Yogyakarta hosts int'l meeting on sustainable development

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Experts, government officials and activists representing the Asia Pacific region gathered on Wednesday in Yogykarta for a three day meeting to discuss cleaner production methods and a sustainable consumption pattern in the region.

The meeting was organized by the Indonesian government and the United Nations, through the UN Environment Program (UNREP), the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA).

Delegates from Africa, Latin America and Europe where also present in the meeting which Indonesia's State Minister for the Environment Nabiel Makarim opened on Wednesday.

"The region's economic development agenda needs to be coupled with clean production processes and sustainable consumption patterns," said UNEP deputy executive director Shafqat Kakakhel in a press conference.

He said that pushing for sustainable development was important in the Asia Pacific region because it was the world's most populous region.

The region accounts for some 70 percent of the world's poor population, according to a UNEP paper.

Its middle to high class consumers earning more than US$7,000 a year amounted to just 26 percent of the region's population.

But even now the region suffers from environmental damage as a result of an unsustainable consumption pattern led by this small percentage of the population.

UNEP warned that raising prosperity in Asia Pacific could further harm the environment if consumption patterns remained unsustainable.

Kakakhel said the meeting in Yogyakarta aimed to prepare an agenda to implement sustainable consumption and production patterns over a 10-year period in the region.

He said the planned agenda was a follow up to last year's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bali had hosted the preparatory meeting for the summit, which environmentalists criticized for lacking support from several developed countries.

Sustainable development aims to curb the over exploitation of natural resources that is driving today's economic development pattern worldwide. The summit's action plan set the direction of global economic development for the next 10 years.

Environmental activists however dismissed the blueprint as loaded with vague targets and weak commitments.

The Yogyakarta meeting meanwhile focuses on production and consumption.

Kakakhel said the resulting agenda from the Yogyakarta meeting would call for stronger government leadership on these fronts.

Participants will meet again to compare their findings with other regions in a meeting next month in Marrakech, Morocco.