Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Presentation by Major Groups.

1 May, 10am

This session gave a final opportunity for major groups to present their specific thoughts and concerns to the chairman, before the draft decisions text came out.

Many of the major groups raised very similar issues to the NGO's spokesperson who argued for two particular points:

1. Increased, unprejudiced participation of NGO's, and that resources be made available to support this, and
2. No renegotiation of Agenda 21, Rio Principles or the JPOI.

The Chair asked the Scientists of their view on the privatisation of scientific knowledge, and the spokesperson responded that it was indeed worrying that some pharmaceuticals 'hoover over developing countries, sucking up all their knowledge" and taking rights away from indigenous peoples.

The Trade Unions spoke of the lack of talk of employment and education, this needed to be corrected. Also, that there needed to be a better balance between the three pillars of sustainable development (Environment, Social and Economic). They raised and interesting point that actions of war wasted many resources, as well as being harmful to the environment.

The Women's caucus asked for gender to be a cross cutting issue, as studies have shown that when women are educated and included in discussions, this leads to better family health.

In our speech, among other things, we raised the point that each government should have a youth delegate, and that there were only 5 delegations that included 'a youth'.

The chair then handed over to the ministers, and the USA worryingly said that it wasn't necessary to have all 9 major groups present at all times in the discussions, that in some issues particular major groups wouldn't provide any insight!! The Senegalese minister made an excellent statement saying that local communities need to be able to have a say in what will 'happen to them', and that youth needed to be involved in all levels of negotiations. The Minister from Finland also made an inspiring speech, that youth and NGO's should be on delegations (they have taken a NGO representative as an official delegate) and also a new point, that the CSD should make more effort to include disabled people in discussions, perhaps the formation of a new major group.

The Farmers' spokesperson asked that major groups be able to self select their representatives, as did the Indigenous Peoples. Canada said that they had provided money for Southern NGO's to attend WSSD, and that this needs to be done on a wider scale in the future. The Belgian minister supported the involvement of youth and educators. Iran said that major groups must have an active say at national level, especially youth. They gave an example of how they had managed to increase the percentage of girls taking technical studies by having discussions with youth in their country.

Greece, representing the EU spoke to follow-up the talk about agricultural subsidies - the official position is something like this: "Social sustainability of our society depends on cities supporting countryside, through agricultural subsidies. We need to ensure that 'trade-distorting' subsidies are phased out, but we want to
keep agricultural subsidies in principle." Clearly Margaret Becket's earlier comments ruffled a few feathers!

Presentation by the Chair of draft decisions

1 May, 4pm

This was the exciting event everyone had been waiting for! Chairman Moosa tabled the draft decisions that will be the basis of all discussions that will take place next week. Mr. Moosa cleared up a few issues surrounding the document and the plans. He reassured us that issues, other than the main focus issue will be monitored during the 2-year cycle. He re-iterated that the over riding theme of the CSD, and the guide to its work, for the following decade, would be poverty irradiation. The draft text is available here.

Youth Caucus

1 May, 7pm

We met up at the GYAN office to discuss the draft text that had come out in the afternoon. It was a long, slow process going through the document... it always is once you start trying to analyse and understand the UN jargon! Exhausted with an hour commute home still to come, we left at about 11pm. We had made good progress and come up with some specific comments and concerns to present on Friday morning at the last official session before the negotiations begin. See tomorrow morning for details.

In Johannesburg, the official sessions were all web-cast so that people around the world could watch. These were supposed to be archived so you could go back and watch, for example, the youth speeches later on. The final day culminated in a presentation by Cathy from the Philippines (who is now chairing the youth caucus) and we've been waiting for it to be archived ever since. We finally tracked down the department in the UN secretariat that deals with the webcasts / archiving, and they're going to make a copy of the video on CD. Hopefully we'll get it on Monday, and at some point we can have it available online for all to see - it was a powerful, inspiring speech!

Right, we've nearly caught up on our reporting now... sorry we got a bit behind - it's been a crazy week!

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!!

• All the UN documents and news from the conference is available here, on the CSD web-site
• Draft text of "Future Programme, Organisation And
  Methods Of Work Of The Commission"
• Excellent website with reports, photos, and audio of speeches

Youth caucus documents

• Lobbying notes on Education and Youth Employment
• Youth Caucus Proposal on Means of Implementation
• Youth Caucus Proposal on Poverty Eradication

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.