Chronicle Essay
The Road from Stockholm to Johannesburg
By Lars-Göran Engfeldt
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The pioneering 1972 Stockholm Conference - United Nations Conference on the Human Environment - and the rapidly approaching Johannesburg Summit - World Summit on Sustainable Development, in August/September 2002 - are closely linked both conceptually and substantively. Johannesburg, with its far broader scope, is also very different from its more modest, yet farsighted, predecessor. The focus in Stockholm was on international cooperation on environment, and twenty years later at the historic 1992 Rio Conference - United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - on the broader issue of the relationship between environment and development at the national and international levels. Now, there is consensus around the general concept of sustainable development and that its three pillars - economic, social and environmental - must be integrated in a balanced way. Another major change is the realization at the international policy-making level that in the era of globalization sustainable development can only be achieved through close partnership between Governments, the private business sector and civil society.
The implementation gap
There have been many achievements over the past thirty years. World trade has increased fifteenfold since 1960 and global per capita incomes have doubled. Life expectancy in developing countries is higher as a result of advances in the health area. However, key negative trends have proven difficult to reverse. They were summed up two years ago by 100 environment ministers in the Malmö Ministerial Declaration: " … the burden of poverty on a large proportion of the Earth's inhabitants counterposed against excessive and wasteful consumption and inefficient resource use that perpetuate the vicious circle of environmental degradation and increasing poverty".
The income gap between the richest and the poorest fifth of the world population increased from 30:1 in 1960 to 90:1 today. The richest fifth account for nearly 86 per cent of total private consumption. This has taken place in a world where half of the population lives on less than US$2 a day, where 1 billion persons are unemployed, underemployed or working poor, and where 250 million children are working. We have witnessed a doubling of fish catch in the last 25 years, with more than 60 per cent of marine fish on the verge of not reproducing stock, or beyond that threshold. Meanwhile, climate change is occurring at a rapid pace, with an increase in average global temperature by 0.4 degrees Celsius in the past forty years.
It is time to recognize that sustainable development has become a matter of survival, which must be given the same priority as traditional security policy. The landmark agreements from Rio show the way, but the key problem before Johannesburg is that implementation is seriously lagging. The scientific community tells us that we have perhaps 20 to 25 years to rectify the situation. The widespread insight that business as usual is not an option is inevitably tempered by our incapability to take long-term decisions in our own interest as human beings. Perhaps this is starting to change. Experiences from international negotiations over this thirty-year period give a perspective to the complex challenges of today, which could be useful to negotiators and decision makers. With this perspective in mind, below are some reflections.
From Stockholm to Rio to Johannesburg
 | Maurice Strong (left) with Conference President Ingemund Bengtsson at the closing of the Stockholm Conference on 16 June 1972. (Pressens Bild AB; European Pressphoto Agencies Union)
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In the 1960s, shortcomings were starting to appear in the United Nations system, a mirror of the sectorial administrative organization in nation States. The system was not designed to deal with rapidly emerging issues of a cross-sectorial and transnational nature that resulted from the unprecedented scientific and technological advances after the Second World War. One example was the environment, a victim of the negative side effects of these developments.
Through its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Sverker Åström, Sweden placed this fundamental question on the agenda of the General Assembly in 1968. He proposed that a global action-oriented UN conference be convened in 1972 to increase awareness and to identify environmental problems which needed international cooperation. In a brilliant diplomatic operation, he overcame resistance from strong Western European opponents who argued that the environment was best handled in one of the sectorial agencies so that additional requests for development assistance could be more easily deflected. It was clear that a major structural reform of the UN system to address these problems in a comprehensive and holistic way was not within reach at that time. A similar institutional constraint still exists today, some 34 years later. The Conference model has been successful, but the increasingly integrated and complex global development agenda urgently requires new approaches. This issue is at the centre of the agenda for Johannesburg.
The Stockholm Conference
The Secretary-General of the Stockholm Conference, as well as of the Rio Conference, was Maurice F. Strong of Canada. His role was pivotal for both events. He brought to these processes a very special and constructive combination of vision and pragmatism, which yielded impressive results in spite of the institutional limitations.
Again, the importance of personal leadership - and there have been many more examples - was demonstrated. With the sound bottom-up approach of the Johannesburg process, the leadership factor has tended to become somewhat blurred, but remains key for success, and high-level political involvement in the Summit preparations in all countries is essential. The motto of the Stockholm Conference was "Only One Earth", a revolutionary concept for its time. After several decades of phenomenal advances in information technology, this vision is now easily understood and shared by almost all.
