World Summit on Sustainable Development - Ministry staff perspective 30 August 2002
Hello from Johannesburg.
Any pre-Summit idea that we might be regular correspondents has been truly buried under non-stop negotiations, late nights and snatched meals. One of the pervasive impressions of the Summit venue is the intensity of the concentration of thousands of people working in concert to reach agreement on the draft text. In the meeting rooms heads are down, focussed on the paragraph in hand; but outside the halls there is no respite: clusters of people in earnest conversation, every spare space bigger than a metre across a place for a cell-phone conversation.
That there are lots of people is to be expected. Sixty five thousand in all. Of those, maybe ten thousand are national delegates engaged in negotiations. Everyone has a cell-phone. And they use them like oxygen. The only topic is the text! The text is the 615 paragraphs and sub-paragraphs of the draft Johannesburg Plan of Implementation. The Plan will be finalised by Ministers at the end of this week, and adopted by world leaders next week. The draft Plan was supposed to be finalised at the three Preparatory Committee meetings held earlier this year, but at the start of the Johannesburg meeting only 459 paragraphs had been fully agreed, leaving 156 (25%) to be finally agreed. That's our work.
The devil is in the detail. On Monday 26, the placement of a comma was debated for two hours. It was not a trivial matter. The meaning of the sentence changed dramatically depending on the placement, and the implications for national interests, considerable. Of course the scope of issues covered by the paragraphs is very wide: poverty eradication, energy, transport, chemicals, oceans, fishing, climate change, agriculture, desertification, mountains, tourism, biodiversity, forests, mining, globalisation, human health, small island developing states, Africa and so on.
The advance team started on Friday 23rd with a round of meetings with other countries, sorting out our strategies and logistics, and settling into our office. Our New Zealand Delegation office is on the 19th floor of the Sandtown Office Tower, the tallest building in Sandtown. We look down on the Sandton Convention Centre, and the shopping centre and hotels which cover about 40 hectares. The perimeter is a physical and human wall of security. Inside the wall are thousands of (armed) security people, so we feel quite safe! Inside the barricades are about 15000 delegates, and thousands of others representing civil society (NGOs, women, youth, farmers, scientists, business people, local government, indigenous peoples). Along with all this Sandton continues to function as a popular, state of the art shopping complex, linking with and surrounding the Convention Centre.
The Convention Centre is like the Aotea Centre the Michael Fowler Centre, and those from Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton and Rotorua added together, one on top of the other. It's a busy place. Now that things are underway, the place is very busy. Plenary sessions take place in the fifth floor hall which seats a couple of thousand. Downstairs, officials are negotiating in the big exhibition hall, and a dozen other meeting rooms, while in the Ballroom ministers are also negotiating, backed by several hundred officials. The basement is media city.
Things kicked off informally on Saturday with officials meeting ahead of the formal opening in a "Vienna" setting to negotiate solutions. In the Vienna setting only the major groups of countries speak – G77 and China for the 134 "developing" countries, EU for the Europeans, a Central Europe group, and JUSCANZ, for an odd collection of others. Because JUSCANZ members do not have mutually agreed positions, only in this bloc are individual countries (like NZ) able to speak. The Summit opened on Monday with a stirring speech from President of the Republic of South Africa, H.E Thabo Mbeki, who reminded us all that:
As we deliberate and work on a way forward, we need to take stock of the inertia of the past decade and agree on very practical measures that will help us to deal decisively with the challenges that we face. This is the central task of this Summit.
We do not have a new agenda to discover. We have no obligation to relearn what we already know about the parlous state of human society and the environment. There is no need for us to reopen battles that have been fought and resolved...
The peoples of the world expect that this World Summit will live up to its promise of being a fitting culmination to a decade of hope, by adopting a practical programme for the translation of the dream of sustainable development into reality and bringing into being a new global society that is caring and humane.
By Thursday 29, the Summit is proceeding reasonably well. Despite the arcane and unfathomable workings of the UN, the Summit has produced some significant gains already. One of our objectives was to secure agreement on oceans issues. The Summit has delivered notable successes on access to fisheries for developing countries, marine biodiversity protection on the high seas, protection for marine mammals, and a regular 'global state of the oceans' assessment.
