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.