Emil wants Bali Commitment to set benchmark
Emil wants Bali Commitment to set benchmark
The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
A benchmark of time targets would prevent the Bali
Commitment from seeing the same lackluster follow up as the 1992
Rio Declaration on sustainable development, but talks on the
action plan indicate that it is too early to say that all
delegates support the view, said Emil Salim.
Emil, chairman of the preparatory committee meeting for the
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), said the Rio
Declaration's action plan, Agenda 21, lacked results from
governments, because it did not have a benchmark.
"This Agenda (21) says you have to do this and that, but
what it doesn't say is by when to achieve all that," Emil told
The Jakarta Post in an interview on Thursday.
Delegates, already behind schedule to finalize the action
plan, must decide quickly whether to include time targets. All
discussions on documents for the WSSD in Johannesburg, South
Africa, must be finalized within a week.
"We want a more concrete result from Johannesburg than from
Rio," Emil said.
There is concern that the Johannesburg Declaration, which
will be based on the action plan coined as the Bali Commitment,
will lack strength to enforce implementation, following the same
path as the Rio Declaration.
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, opened the
way for embedding sustainable development principles into
countries' development plans.
But action lessened among most countries that participated in
the summit. It took Indonesia five years to issue its National
Agenda 21, and the 1997 economic crisis further slowed the
process of implementation.
"This (the Johannesburg Declaration) is about getting this
done within a 10-year time frame, the deadline is 2012," said
Emil.
But not all delegates agree to incorporate the time targets
into the Chairman's Text, which is the negotiated document that
will be endorsed by heads of state during the Johannesburg
Summit. The Chairman's Text is also known as the Bali Commitment.
The United States has refused to include these time-bound
measures, which, according to Emil, was because the country
needed congressional approval before committing future resources.
He said the U.S. argument could be part of its negotiation
tactics. "After all, it should be the government's job to
convince Congress."
Since talks on the Chairman's Text began on Monday, delegates
from developing countries, and some developed countries, have
expressed frustration over the U.S.'s uncompromising stance.
Emil downplayed delegates' concerns, saying that during
negotiations parties always aimed for the highest stake.
He said that despite the apparent deadlock, compromises were
possible and talks could shift to which programs in the
Chairman's Text should come with a time target.
One Indonesian delegate has said that if a compromise were to
be reached, the U.S. would approve only those time targets, which
the U.S. already agreed to under the Millennium Goals, set out at
a United Nations conference in September 2000.
The Chairman Text is a summary of input from three preparatory
meetings in New York that were preceded by a series of
subregional and regional meetings.
The first version of the Chairman Text had 21 pages, but when
I asked for feedback it returned as a 150 page document," Emil
said.
"So what we did was we agree to omit the political language
and the pages went down. We expect to finalize the Chairman's
Text by Saturday night, leaving Sunday free. Negotiation is
slated to resume on Monday with discussion on the political
declaration for the Johannesburg Summit."
Emil said the political declaration in Johannesburg would act
as the political umbrella for the Bali Commitment action plan.
But implementing the action plan, he added, would largely rest
upon the partnerships between governments.
Bilateral and multilateral partnerships are key elements of
the Rio declaration, and the current talks are discussing whether
to extend them to include stakeholders such as companies and non-
governmental organizations.
However, discussions on these partnerships -- pursued
outside the negotiating room and often called type-2 outcome --
were watered down due to fears that developed countries would use
them to shift commitments on implementing sustainable development
measures to the private sector.
Non-governmental organizations have also called on
government delegates to set up monitoring and time-bound measures
for the type-2 partnerships, fearing that corporations could not
be held accountable for their programs.
"Partnerships lie with the real action, but the implementation
program (Bali Commitment) will give them direction, providing,
however, that time targets are put in place," Emil said.