Putting sustainability on track

Putting sustainability on track

With little to show in the last two decades, participants at a recent workshop in Bangkok ahead of the Rio+20 summit advocated greater integration of global aspirational goals at both regional and national levels to turn the talk into action

From June 20-22 a global conference designed to set a new agenda for sustainable development will take place in Rio de Janeiro. Dubbed Rio+20 because it comes 20 years after the Earth Summit in the Brazilian city which set the stage for the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations Conference for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) is seen as a crucial test of whether the global community can come together and take action on climate change or remain splintered and ineffective.

The Bangkok Post Sunday spoke with some leading advocates for international action on sustainable development on the sidelines of a recent Bangkok workshop to gauge their views on the difficulties and possibilities facing Rio+20.

Surendra Shrestha, former leader of the United Nations Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development special task force and now director of the UNCSD's Focal Point for Sustainable Development Goals, said that while there are obstacles to overcome most countries now accept that sustainability should be a core principle of any kind of development. ''At least, no one objects to this.''

He noted that the first Rio conference was acclaimed as one of the most successful environmental forums in history, producing a set of clear agendas and principles for global communities to pursue development in a sustainable way. But despite all the efforts of the past 20 years, the achievements that can be claimed are scarce while the challenges multiply.

It was pointed out in Bangkok that after the first Rio conference, global agencies were created to work on sustainable development, but they failed to deliver partly because they lacked integration and coordination. Under the UN umbrella alone, the mandates and responsibilities of about 40 agencies are either overlapping or fragmented, and there are also more than 50 multilateral environmental agreements that are poorly integrated. Experts in the field of sustainable development are considering ways to improve the institutional structure.

Various options have been put on the table for discussion, including improvements to the United Nations Environment Programme. Creating a sustainable development council dedicated to integrating the various agencies has also been suggested. Mr Shrestha said UN member countries have not yet finalised a course of action, but most agree that a central body is needed.

A bigger challenge, he added, is how to translate global aspirations and projects to the regional and national levels.

''If we look at past experiences, it's clear we need to have shared global aspirational goals. These need to be integrated into national plans [to make them happen].''

Ella Antionio, president of Earth Council Asia Pacific, an international non-profit organisation promoting sustainable development through planning and governance, has been studying regional and national structures in Asia that may be used to help translate and deliver global aspirations and projects as urged by Mr Shrestha. In presenting her findings to the workshop, she pointed to a number of regional or sub-regional organisations and agencies which have the ability to carry out such a task.

But she said, many of them are still under the UN, and have overlapping mandates and responsibilities.

''Efffectiveness and good coordination among them is not discernible [at this time],'' said Mrs Antionio.

Regional bodies such as Asean have some focus on sustainable development, but there is not much public participation, she said. At the national level, meanwhile, several regional countries including Thailand have national committees for sustainable development in place, but they are not active. What's more, these committees are generally under government control, so they are sensitive to leadership changes, and also lack participation from other sectors to help deliver sustainable development goals.

Mrs Antionio suggested strengthening connections between concerned parties at regional and national levels, and said clarification of functions and roles among the concerned parties is also needed.

Somrudee Nicro, senior director of the Thailand Environment Institute, agreed with the current process of review and integration of global aspirational goals for sustainable development. She said the current impasse was nothing new, as the sustainable development paradigm has been tossed up since the very first global environmental forum back in the 1970s in Stockholm, but has hardly ever been materialised. This is due to the fact that the environment has been left far behind economic growth, and therefore development has proceeded in an unbalanced way.

Ms Somrudee agrees that to achieve the goal, integration of work is needed, and that it must filter down to the national level. In several countries, certain mechanisms are in place but not yet active, she said.

Thailand, for instance, has had a national committee for sustainable development since the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa 10 years ago, but it's not active. It has never even called for a meeting.

Ms Somrudee blames this partly on the non-legally binding nature of past agreements. However, she doubts that people would accept making climate change agreements legally binding at this time.

She suggested that a way to move forward is for governments to work more with non-government sectors, in accordance with UN Global Compact Principle 10, which guarantees people the right of equal access with regard to politics and natural resources.

''The lack of access is a fundamental problem in many countries. So, if this concept is merged into development it may make it more balanced and sustainable in the first place, without causing so much frustration over what we are able to do in the years to come.''

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