The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is a United Nations (UN) event but as the host nation South Africa has an important role in helping to set the agenda. South Africa, along with other African countries, has emphasised poverty related issues in its preparations for the summit. We start this SARPN newsletter with a look at the core areas the South Africa government has focused on in the preparatory meetings and will continue to focus on during the summit. However, South Africa has to engage with the other nations in the UN system to promote its agenda. The UN is a multilateral body that works on a consensus seeking model. This helps to ensure that countries have the commitment to implement agreements. In practice South Africa, along with other African countries works through a bloc of developing countries called the G77/China. Securing consensus on positions at an Africa level and then negotiating them in the G77/China bloc means that they carry more weight than proposals from a single country. We look at how this works in more detail in the section on International Governance. Returning to the agenda, we broaden our focus to look at the SADC position, which shares many features with the Africa position.
From there we examine how the process has played out in practice, assessing the progress achieved at the final PrepCom for the WSSD in Bali. Here we focus on the Draft Implementation Plan. In its final form this plan will be the most important output of the WSSD. Although some 73 per cent of the text was agreed at Bali, the 27 per cent of unresolved text includes issues like trade and finance which are fundamental to its implementation. Text on unilateral actions is also unresolved. This was a response to the growing tendency of the United States, in particular, to seek international solutions outside of multilateral institutions. This gives it greater latitude to use its political, economic and military power to secure its objectives without going through consensus building processes. Although not part of the plan itself, the issue of partnerships is also unresolved. Partnerships between governments and the private sector have been promoted, particularly by the United States, as a key mechanism for addressing the implementation deficit that has dogged the objectives set out in Agenda 21 at the Rio Earth Summit ten years ago. However, developing countries are concerned that developed country governments will use them to avoid commitments. The failure to resolve these fundamental issues places greater urgency on the process at the WSSD from 24 August to 9 September in Johannesburg. Success will be key to securing an outcome that will effectively promote sustainable development, and contribute to poverty eradication. However, it is unlikely that the WSSD will arrive at definitive positions on all the issues. It is only one in a complex series of highly politicised interactions between nations, and in some areas like trade and finance, agreements reached at the WTO take precedence over those in other international forums.
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