The road from Stockholm to Johannesburg.

• Author: Engfeldt, Lars-Goran
• Position: Essay - Achievements in sustainable development

The pioneering 1972 Stockholm Conference--United Nations Conference on the Human Environment--and the rapidly approaching Johannesburg Summit--World Summit on Sustainable Development, in August/September 2002--are closely linked both conceptually and substantively. Johannesburg, with its far broader scope, is also very different from its more modest, yet farsighted, predecessor. The focus in Stockholm was on international cooperation on environment, and twenty years later at the historic 1992 Rio Conference--United Nations Conference on Environment and Development--on the broader issue of the relationship between environment and development at the national and international levels. Now, there is consensus around the general concept of sustainable development and that its three pillars--economic, social and ervironmental--must be integrated in a balanced way. Another major change is the realization at the international policy-making level that in the era of globalization sustainable development can only be ach ieved through close partnership between Governments, the private business sector and civil society.

The implementation gap

There have been many achievements over the past thirty years. World trade has increased fifteenfold since 1960 and global per capita incomes have doubled. Life expectancy in developing countries is higher as a result of advances in the health area. However, key negative trends have proven difficult to reverse. They were summed up two years ago by 100 environment ministers in the Malmo Ministerial Declaration: " ... the burden of poverty on a large proportion of the Earth's inhabitants counter-posed against excessive and wasteful consumption and inefficient resource use that perpetuate the vicious circle of environmental degradation and increasing poverty".

The income gap between the richest and the poorest fifth of the world population increased from 30:1 in 1960 to 90:1 today. The richest fifth account for nearly 86 per cent of total private consumption. This has taken place in a world where half of the population lives on less than US$2 a day, where 1 billion persons are unemployed, underemployed or working poor, and where 250 million children are working. We have witnessed a doubling of fish catch in the last 25 years, with more than 60 per cent of marine fish on the verge of not reproducing stock, or beyond that threshold. Meanwhile, climate change is occurring at a rapid pace, with an increase in average global temperature by 0.4 degrees Celsius in the past forty years.

It is time to recognize that sustainable development has become a matter of survival, which must be given the same priority as traditional security policy. The landmark agreements from Rio show the way, but the key problem before Johannesburg is that implementation is seriously lagging. The scientific community tells us that we have perhaps 20 to 25 years to rectify the situation. The widespread insight that business as usual is not an option is inevitably tempered by our incapability to take long-term decisions in our own interest as human beings. Perhaps this is starting to change. Experiences from international negotiations over this thirty-year period give a perspective to the complex challenges of today, which could be useful to negotiators and decision makers. With this perspective in mind, below are some reflections.

From Stockholm to Rio to Johannesburg

In the 1960s, shortcomings were starting to appear in the United Nations system, a mirror of the sectorial administrative organization in nation States. The system was not designed to deal with rapidly emerging issues of a cross-sectorial and transnational nature that resulted from the unprecedented scientific and technological advances after the Second World War. One example was the environment, a victim of the negative side effects of these developments.

Through its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Sverker Astrom, Sweden placed this fundamental question on the agenda of the General Assembly in 1968. He proposed that a global action-oriented UN conference be convened in 1972 to increase awareness and to identify environmental problems which needed international cooperation. In a brilliant diplomatic...