WSSD:
Experts Question Caribbean's Readiness for Summit
by Dionne Jackson Miller
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, Aug 21 (IPS) - Caribbean nationals are
raising concerns about the region's preparedness for the World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), saying the lack
of a coordinated approach could hurt future efforts to tackle
serious problems.
The WSSD, also known as Rio-plus-10 because
it comes a decade after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, is widely viewed as a chance to assess the world's
progress towards sustainable development in the last decade.
But experts here say Caribbean states
may not have done enough homework to make an impact at Johannesburg,
where 40,000 people are expected to gather for the meeting
that starts next week. Nor have many countries taken significant
steps towards sustainable development, they add.
"We're going in, some of us, with
an uneven playing field," says Ijahnya Christian, executive
director of the Anguilla National Trust on the island of Anguilla.
"There are many within our political
leadership who may not be familiar at all with Agenda 21 (the
landmark sustainable development action plan agreed to in
Rio), and yet it is the implementation of that, that is being
reviewed in terms of the Johannesburg meeting," Christian
says.
Issues like vulnerability to natural
disasters, poverty, and climate change, as some of the more
critical issues facing the small island states of the Caribbean,
she adds.
Christian, whose group was created by
the state to help protect Anguilla's natural and historic
resources, argues that good governance is a prerequisite for
sustainable development, but says the region's people have
not fully participated in the process.
"We have not sufficiently engaged
the Caribbean people at every level in all of the issues,
so while Johannesburg may represent for us some opportunities,
I do not know that we're sufficiently organised to take full
advantage of what the opportunities may be," she says.
Undoubtedly, the region faces serious
environmental problems.
For example, Latin America and the Caribbean
account for 16 percent of the world's degraded land, ranking
third behind Asia and the Pacific, which is home to 29 percent,
and Africa (26 percent), according to the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP)..
In addition, almost one in three Caribbean
coral reefs are considered to be at serious risk from run-off
and sedimentation.
While acknowledging the gravity of environmental
issues, one expert says many in the Caribbean are making the
mistake of viewing the WSSD as primarily an environmental
meeting, instead of focusing on equally critical economic
and social issues.
"We are duly concerned about things
like sea level rise and climate change, which are major problems,"
says Al Binger, director of the centre for environment and
development at the University of the West Indies in Kingston.
"(But) Sustainable development is
not just environment," he adds. "We also need to
be concerned about shorter-term issues like trade, and finance
and energy, and the whole issue of HIV/AIDS, because this
is development in total," notes Binger, a university
professor who will be part of a group launching a publication
on small island developing states (SIDS) in Johannesburg.
Environmental consultant David Smith
says the Caribbean should seek to benefit from the meeting's
wider development agenda.
"People are complaining that it's
not an environmental conference, (but) it's not supposed to
be. I think it would be very important if we came away with
an better understanding of what developing countries have
to face in order to move up the human development index,"
Smith says, referring to an annual U.N. report ranking the
world's countries based on health, education, the status of
children and other measures.
For instance, the Caribbean would benefit
if Johannesburg led to agreements for more development assistance
to implement policies, or for improved debt relief mechanisms,
he suggests.
Improved planning would also boost sustainable
development in the region, says Environment Tobago Vice-President
Kamau Akili.
"We have found that our institutional
arrangements do not allow for proper planning and implementation
to achieve some of the objectives, and long-term goals,"
says.
For instance, "you have a government
elected for five years, it comes into office and does not
want to implement what was planned by the government before",
explains Akili, whose group is a non-governmental organisation
working to conserve and restore the environment of Trinidad
and Tobago.
While this applies to that country, he
adds, the issue is likely to strike a chord in other Caribbean
countries that have inherited similar institutional arrangements,
as former British colonies.
Tobago is now establishing a council
for sustainable development to broaden its focus from strictly
environmental issues into social and economic dimensions,
Akili says.
How effectively the Caribbean will be
able to articulate their issues in Johannesburg is another
cause for concern, say experts.
Small island states often have limited
capacity to participate in international negotiations, and
the relatively small size of their delegations compared to
developed countries frequently puts them at an immediate disadvantage.
But even given the problems of capacity
and delegation size, Binger believes that the Caribbean is
not maximising its negotiating abilities.
"Part of the problem is that the
negotiating teams tend to negotiate in isolation from one
another. For example, during the WSSD process, we haven't
really benefited from the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM)
dealing with trade," Binger explains.
The RNM was established to provide advice
to Caribbean states negotiating a number of international
trade agreements.
Ijahnya Christian says Caribbean participation
in the preparatory process for the WSSD was not as effective
as it could have been.
With the U.N. system grouping the region
with Latin America, the small island states were marginalised
by their lack of preparedness and the absence of agreements
at the sub-regional level, she claims.
"There're different levels at which
we needed to play, to be able to speak more forcefully as
a people, and I think we haven't done our homework well enough
in terms of the preparation, in terms of the lobbying,"
Christian says.
Although many in the Caribbean have low
expectations for the summit, others say the road ahead is
not insurmountable.
Binger suggests that the states affected
should already be positioning themselves for the Barbados
+ 10 conference (on small island developing states), by developing
a collective plan to address the region's vulnerabilities.
But he notes that process has suffered
from a lack of capacity and resources, partly because of declining
financial aid.
"Development assistance (fell)
since 1990 significantly, and what is so funny is that, that
is the decade in which the economic expansion of the world
was the greatest in history. I keep asking myself if (donor
nations) can't live up to their funding obligations during
good times, when will they live up to it?" (END/2002)
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