Capacity 21 project launched
Capacity 21 project launched
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched here on Thursday evening its Capacity 21 project to empower the people in fulfilling their own basic needs for water and energy, and in fighting against poverty.
UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown said that dealing with local communities was the best way forward for sustainable development as the local community or people served as "the front line of the battle."
"That is why we have to invest in the fundamental line. The local community is the frontline in turning around natural degradation," Brown said during the launching of Capacity 21 here on Thursday.
The project goal is to deal directly with the local communities in empowering them to build partnerships with other groups in the effort to provide access to water and energy, and eradicate poverty.
Capacity 21 is designed to support developing countries in meeting the Agenda 21 on sustainable development that was agreed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro ten years ago.
The project is also meant to achieve the Millennium Goals, agreed in 2000, of halving the number of people lacking access to clean water and energy by the year 2015.
Over the past ten years, the UNDP had been working with 2,600 NGOs in 35 countries in carrying out various sustainable development programs.
It would continue to work with those NGOs in implementing its Capacity 21 projects so that sustainable development projects would continue to improve the world even if the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg failed to produce something beyond the Rio declaration.
"The real application happens at the local community level. The people are the means to win the battle of sustainable development," Brown said.
Separately, the UNDP environment and sustainable development group chief, Alvaro Umana, told The Jakarta Post that the Capacity 21 project would educate the people so that they could organize themselves in obtaining their basic needs of energy and water.
He underlined that when people had the knowledge, they could address their own problems with water or energy access and improve the quality of their lives.
Umana stressed that although the program promoted partnerships, it would not encourage any privatization of water and energy supplies for the ordinary people.
"This partnership is not something that considers privatization as we all agree that energy and water should not be for making profits," Umana said.