08/29/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10097

JOHANNESBURG SUMMIT

The World Summit on Sustainable Development opened August 26^th and runs through September 4^th in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is the first such global meeting since the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit ten years ago. The Johannesburg summit is intended to assess progress toward sustainable development since 1992 and revitalize efforts to take action on the environmental, economic, and social challenges identified at Rio.

Among other things, the United States is committed to increasing access to safe drinking water and sanitation services, and to modern and efficient energy services. The U.S. is also committed to reducing hunger and to increasing agricultural productivity in the developing world. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will launch the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, which will improve management of forests and the lives of people. This partnership on forests -- along with other key partnerships the U.S. will be announcing in water, energy, and health -- illustrates the importance the U.S. places on the role of public-private cooperative efforts in addressing today’s sustainable development challenges.

As President George W. Bush said, there exists "a growing divide between wealth and poverty, between opportunity and misery that is both a challenge to our compassion and a source of instability." Mr. Bush said, "For decades, the success of development aid was measured only in the resources spent, not in the results achieved. Yet, pouring money into a failed status quo does little to help the poor, and can actually delay the progress of reform. We must," said President Bush, "accept a higher, more difficult, more promising call."

The Johannesburg summit can take practical measures. Paula Dobriansky, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, said the essence of the message the U.S. takes to Johannesburg is that "We must continue...working together to build global prosperity." To do this, said Secretary of State Powell, nations must open up their economies. As he said, "A World Bank study found that over the course of the 1990s, the twenty-four developing countries that increased their global trade and investment the most...also increased income per person much more than those that did not move in this direction."

As Secretary of State Powell said, "Sustainable development...is a marathon, not a sprint. It does not follow from a single event like the Johannesburg Summit...but from a sustained global effort by many players working together over a long period of time."