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By Rachael van der Kooye |
It was one of the five "Type 2" deals struck for partnerships between America and developing nations. world Caribbean. The five partnerships, announced by the George W Bush administration, are worth US$2.56 billion. This initiative is aimed at providing poor people with access to clean water, sanitation, clean energy, relief from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and protection for Congolese forests.
The US "White Water to Blue Water" partnership, which focuses on the Caribbean, is multi-prong.
It aims to increase coastal state and regional capacity for cross-sectoral approaches to the management of watersheds and marine ecosystems, to develop a framework for regional management programs that will promote a common vision and the efficient use of program resources as well as address the entire scope of watershed and marine ecosystem management from forests to the sea, and reverse the downward trend in fisheries.
It also envisages a partnership on biodiversity protection and commercialization in the Caribbean which aims to protect the natural heritage of the Caribbean region through the conservation and sustainable management of their natural biodiversity.
It also targets formal educational institutions. The overall goal for this partnership in the Caribbean is to increase and strengthen capacity of regional tertiary institutions to provide skills for the sustainable management of the islands' environment and natural resources. This partnership initiative is intended to further advance the development of graduate education in the area of environment and natural resources management.
The partnership also plans to improve the capacity in Small Island Developing States (SDIS) in the Caribbean to manage vulnerability and develop resilience particularly to disasters by providing technical assistance to develop systems and also to integrate a comprehensive hazard and risk management approach into sustainable development planning.
Another facet of the partnership is to help the Caribbean to better under and improve the capacity of governments and peoples adapt to respond to climate change, climate variability, and sea level rise.
Paula Dobriansky , the US secretary of state for Global Affairs, said that they will leverage government funding with financial support from the private sector to help developing countries move toward sustainable growth.
"The five partnerships constitute a vital step down the road towards sustainable development They are key elements in the new approach to development that president Bush embrace with other national leaders at the Monterrey conference in March. An approach based on shared accountability among developed and developing countries," she said.
She added that the US is getting "good marks" from other countries for its flexibility in negotiating the final points of the text of a final summit declaration.
Partnerships were one of the core elements of the WSSD which is reviewing the progress made (or not made) by the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992. One of the big concerns was that the industrialised countries have not followed through on their commitments for financing and a major focus was to develop partnerships between countries of the so-called North and South to achieve the blueprint which were set out in Agenda 21 - which is a document detailing the recommendations from the Earth Summit.
Two types of partnerships were agreed: One was "Type 1" which deals with a plan to further implement Agenda 21 while "Type 2" concerns voluntary commitments. Type 2 partnerships were expected to become an important element in the outcomes from the WSSD.
"The partnership initiatives are intended to ensure that there is real action toward sustainable development after the Summit," Johannesburg Summit Secretary-General
Nitin Desai said. "Too often, we have seen conferences end with only a document. We need government commitments-that's what the negotiations are for. But we need to know who is actually planning to implement what the Summit decides." But he cautioned that the partnerships should not serve as a substitute for government commitments.
According to Jan Pronk, the envoy of the UN-secretary general and former Dutch minister of environment, the developing countries want to deal with Type 1 first - the agreement and negotiation on a plan of action for the further implementation of Agenda 21 and a high level political declaration - and then the Type 2 agreements.
Therefore delegates are negotiating on trade, finance, and globalization. at the moment.
Ambassador John Ashe, Antigua and Barbuda's deputy permanent representative to the UN is chairing the talks. According to him all of the provisions on finance have been agreed upon, with outstanding issues referring to the conclusion of "common but differentiated responsibilities". He said that negotiations are continuing on the issue of phasing out subsidies and there are still disagreements on how to characterize the effects of globalization, as an opportunity as well as a challenge. Some of the targets that were not agreed upon yet include the goal of 2004 to limit the health related impacts of pollution, the goal of eliminating gender disparities in education by 2005, the development of food strategies for Africa by 2005 and a date of 2015 to restore depleted fish population globally. These targets will be included in the summit's final outcome document.
There are several partnership initiatives under the Type 2 commitments. Delegates submitted proposed initiatives to the secretariat for the WSSD. Most proposals contribute to poverty eradication and nearly all involve capacity building. The countries have expressed a great deal of interest in developing these partnerships, which are expected to become an important element of the outcomes from the WSSD. They will also become an integral part of the summit, even though they will not be negotiated by all present. They need only be agreed by those directly involved. Those who will commit themselves to taking the partnerships forward and making them a success.