The global problem
The relationship between environmental and developmental goals is well-recognised. Rio’s Agenda 21, itself opens:
The 1997 ‘Second Earth Summit’ in New York (‘Rio+5’) made an assessment of progress made since 1992. The General Assembly adopted the Programme for Further Implementation of Agenda 21, which reaffirmed the 1992 programme as the fundamental basis for sustainable development. “We emphasize”, said the Assembly in a Statement of Commitment, “that the implementation of Agenda 21 in a comprehensive manner remains vitally important and is more urgent now than ever”.
The global objective and strategy
In response to this fundamental problem, the international community
has recently set certain goals. In
Agenda 21, the international community identified as its goal, through
the ‘global partnership’, the “fulfilment of basic needs, improved living
standards for all and better protected and managed ecosystems’.
Food
The global objective is essentially food security for all. But the target date of 2000 set in previous world food conferences proved unattainable and more realistic goals have since been adopted. The 1996 World Food Summit set a target of reducing by 50% the number of malnourished from 840 million today to 420 million by 2015, despite the increase in global population. The Rome Declaration affirmed “the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritional food consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.”
The strategy to achieve that objective is both greater productivity and better distribution of product. UN Secretary-General Annan has noted that the world at present has enough food: “what it lacks is the political will to ensure that all people have access to this bounty, that all people enjoy food security”. But the global population growth will strain the capacity of the planet even to ensure sufficient production in the future. In order to feed the world’s projected population in 2025, for example, agricultural production must increase by 2% per annum. FAO estimates that the planet must increase global food production by 75% by 2030 to keep pace with population growth. This production increase must come through increased yields rather than increased land since most cultivable land is already utilised, requiring almost a doubling of yields on the existing cultivable land area. Yet that doubling of yield must be achieved in the context of sustainability.
Shelter
The global objective, proclaimed at the 1996 UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) at Istanbul (Habitat II), is two-fold: adequate shelter for all; and ‘safer, healthier, and more liveable, equitable, sustainable and productive human settlements’. No quantitative targets nor any deadline, however, was agreed upon. The Habitat Agenda was described as a “global call to action at all levels, and a guide towards the achievement of sustainable development of the world’s cities, towns and villages into the first two decades of the next century”.
To attain this kind of objective, the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, adopted in 1988, had already emphasised the need for an enabling strategy for improved production and delivery of shelter, and revised national housing policies to that end. The 1988 strategy was updated by the 1996 Agenda. To achieve adequate shelter for all the world’s people by 2020, the Habitat Agenda lays down ten goals and principles. They are, however, vague and intrinsically broader even than the strategic objective itself. As such, they are of little use in assisting the international community attain the objective.
Health
The stated basic global objective, identified in Agenda 21 in 1992, is to achieve ‘health for all by the year 2000’. The major global health goals were set out in the Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s adopted at the Children’s Summit. These goals for 2000, identified in Agenda 21 and on a baseline of 1984, were: to eliminate measles, polio and Guinea worm; ‘effectively control’ leprosy and river blindness; reduce child diarrhoea by 25% to 50% and deaths from this by 50% to 70%; reduce child respiratory deaths by 33% and provide child respiratory care for 90% of the global population, provide 100% coverage for anti-malaria; reduce schistosomiasis by 40% and the incidence of trematode by 25%; and contain any resurgence of tuberculosis.
The strategy for attaining these goals is a vast and loosely integrated undertaking in sustainable development. The specific strategies for each sector – food, shelter and health – are the concern of specialized UN agencies, but the overall strategy is the focus of the Commission on Sustainable Development and the ‘Earth Summits’ at Rio in 1992 and Rio+5 in New York in 1997, both attended by a large number of heads of state and government. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan observed in New York, their presence was a ‘welcome demonstration’ of political will. The task now, he said, “is to turn that political will into deeds and actions. We must aim ... to set a sure course for the world community into the new millennium, on this most urgent and vital global issue”. At the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, the international community adopted the Poverty Strategies Initiative, located in UNDP, to support national efforts in poverty reduction strategies and programmes.