Partnership, capacity building dominate multi-stakeholders meeting
A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
The governments and its counterparts, the nine major groups, wrapped up their multi-stakeholders dialogue meeting in Bali on Wednesday, with the central issue of partnership and capacity building.
During the three-hour meeting, led by Emil Salim of Indonesia, representatives of the nine major groups -- trade unions, NGOs, women, children and youth, indigenous people, local authorities, scientists, farmers and businesses -- pushed the need for strong action and action-oriented language in the outcome documents.
Concrete action was needed to bring to reality Agenda 21 set up in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, as to which all outcomes of the next World Summit on Sustainable Development should contribute to.
The next World Summit on Sustainable Development will be held in Johannesburg from August to September this year.
While touching on partnership, the major groups lashed out at the developed countries, which rejected accepting the demands of the developing countries to impose time-bound measures for the implementation of the action plans set up in Rio concerning sustainable development.
Dianne Quarless, the committee vice chair from Jamaica moved ahead, suggesting the establishment of a supervisory body to oversee the partnership.
The major groups also stressed that measures should be taken to ensure that the government did not abdicate its responsibilities for sustainable development.
Some of the major groups, especially representatives of the NGOs, demanded that the chairman's text -- to outline the action plan to save the planet -- outline time-bound measures, so that countries would not continue to drag their feet when it came to implementation.
Demands for time-bound measures have been aired several times by various groups at the current preparatory committee meeting for the World Summit, but the demands have fallen on deaf ears from the delegations of developed countries, especially the U.S.
The U.S. instead has promoted partnership initiatives. This has already received a warm welcomes from the business group.
Partnerships are seen as a vehicle to improve the implementation of Agenda 21 by involving those stakeholders whose activities have a direct impact on sustainable development, and not just the government.
As of Wednesday, there was no focus and clear thoughts on what the detail and profile of the partnerships would be.
However, the major groups would still have time to move forward on the details of partnerships, as the opportunities were still there for negotiations with the governments, before the high level ministerial meetings on June 5.
On capacity building, a representative from a local government group stressed that local capacity building must be promoted to materialize sustainable development drives.
"Local governments must be empowered so the capacity building drive is a success. The local government could be a pivotal party to facilitate the local and national stakeholders to promote sustainable development drives," said the representative.
It is a common phenomenon at the meeting that the representatives fail to identify themselves, and apparently the chairman lets it go.
Concluding the meeting, Emil Salim stressed the need to close the gap between ideals and realities.
Emil said he hoped that the contributions of the major groups should be taken into account by government delegations during their negotiations to prepare documents for the upcoming World Summit.
"The participants of the meeting, especially the nine major groups would bring their views on the working group meeting, and in that arena the real negotiations would take place," Emil told The Jakarta Post.