Bridging interests, Bridging peoples.

• Author: French, Hilary
• Position: Development Watch

In mid-March, more than 50 heads of State, over 200 government Ministers and hundreds of leaders from civil society and the private sector gathered in Monterrey, Mexico for the International Conference on Financing for Development. This summit-level meeting addressed a daunting array of issues, including the role of domestic financial resources, private capital flows, international trade, development assistance and debt relief. It also tackled broad systemic issues related to governance of the international monetary, financial and trading systems. In August 2002, the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) will open in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the task of assessing progress in the ten years since the Rio "Earth Summit" and agreeing to a bold plan of action for putting sustainable development into practice worldwide.

Given the important links between the issues addressed in Monterrey and those to be discussed in Johannesburg, it is disappointing that preparations for the two events proceeded over the last few years on largely separate tracks. Although the Financing for Development Conference process shied away from discussing the "sustainable" part of the development agenda, it was nonetheless an important milestone on the road to the WSSD. The challenge of the coming months will be to build on some of the modest achievements of Monterrey to deliver tangible results in Johannesburg.

The 1992 Earth Summit attempted to bridge the interests of countries of the North and the South in forging a sustainable development path through what is sometimes called the Rio bargain. Its essence was that industrial and developing countries would agree to implement a range of environmental provisions contained in Agenda 21 and other Rio documents, with industrial countries providing substantial financial resources to help others accomplish this. This financing was to come from a range of sources, including increased foreign aid, debt relief and improved market access for developing-country exports. Apart from generating resources to implement Agenda 21 commitments, Governments saw these steps as important in combating poverty and improving living standards in the developing world. Ten years later, frustration is running high in many quarters over a perceived failure of industrial countries to uphold their end of this bargain.

At the same time, the strength of the anti-globalization protest movement in recent years has focused public attention on the importance of addressing persistent inequities between the North and the South. As the Johannesburg Summit approaches, many observers are hoping that it will provide a platform for reinvigorating and updating the Rio bargain to form a Johannesburg Global Deal.

Agenda 21 put a price tag on its own implementation in developing countries of over $600 billion annually, $475 billion of which was expected to be generated from domestic resources and $125 billion to come as foreign aid. The aid sum was widely viewed as unrealistic at the time, as it amounted to twice the overall level of spending on foreign aid then. But northern Governments nonetheless agreed to strive to meet it, in part by reaffirming the commitments of many donor countries to...