There were world leaders present, among them Indira Gandhi, who echoed strong sentiments among developing countries when she emphasized the close interrelation between mass poverty and the environment. Unwittingly, she set the stage for the next thirty years of international deliberations on these issues. This time was needed to make the conceptual breakthroughs, which can allow the international community at the beginning of the twenty-first century to start to embrace only one and not several agendas of development.
The Conference took place in the middle of the cold war with the Soviet Union and its allies absent; however, this did not seriously affect the results, as the Soviet Union participated actively in the unique preparatory process for the Stockholm Conference. It was also the first major international event in which the People's Republic of China participated as a new member of the United Nations. This led to a protracted and difficult renegotiation of the draft declaration, where China came close to formally opposing the text on the population issue. In the end, all decisions were taken by consensus-a tradition that continues until now.
As a result of Stockholm, environment ministries and agencies were established in more than 100 countries, a key requirement for carrying forth the results of the Conference. It also marked the beginning of the explosive increase in non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations dedicated to environmental preservation. In twenty years, an estimated 100,000 such organizations were formed.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was established in Nairobi to act as a catalytic instrument to promote the results of the Conference. The Declaration and the Action Plan, with recommendations for international action adopted at Stockholm, were particularly instrumental in the subsequent rapid development of international environmental law. Principle 21 of the Declaration has special significance; it contains the provision that States have the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment beyond their own borders. From a handful in the 1960s, more than 200 global conventions are in place today with their own Conferences of Parties and secretariats.
However, over the years this positive evolution became a victim of its own success through increasing fragmentation and lack of coherence in the overall system of international environmental governance. The Johannesburg Summit will consider steps to rectify this situation, including a desirable strengthening of UNEP as the centre of the system. UNEP has achieved many successes since the 1970s, notably in the area of international environmental law and assessment. But partly due to the relative weakness of the environment area of national administrations, the Programme has not been allowed to live up to its true potential as foreseen at the time of Stockholm.
As the globalization process accelerated in the last 25 years of the twentieth century, the Conference was used as a model for a series of similar United Nations events to try to come to grips with interlinked and related problems of a cross-sectorial nature, such as population, the food crisis, urbanization, human rights, social development and gender. They have all contributed to what is now a comprehensive global development agenda, including the Millennium Declaration Goals.
Debate on the relationship between environment and development
Various factors, among them the oil crises, contributed to a certain loss of momentum in the 1970s. At the tenth anniversary of the Stockholm Conference, the question was how lost ground could be regained. In reply, the UN General Assembly established a special independent Commission of eminent persons, under the chairmanship of then Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway. When the conclusions of the Brundtland Commission were published in 1987, the political climate was more receptive, as economic prospects in the industrialized world were more positive and serious threats to the global ecosystem were starting to emerge.
The Commission developed conceptually the relationship between environment and development, where divisions between North and South had not diminished since Stockholm. In fact, this issue had already been seriously debated before the Conference. Vocal arguments were raised, particularly by Brazil and Algeria, claiming that the Conference on the environment was a rich man's show to divert attention from the development needs in the underprivileged parts of the world. An influential seminar in Founex, Switzerland in the spring of 1971 concluded that there is no inherent contradiction between environment and development, and that these two concerns should be mutually supportive. This secured attendance from most developing countries, but the question could not be substantively settled at the Stockholm Conference.
An increasing consensus developed in the 1980s that environmental degradation undermines the basis of economic development unless radical steps are taken. At the same time, developing countries took the view that if poverty and underdevelopment were given priority, a sound and sustainable environment would follow.
The Commission emphasized the importance of economic growth and promoted the concept of "sustainable development", defined as a growth that satisfies today's needs without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. Protection of the environment should not be seen as a sectorial interest but as an integrated component in all economic and social development. The report recommended a sound management of natural resources, energy saving and a population size in harmony with the productive potential of the ecosystems. It also argued for a strong increase in capital flows and improvements in terms of trade for the developing countries, and other measures to reduce the gaps in living standards between rich and poor countries. The agenda was thus set for the Rio Conference, with major implications for the Johannesburg Summit fifteen years later.
