South Perspectives - November 2002

FOREWORD

The 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is the third global conference on environment-related issues in the last three decades. It is a further, important stage in the process initially charted and launched by the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) and carried forward by the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

Today, as in the past, the same basic issues that have been central to North-South debates on environment and development over these past three decades are once again stirring passions and controversy. The preparatory process, especially the final meeting of the Preparatory Committee for WSSD, held in Bali in May 2002, as well as the Johannesburg Conference itself were characterized by major disagreements between the North and the South, which ultimately proved impossible to bridge. The developing countries were unhappy, in particular, by what they felt was a negative stand of some developed countries and their reneging on earlier commitments and decisions.

During the preparatory process, as in the case of the 2002 Monterrey U.N. Conference on Financing for Development, the developing countries experienced some difficulty in articulating and defending their views. Nor did the Draft Plan of Implementation for the WSSD allow much scope for their major concerns to be properly reflected, given the need to be sensitive to the views of the major countries of the North and what their respective governments were prepared to consider.

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