Comments by Major Groups on Chairman's Draft

2 May, 10am

The plan for the CSD from here is to focus on one of the major sustainable development issues at a time in order to address it in detail, but making sure of two things. Firstly, that all related issues are discussed and dealt with as a part of that (after all, the point of sustainable development is that all the issues are interlinked) and secondly that whilst there is a focus, other issues are still looked at and there is enough flexibility to deal with specific problems and other issues that arise. The plan is for a two-year cycle, with the first year reviewing what's happened already and the policy that exists in the area being focussed on - whether it's working, and the second year being a 'policy' year, where the CSD decides what changes have to be made.

Some interesting (or worrying) comments from the various major groups...

Women: Gender balance needs to be included. Not all meetings should be in New York.

Business: More specific reference should be made to type-II partnerships. Experts that are called to speak should not just be scientific, but also economic.

Scientists: More educators need to be involved, as well as better major group participation in general.

Farmers: at the moment it seems the plan implies major groups are involved in the review year much more than in the policy year - they should be involved in both.

NGO's: In the plan, it specifies that Africa, SIDS, and the Least Developed Countries should be given specific attention in every cycle. There's a concern that this will shift the focus away from the need to address the consumption patterns of the developed countries - poverty eradication is great, but if that means bringing the developing countries up to the levels of unsustainable-consumption of the developed countries, we've missed the point! Education seems to have been lost - needs including as a cross cutting issue, in paragraph 10(e) and the annex. Also, human rights needs to be brought out as a cross-cutting theme.

Youth: many of our points backed up those already made by the other major groups; that education is an important cross-cutting issue, as is corporate accountability and the need to address unsustainable consumption patterns. Also that partnerships cannot be a substitute for government commitments. The youth statement should be available online soon, and a recording can be heard by clicking here.

One issue that was brought up a few times was to do with major group participation. It has varied considerably throughout the history of CSD whether or not the major groups have been allowed access to the text negotiations. In Bali we were kept out, but sometimes major group representatives have been allowed to observe. It's important to be able to follow the negotiations to keep on top of the debate and be able to lobby effectively, and ensure as transparent a process as we're likely to get our hands on.

This had been brought up before, but at one point Chairman Moosa had said we had no right to observe the negotiations. Almost every major group brought up this point, and a number of times directly challenged him to answer if we'll be able to get in to the negotiations. Eventually, he was pressed by one of the governments - the Netherlands we think - but didn't really reply, and then again by the major groups, he said we would be able to attend all the open negotiations. (We still can't observe the closed groups such as G77, EU etc meetings.)

That was a small victory, and at least means we'll be able to participate usefully next week. We could have had the few government youth representatives inside the negotiations, but this would have been difficult to co-ordinate and less effective.

At the end of the session, we took the floor again, and presented the chairman with copies of Agenda 21, and the Johannesburg Plan of Implimentation - the message was that these were being forgotten and in the interests of our future Chairman Moosa needed to keep the debate focussed and steered away from silly political games.

Photo courtesy of IISD/ENB-Leila Mead

Educating for Sustainability
(Earth Charter & UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development)

2 May, 4.30pm

The earth charter is a brilliant initiative to put an ethical framework behind sustainable development. What does that mean? Well, it seem silly to talk about changing the world if we haven't got some values and principles upon which to base what we're doing.

It started off as a UN thing, but the governments ditched it (politicians always seem to get nervous when you start talking about the ethics behind decision making!) There is a drive at the moment by the earth charter team worldwide to use the earth charter and the UN decade of education for sustainable development that starts in 2005 (I believe) to promote education for sustainable development in a coherent, well founded way, as vehicle to bring sustainability to those without access to UN events - in terms of practical sustainability (not just theory).

The aims of the partnership:
"educating for sustainable living with the earth charter"

  1. Train community development leaders using the Earth Charter as an educational tool
  2. Integrate the Earth Charter into the formal curriculum of selected organizations with global and regional reach
  3. Develop new curricular and educational materials that use the Earth Charter as a framework

...something we should look at for use within woodcraft?

On October 11 there are earth charter community summits all around the world:

http://www.earthchartersummit.org


Matthew & Vic

Preparing to deliver the youth comments on the chairman's draft
Matthew doing two things at once (what's new?)

 

 

 

 

 

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.