NGO Strategy Session

29 April, 9am

This is an hour long meeting where all NGO's are invited to attend. Emphasis is on sharing information and deciding on the best way to proceed during the day. reports are given of the previous days sessions, and it's decided who will sit in the NGO seat at the roundtable meetings, and what kind of thing they will say in this roundtable.

After introductions, the people who had attended different meetings, plenary sessions, roundtables and caucus meetings gave reports. I won't say much about these, but the report of Monday's plenary and roundtable meeting portrayed how there seemed to be a common theme occurring, that this CSD had to be about implementation, providing concrete plans, with time and money allocations, based on the Millennium Development Goals, The Rio statements and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI).

People mentioned that water and energy were two subjects not already being addressed in the UN, and therefore these issues should be central to the CSD. The issue of decentralisation of some of the issues was raised, and apparently, the USA weren't too happy with this, wanting everything to run through New York.

We also exchanged information about side events, and reminded ourselves of what the issues were that would be discussed in the afternoon's roundtable (Natural Resource Management and Health and Sustainable Development).

Sustainable Development Issues Network NGO Meeting

29 April, 9am

The other morning briefing was organised by the Sustainable Development Issues Network - a loosely held together group of NGO's / interested parties. One of the most interesting parts of the meeting was an analysis of the Secretary General's report about the Johannesburg Summit and the structure of the CSD process from hereon.

Whilst this conference isn't doing as much talking about the issues as we did in Jo'burg, it's important to remember that this is the start of turning all those decisions into reality, and the structural decisions made here will affect how the path to sustainability looks for the next 10 years.

The current proposal is for a two-year work cycle - focussing on one of the big issues of sustainable development at a time, with a larger global summit every five years. This will probably be a two-pronged approach... reviewing policy one year, and working on implementation the next. There's been lots of discussion about what the most effective process would be, and whether a three year process would be more effective, giving more time for the process to filter up from the grass-roots level, and subsequently back down again. There has also been talk of regional fora, mimicking the build up to Jo'burg, to feed into CSD

Apparently the review of Kofi Annan's report will be posted on: www.sdissues.net

International Youth Dialogue on Sustainable Development

29 April, 10:45am

(Organised by the Global Youth Action Network)

This meeting was mainly a presentation, by Pierre Andipatin, of the Global Youth Network based in Durban. Pierre is also a member of the Youth Caucus. The Global Youth Network intends to provide an intellectual space for continuous, focused discussion. It will look at the 10 points on youth stated by the UN, and will promote meaningful action.

It intends to form local, national, regional and global partnerships with other organisations and individuals, with whom they intend to mobilize for action. Questions brought up by people attending the meeting included how GYN intended to involve young people, and or organisations, when many youth seemed to be, or were portrayed to be apathetic.

Youth Caucus Meeting

29 April, 11am

Briefly, we talked about lobbying strategy and our key priorities for the two weeks. We decided that to best use our role as 'youth', and given the relatively short amount of time we are allocated to speak in the ministerial round-table sessions, we should focus on areas that won't be addressed by other major groups.

We singled out education for sustainable development, youth participation and youth employment as being key areas we could speak to.

The various documents prepared for the different sessions will be circulated online soon, although these, for the most part, haven't been read out in the round-tables but rather used as a basis for responding to other governments' points, as the chair is (rightly and effectively) taking a strong stance against the delivery of set-pieces in order to try to foster discussion.

Ministerial Roundtable

29 April, 3pm

This roundtable was on "Protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development" and "Health and sustainable development", as set out in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JOPI). the discussion started of on the topic of biodiversity, with the Croatian minister pointing out that in order to supply fresh and clean water, as yesterday discussion was about, it was essential ecosystems were protected.

The USA then spoke, saying that the responsibility of implementing the (JPOI) shouldn't fall on the government alone, and that business and the NGO's need to also take responsibility. He went on to state that the only way to proceed in any issue was to have public private partnerships.

Kenya commented on the fact that they would find it difficult to protect the ecosystems and biodiversity, as land was being cleared for settlements and farming, and also drilling for oil. However, Lesoto commented in the fact that it was essential to protect biodiversity as the 85% of their population who are in rural areas rely on nature for medicines, but also fuel.

The Venezuelan minister remarked on how agriculture was having a bad impact on the environment, due to the pesticides being used. The minister commented on the fact that the pesticides had a bad affect on health, and also contaminated the water basins. The minister then suggested that the MEDSs should finance the transition in LEDCs to cleaner techniques. the Issue of POPs was also brought up and how Venezuela still used DDT to combat Malaria, and finance was needed for alternatives.

[Jargon buster :-)
LEDC = less economically developed country, similarly
MEDC = more economically developed country
POP = persistent organic pollutant - a nasty chemical]

Pakistan's environment minister suggested that the richer nations should show the poorer nations the technology and techniques used to be successful. The Youth Caucus got a chance to speak and explained that education was essential for youth to participate in decision making programs, and that action should be taken to provide free, quality education for all.

The youth caucus then continued that curricula world wide should include issues on: environment; health and reproductive health to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS among youth; human rights; technologies used to combat problems associated with these problems; by saying that youth must be involved and must participate at all levels during the implementation.

The Local Government representative reminded us of the "think globally act locally" motto and gave an example of a 'River Guardians' scheme in Rio de Janeiro where local people from the community took it upon themselves to look after the cleanliness of their local river.

South Africa emphasised that biodiversity was a very important issue, as 70 - 80% of the health systems depend on natural medicines.

The business representative said that there needed to be an incentive for businesses to protect natural resources.

The women's major group speaker commented on the increasing number of refugees, and that health was a universal right for all. The IMF stated that partnerships were a good way forwards, and that international cooperation was essential. It stated that MEDC's should act responsibly and not drain LEDC's of their key workers, especially those in health.

UK Government NGO Briefing

29 April, 6pm

We had a very interesting and informative meeting with a few members of the UK government's delegation. It was a much smaller scale than in Jo'burg, only about 8 people in total. Some interesting points that came up...

The ministers are here now. Next week the text negotiation takes place, but the ministers aren't coming back at the end, so what happens if there is deadlock as we saw in Jo'burg, that took high level ministerial intervention to sort out? It will be interesting to see how this slightly altered process pan's out!

There was discussion of Margaret Beckett's statement on liberalising agriculture markets. Apparently this was rather controversial within the EU later. She was right though, we do need to get rid of the subsidies that distort the markets and prevent poor farmers being able to sell their crops in the western-European markets. It's interesting that it turned a few heads.

There are four main points that will need to be sorted out by the end of next week:

  1. The structure and organisation of the CSD's work into two-year cycles.
  2. The themes to be tackled - what they are, how many to tackle at the same time, and when! There is obviously some need for flexibility in the structure.
  3. One of the Jo'burg commitments was to use the regional UN bodies to greater effect - how will this be put into practice?
  4. On partnerships - how does CSD handle them, in terms of registration and criteria, without stifling them but still ensuring they work and are accountable and transparent.

Finally, we have been assured that the UK government 'will' press for inclusion of greater stakeholder / Major Group involvement and active participation in the CSD. Good! Keep the watering cans in the shed please negotiators!

......sleep.

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!!

Youth caucus documents

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.

JPOI - the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation

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.