that various disagreements could be identified and solved at those levels.

Mr. Desai added that “if it were easy, it would not be worth doing”.  The process was worthwhile precisely because it was difficult.  It was difficult because, although everyone could agree on what the problems were, disagreement would arise on how the burden should be shared in addressing the problems.  There were also different perceptions.  For example, some were more concerned about poverty, others about the impact of the economy on the environment.  A political process was therefore necessary to find common ground.  The genius of the United Nations preparatory process was that, in the end, common ground was found.

Asked what he meant by a sense of disappointment, Mr. Desai said that people would expect the outcome to be more operational than the Rio outcome.  He hoped for clearer goals and hoped they would address some of the new concerns, such as globalization.  People would get a sense of hope if they felt that there was a political process that would lead to “doable” things.  For that to happen, a sense of partnership must be created between countries, between East and West, and between governments and the private sector.

In reponse to another question, he said that between now and January

2002 there would be a large number of decentralized preparatory events to identify achievements and failures and to come up with a set of ideas.  Apart from five regional meetings, there would be numerous local meetings and stakeholder events. There was a strong emphasis on national preparation.  He hoped that the “bottom-up” approach would lead to assessments and proposals for action, which would be considered at the global level in preparatory meetings in January and March.  That, in turn, would lead up to a major ministerial preparatory meeting in Indonesia towards the end of May 2002.  That meeting would define the quality of the outcome of the Summit, he said. 

Mr. Salim said he hoped that the process would allow moving from the general concept of sustainable development towards action plans to translate concepts into reality.

At the end of the press conference a video was shown in which Harlan Hugh, Chief Technical Officer of The Brain Inc., introduced special software developed for the Summit’s Web site (www.un.org/rio+10).  The Web site includes a section specifically designed to meet the needs of the media.

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