'How can you produce so much material and be efficient?'.

• Author: Rutsch, Horst
• Position: Towards a Global Partnership for Development

Agnes van Ardenne-van der Hoeven had been Minister for Development Cooperation of the Netherlands for only four weeks when she attended the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Seven Dutch Government departments--development cooperation, finance, trade, agriculture, labour, foreign affairs and environment--had been preparing for two years a joint position for the Summit, she emphasized, saying that "it was my responsibility to carry out the instruction and come back with results".

Horst Rutsch of the Chronicle spoke with Mrs. van Ardenne on 16 September 2002 in New York.

On the millennium development goals

Water is life; sanitation is dignity. Sanitation was not part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). After tough negotiations, the Johannesburg Summit agreed to accept 2015 as the target year to provide access to sanitation for half of the population lacking it today--some 2.4 billion people. And 1.2 billion don't have access to water; we will also halve that amount. On biodiversity, we added something to these goals. We had hoped to achieve more on durable energy. But now, I think, we must stop adding goals; we have to work these out--that is what the plan of implementation is all about. We don't need new talks or new conferences on that scale. Instead, we should now focus on implementation--that's more important.

On the Johannesburg Summit

The outcome of the Johannesburg Summit is significant, above all, because of what is new. For the first time, we have combined poverty reduction with trade and sustainability and environment protection in one holistic approach--that's very important. We also found out that besides the involvement of Governments, you need the private sector and civil society. You need partners in sustainable development: multilateral organizations, the private sector, civil society, as well as Governments. That too is what is new about Johannesburg--the search for new partners in sustainable development: from the private sector, the non-governmental side and the UN system. These kinds of partnerships complement bilateral development cooperation. In partnerships, you try to find more capacity, more managerial expertise, more institution-building--that's important whenever you want to improve water, energy, health, education or biodiversity. You need the capacity and the people to make it sustainable.

On the centrality of water issues

Water was one of our priorities for the Summit, as was energy...