Greetings from New York! We arrived yesterday afternoon and despite a slight hitch at immigration (nothing serious) our journey was fairly uneventful.

We're staying with Jennifer Lopez, who believe it or not is actually a member of SustainUS (the US youth sustainability network) about an hour commute from the UN building. It's been a busy first day, which combined with jet-lag has been rather exhausting, but it's been an interesting start to what I'm sure will be a fascinating two weeks.

We were in and out of various meetings and events during the day - here's a summary of the various events we went to and what happened, as best we can remember from our jet-lagged state :-D

CSD 11 Opening Session

28 April, 10am

One thing became apparent right from the outset of the opening session - this conference is about implementation. The failure of the last ten years has been the lack of turning goals and targets into reality. In Jo'burg, we saw the haggling and dealing over targets and timetables, and the end result
was far from the vision we were all hoping for, but what was mentioned again and again this morning is that we need to work with what we've got, concentrating on making the aims we have a reality, and identify the blocks that exist to progress rather than going back to the drawing board and
beginning negotiations over again.

Youth Caucus

28 April, 11am

After the usual rounds of introductions we made plans for drafting a brief statement for the afternoon roundtable discussions (see below.) We circulated previous statements written in Bali & Jo'burg so that we had a basis to work with during CSD11.

Roundtable Discussions

28 April, 3pm-6pm

Roundtables are less formal discussions, where the countries and major groups can speak, but avoiding just reading statements out - the chair was quite strict at times, trying to get everyone to respond to each other and encourage real dialogue... it made for a busy, interesting afternoon.

Two key issues that have some (I didn't say great - some) targets associated with them from Jo'burg are water and energy. Most of the ministers mentioned these two topics - rather than try to summarise what was said, some of which
was repetitious, here are a few interesting points that were made:

The farmers representative mentioned that this morning, Becket made some interesting comments about how richly subsidised farmers are in some areas (e.g. EU) and the need to really redress government distortions of food production (i.e. subsidies). The farmers rep also mentioned market
distortions, the tight-fisted control of food production by supermarkets.

There was a lot of talk about water and sanitation, and reference to the World Water Forum that took place in Kyoto, Japan, recently. There seemed to be some concern that the outcomes of the forum supported privatisation of water supplies, but the minister for South Africa got up and clarified this, saying the outcome wasn't actually support for outright privatisation, rather a range of options... either way it's rather worrying.

The chair, who is the South African environment minister, made some fairly hard-hitting comments, seemingly trying to re-assert the importance of the UN process and the role governments have to play. Firstly he said that whilst genuine good governance is costly and time-consuming and that the UN process is sometimes frustrating, the alternative to making UN work is decent into barbarism(!) Secondly he challenged everyone present, saying that the world's poor watch and wait to see if the problems that face the world such as daily deaths from water-borne diseases, poverty, global warming, etc, will see the same investment of time, resources and effort as military campaigns - this guy is on form!

Trying to put the implementation challenge into perspective, Nitin Desai, the UN Under-Secretary-General said that there are only just over 4200 days left until the end of 2015. To achieve the targets set out in the millennium development goals, we should doing the following:

  • 100 000 people raised out of poverty
  • 100 000 people provided with fresh water
  • 200 000 people given access to sanitation
  • 400 000 provided with safe energy

...every single day. That really put it into perspective for me - there's so much to do!

The minister from Gabon (nope, never heard of it!) (smallish country in West Africa, has seen sharp decrease in poverty in recent years due to income generated from export of oil, timber and mangenese - Ed.) tied together a whole
load of issues. From begging in his local neighbourhood, specifically by old people, to the lack of support of the elderly by the young. Why? Because the young can't get jobs. Why? Because there is insufficient investment by government. Why? Because the government lacks the capacity to provide that
investment. (Guessed where it's going yet?) Why? Because of the national debt burden.

Then the roundtable moved on to discussing consumption and production - the need to alter the way we consume resources, especially in the North, to make the world sustainable. The chairman interestingly at one point called on the USA to address the issue. The representative skirted right round the issue, talking about energy, and the necessity of roles for business and NGO's. The chair called him on it, offering another minute to talk about how we can alter unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, saying that it's vital the big consumers play an active role in these discussions. The USA rep declined to respond! It really seems this is one issue the USA don't have a clever response to.

Finland referred to the link between poverty eradication and production / consumption. i.e. the way we over consume resources in the North directly hinders progress in developing countries.

Towards the end, a youth representative got to speak for us, and made the link between altering unsustainable consumption patterns and education.

One observation of the first day as a whole: This CSD is rather different in structure to previous ones - the ministers are here now, at the start, and there has been some re-structuring of the way in which the major groups and NGO's can input into the process. Apparently, proposed changes in structure of CSD are being tested here at this session. Yesterday there was a LOT more input by NGO's and the major groups than there has been in previous conferences. This certainly seems good, but what we need to be sure of is that the gains that are being suggested for civil society here aren't retracted during negotiations next week!

OK, hopefully that wasn't too long-winded or disjointed. It was a hectic first day, and we didn't get home until 10pm, but things are settling down now. Until next time...

lots of love + blue skies

Matthew & Vic

Don't forget:

If you have questions or comments to make to Matt and Vic, you can email them - they'd love to hear from you!!

Glossary of
CSD-speak

Confused by all the strange terminology and acronyms... We hope the glossary below will help:

CSD 11 - the 11th session of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. These have taken place every year since the first earth summit in Rio. Johannesburg was number 10.

WSSD - World Summit on Sustainable Development - which took place in Johannesburg last summer.

Rio +10 - WSSD but it refers to the fact that this summit is ten years on from the original summit in Rio.

Agenda 21 - the environmental agenda for the Twenty First century. This was created at the Rio summit and the idea was that all aspects of society should be looked at from the perspective of Agenda 21.

Stakeholder - anybody who has an interest in the issue that is being discussed. In the case of WSSD it is probably everyone on the planet.

Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue (MSHD)- this is no more no less than a meeting of all people who have an interest/stake in the issue. With reference to WSSD, this has been split into nine Major Groups such as women, youth etc. and bodies have been created to represent the needs and opinions of these particular groups.

Major Groups - the nine stakeholder groups who can make an input into the summit: Women, Youth, Farmers, Indigenous Peoples, Local Authorities, Scientists, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Trade Unions, and Business and Industry.

Type I outcomes - agreements made at the Summit in Johannesburg which are legally binding on an international level

Type II outcomes - promises made by governments, regions, businesses, and other organisations, maybe in partnership with others, to do things to achieve sustainable development - not enforcable though.

Caucus - a group of people with a common interest (eg women, youth) who meet together to organise themselves and work to further that interest.

Youth Caucus - the 'youth' Major Group - a group of youth organisations and youth representatives who we are working with in Bali and will be part of in Johannesburg.

Civil Society - all organisations, groups and individuals who are not part of governments - not politicians or civil servants.