EXPERTS MEETING ON 10-YEAR PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION, PRODUCTION TO BE HELD IN MARRAKECH, 16 – 19 JUNE

EXPERTS MEETING ON 10-YEAR PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION, PRODUCTION

TO BE HELD IN MARRAKECH, 16 – 19 JUNE

NEW YORK, 12 June -- Over 100 participants from about 70 countries will meet on Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, to take the first steps towards implementing one of the key commitments made by world leaders at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit:  to develop a 10-year framework of programmes for sustainable consumption and production.

"Changing unsustainable patterns of consumption and production is one of the key global challenges for sustainable development in the twenty-first century", said JoAnne DiSano, Director of the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development, which is organizing the meeting in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).  "We cannot continue consuming the world’s resources at the current rate without damaging the planet’s life support systems beyond repair.  It is important to build on the momentum generated by the Johannesburg Summit and to start implementing the Summit’s decisions in this crucial area."

The 15 per cent of the world’s population living in high-income countries account for 56 per cent of the world’s total consumption, while the poorest 40 per cent, in low-income countries, account for only 11 per cent of consumption.

The Marrakech meeting -– the International Expert Meeting on a 10-Year Framework of Programmes for Sustainable Consumption and Production -- will follow up on the call from Johannesburg to accelerate the shift towards sustainable lifestyles that promote social and economic development for all.  Participants will discuss the structure and priorities for the 10-year framework in order to improve international cooperation, information exchange and assistance for developing countries.  The meeting will review international and regional work on various aspects of sustainable consumption and production and consider how these might be strengthened.

The four-day meeting will be chaired by the Moroccan Minister for National and Regional Development, Water and the Environment, Mohammed Elyazghi, and Viveka Bohn, Ambassador at the Swedish Ministry of the Environment.  Participants include experts from government agencies and international organizations, as well as from industry, non-governmental organizations and academia.

The meeting is being hosted by the Government of Morocco and supported by the Governments of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Germany.

Leading up to this event, two regional expert meetings were organized, with support from the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development and UNEP, in order to identify regional concerns and priorities:  in Argentina for Latin America and the Caribbean (April 2003) and in Indonesia for the Asia-Pacific region (May 2003).  The results from these meetings will be presented in Morocco.

The outcomes from the Morocco meeting will be submitted to the Commission on Sustainable Development for consideration as part of its post-Johannesburg work programme.  Governments attending the Commission’s first session since the Johannesburg Summit agreed last month that its future work should be organized on the basis of two-year cycles, each focused around thematic clusters of issues.  Changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption was identified by governments as one of the key cross-cutting issues that need to be discussed in every Commission cycle.  Specific discussions relating to the 10-year framework of programmes will be on the Commission’s agenda for the 2010/2011 cycle.

For more information, please contact:  Rolando Gomez, Department of Public Information (New York), tel.: +1-212-963-2744, e-mail: mediainfo@un.org; Mourad Ottmani, UN Information Centre (Rabat), tel.: +212-37-76-86-33, e-mail: mourad@unicmor.ma.

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