Speech:
H. E. Dr. Lamuel Stanislaus
Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Grenada at the U.N.
St. George’s, Grenada
Follow-up and Assess to the WSSD
Johannesburg, South Africa in August 2002
April 14, 2003

Mr. Chairman, Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, distinguished Professors and Scholars, Ladies and Gentlemen.

There is no need for me to multiply words to express our pleasure and gratitude to CARICOM, COTED and UNDP for holding this Multi-Disciplinary Workshop in beautiful St. George’s, as a follow-up activity, to assess the World Summit on Sustainable Development WSSD held in Johannesburg in August 2002 and to map a strategy as The Way Forward.

Mr. Chairman,

By way of history, the June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Environment and Development (UNCED) conjured up great expectation for the integration of economic growth, social development and environmental protection. Yet more than ten years later, although some progress has been made, there still remains plenty pockets of poverty, environmental degradation, social disintegration and dislocation in many parts of the world, especially among developing countries.

Enunciated at that meeting was the Rio Declaration, the centerpiece of which was Agenda 21, the blueprint for sustainable development, which, like globalisation, is another catchword in the international community, under which, a host of interrelated ideas and programs are subsumed. The great need is to make these concepts and ideas workable in a practical way for poor people around the world, who earn less than a dollar a day, lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation, lack access to health and education and the many other basic necessities which contribute to a better standard of living.

Mr. Chairman,

Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, there has been several UN summit level conferences—The Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993, the Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, the Social Development Summit in Copenhagen in 1995, the World Conference on Women in Beijing in mid 1995, Habitat II on urbanization in Istanbul in June 1996, the Food Security Summit in Rome in late 1996, the Special Session on Children at the UN 8-10 May 2002, The Millennium Summit 6-8 September 2000, Financing for Developing in Monterrey 18-22 March 2002, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg 26 August to 4 September 2002, into which we are now sinking our teeth in this Multi-Disciplinary Workshop here in beautiful St. George’s, in terms of follow-up activity and the development of a strategy, which leads to action.

Mr. Chairman, in order to map a strategy with respect to The Road from Johannesburg and The Way Forward, there must be the political will and the universal reaffirmation of commitment on our part, as owners of the SIDS program, and on the part of government, private sector donors, and NGO’s from the developed countries that are willing to do more than just express pious platitudes. The Way Forward is to move without delay to the final implementation phase of the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA), which is the centerpiece of Agenda 21 with respect to SIDS development.

Mr. Chairman,

What my delegation will like to do is to compare some parts of the outcome document of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as ours, with the Barbados Declaration and Program of Action (BPOA), which came out of the conference in Barbados 25 April to 6 May 1994. Let us see what has been accomplished and what is left undone as we proceed to Mauritius in 2004 for the historically significant 10-year review.

The UN General Assembly authorised that conference in December 1992, on the recommendation of the Rio Earth Summit. It was the UN Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of (SIDS), which was intended to be the seminal test of global partnership formed at the Earth Summit, by which rich and poor countries agreed to work together for sustainable development. How much has been accomplished? This workshop will tell.

The Barbados Programme of Action called for national, regional and international action in certain priority areas. These range from sectoral concerns such as freshwater, climate change, biodiversity, marine resources and tourism, human resources, finance, and the support needed to put the plan into action.

In the Johannesburg WSSD the Secretary General of the UN identified the following priority areas for action—water and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture, biodiversity, trade, finance and globalisation.

With respect to water and sanitation, over 1 billion people do not have access to this precious commodity, which is finite and vulnerable, and, therefore, must be managed sustainably the world over especially in small states such as ours. The Millennium Development Goal challenges the international community to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. This fits right into the BPOA in terms of collaboration in water management and conservation. It must be remembered that water and civilization are disassociable.

The USA announced $970 million in investments over the next three years on water and sanitation. The EU, which currently spends about $1 billion a year for water and sanitation projects in developing countries, under a Water for Life initiative, seeks to engage partners. Such programmes fit directly into our Caribbean (SIDS).

Agriculture, which is so vital to the economy of many SIDS countries, has been stressed in the BPOA and the WSSD. Yet it is ironic, bordering on absurdity, that certain countries that preach sustainable development, are opposed to the EU banana regime of assistance to Caribbean banana, upon which many SIDS depend for foreign exchange. This unsustainability is antithetic to the concept of sustainable development for which SIDS should continue to fight vigorously.

Human Resources and Cultural Heritage are significant assets to ensure the centrality of people in sustainable development, which include their health, education, recreation, well-being, safety etc. In short the enhancement of a better quality of life. In this regard, gender equality and the role and contribution of women and indigenous people must be given full attention.

Tourism, which has contributed so much to the development of SIDS must be managed sustainably to prevent degradation of the environment on which it is so dependent. Hence there is the need to practice ecotourism.

According to the BPOA, our renowned Biodiversity resources must be preserved at all cost. Due to small size, isolation and the fragility of island ecosystems, biological diversity is among the most threatened in the world. Deforestation, coral reef destruction, habitat degradation and the introduction of certain non-indigenous species constitute a most dangerous threat to the biodiversity of SIDS.

Due to the constraint of time, my delegation would like to conclude by stressing the need for SIDS to develop a National Action Plan with policies and measures that are clear and well defined. Without action in terms of implementation of WSSD, BPOA, Millennium Summit et al, the volume of outcome documents produced does not worth the paper on which they are written.

Finally, promising too much is as bad as doing too little, therefore, we must not wait to do everything before doing something.

Thank you.