Partnership, capacity building dominate multi-stakeholders meeting
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.