Ministers have all arrived and completed their discussion on process issues (i.e. how they will conduct their business) yesterday (Thursday). Today and tomorrow they will engage with the substance of the outstanding issues that the Main Committee has referred to them. Many issues that were outstanding from the Bali Prepcom have been resolved and only the most contentious or intractable ones remain. The Main Committee is still considering items that the Contact Groups were unable to resolve. Any items that cannot be agreed by the Committee will be referred to Ministers. Naturally, there is a desire to refer only those items on which officials are unable to come to agreement. After 8 days of intensive discussion and debate, the issues where there are substantial unresolved differences are (in no particular priority order):
- Rio principles – agreement has been reached on Principle 7 (common but differentiated responsibilities), but the debate on Principle 15 (precaution) remains deadlocked with the
- EU and US at opposite ends of the spectrum. The G77 have shifted ground and it is unclear where they are likely to go next. NZ, Norway, and Switzerland are seeking the middle ground, but this is increasingly difficult to find.
- Means of implementation (finance, trade, globalisation) – the trade debate continues to feature various references to elimination of subsides but positions are still far apart.
- Energy – this is a new item on the agenda and the debate is still characterised by widely different levels of ambition. The key issues are improving access to energy, efficiency, cleaning up dirty production and use practices and improving abatement technologies, setting a global target for renewables, and phasing out harmful subsides. The US, Japan, Canada, and Australia ambitions are modest (i.e. weak), whereas EU, NZ, Norway, Iceland, Brazil, Switzerland, and Hungary are aiming for a much stronger commitment.
- Climate change – the key issue is ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The strong line taken by Norway has attracted support from the EU and Iceland and their position has hardened.
- Consumption and production – the EU has proposed a ten year work programme that includes life cycle analysis and labelling, but this is rejected by the US which does not want to be bound by a global programme and is advocating 'programmes' (plural).
- Water and sanitation – a key issue is agreement to a target date of 2015 to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to adequate sanitation. A similar goal for access to water has been agreed, but the US is holding out on making a clearcommitment to the sanitation target.
- Chemicals – a target date of 2020 to achieve an outcome where chemicals are used and produced in ways that do not lead to adverse effects on human health and environment is contentious. The G77 cannot agree to such a target but it is supported by the EU, Switzerland, Hungary and Norway.
- Governance (interface between national and international levels) – progress is slow, with the G77 opposing references to national governance, labour standards, and human rights. These are a bottom line for most developed countries. The notion of international governance is also contentious.
- World Solidarity Fund – NZ along with the EU, Canada, Australia, and the Nordics have doubts about the utility of yet another fund when there are already others in operation. Rather than creating another fund, it may be better to put the money into existing funds.
- Natural resources (incl. biodiversity) – again, the proposed targets and dates (2015 for reversing natural resource loss, and 2010 for reducing or halting the loss of biodiversity) are the main source of disagreement, although references to use of the ecosystem approach and the precautionary approach in managing natural resources are also contentious.
There is a general reluctance to send such a long list to Ministers, although views are divided on this as well. The main issues before Ministers today (Fri) are: targets and time frames, Rio Principles, climate change, Solidarity fund. The intention is that all issues will be resolved in one way or another by Sunday night so that the final Declaration is ready to be signed by leaders on Tuesday or Wednesday. It is possible that some issues may still be on the table early next week, but there will be an all out effort to complete the business before the end of the weekend.
There are also many side events going on in parallel to the official business of the Summit. The NZ delegation includes NGOs, business representatives, local government, Maori representatives, and a trade union representative. They have been actively participating in the side events and gathering information about what's going on elsewhere that might be of interest to NZ.
Neither of us has yet managed to venture beyond the security cocoon that surrounds the Summit. Work hours are long and meetings intense and most of the breaks are spent consulting with other delegations in the corridors. No-one has been eaten by animals, though one of or drivers was hijacked and ended up in hospital with a badly gashed hand. We're all OK, but it's a reminder that the suit jungle in here has nothing on the real jungle out there.
More follows later today after Ministers have completed their work and we have a (hopefully) clearer sense of where things will go from here. Rumours abound about a first draft of the political declaration, but no-one has actually seen it yet.
Graeme and Brett (your increasingly diligent correspondents)
Last updated: 17 September 2007