It was not possible to use the new concept of sustainable development in the title of the Rio Conference. Influential developing countries, while recognizing the importance of limiting pressures on the ecosystems, feared reductions in their freedom of action. By keeping the term "environment and development", a certain ambiguity could be maintained. This made it easier to argue that the responsibility to take action against environmental destruction primarily rested with the industrialized countries which, in their view, had caused the problems in the first place.
At Johannesburg, promoting sustainable development is of course the recognized key objective. This does not prevent that underlying attitudes, as described above on the distribution of responsibilities for action, still are very much the same. However, in the years since Rio, there is a gradual and politically important shift in emphasis towards a realization of the key importance of national and local actions, including systems of good domestic governance.
The Rio Conference
 | Children from around the world presented their environmental concerns at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Mr. Nitin Desai (second from left) is Secretary-General of the Johannesburg Summit.
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In 1989, the General Assembly decided to convene the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. The host country was Brazil, whose attitudes and policies had undergone major changes since Stockholm. The Rio Conference was a summit attracting some 120 heads of State or Government. The United States, which had played a leading role twenty years earlier, took a restrictive position. Nevertheless, the Conference took place in a spirit of high hopes after the end of the cold war and became a success. It adopted three documents: the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21 and the Statement of Forest Principles. Two global Conventions - on climate change and on biological diversity - were opened for signature and shortly followed by a desertification convention.
The Rio Declaration represents a delicate balance of principles, among them those of common and differentiated responsibility, polluter pays, precaution and liability. The Forest Principles reflected a hard-fought first global consensus on forests, which has since been further developed. Agenda 21 is a detailed blueprint for action into the twenty-first century, with a focus on integrating environment considerations in development, and also covering action at the national level, underlining national responsibility. This was a significant breakthrough. An attempt was made to cost the recommended measures, demonstrating the urgent need for additional financial resources to implement Agenda 21; the bulk would have to come from the domestic public and private sectors. At the same time, as part of the overall political agreement between industrialized and developing countries, the former reaffirmed their commitment to reach the accepted United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product for official development assistance (ODA). This did not include the United States, which had not made an original commitment in 1970.
A special financial mechanism - the Global Environment Facility (GEF) - was set up to deal with global environmental problems, where industrialized countries accepted a special responsibility. Through the GEF, some $11 billion have so far been disbursed. By comparison, an additional $50 billion a year will be needed to implement the Millennium Declaration goal of halving the number of persons living in absolute poverty by the year 2015. It is clear that such a magnitide of resources will have to come from a variety of sources, particularly domestic ones. External private financial flows have also become much more significant in volume than ODA during the 1990s. However, ODA remains a primary lifeline, particularly for the least developed countries. It is a case in point that the $50 billion roughly corresponds to the financial commitments made by the industralized countries in Rio, which as of yet have not been fulfilled.
The Rio Conventions reflect the broader concept of sustainable development. The Conventions on biological diversity and on desertification suffer from problems of implementation related to inadequate financial resources and lack of institutional capacity in developing countries. In a promising development, the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1997, containing in the first phase a series of binding, although modest, measures to respond to climate change that go straight into the heart of the industrial civilization. The Protocol will hopefully enter into force around the time of the Johannesburg Summit. Again, the United States has opted to step aside.
The Rio Conference resulted in the establishment of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), under the UN Economic and Social Council, to oversee the implementation of Agenda 21. The Commission has had some positive impact, including promoting dialogues between stakeholder groups and Governments. In spite of its broad sustainable development agenda, the CSD meetings had been attended largely by environment ministers.
At Rio, the non-governmental presence was very prominent. A significant informal involvement of private business leaders also took place, a first sign of an even more active involvement of these key actors, which has increased further as we approach the Johannesburg Summit. The five-year review in 1997 was a disappointment. Three years later, the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals at the Millennium Assembly in 2000 inspired new hope as the international community took a decisive step towards focusing its development efforts clearly on implementing agreed targets.
The road from Stockholm has gradually expanded in an ever more complex network of paths, which will come together at Johannesburg. From there, another journey will start.
The entire sustainable development agenda is now on the table. Again, the crucial importance of decisive leadership must be underlined. Ten years ago at Rio, world leaders demonstrated their personal commitment to the Conference and its results. Now, they are expected to take clear and tangible steps to reduce the discrepancy between commitments and action. With the new challenges of the accelerating globalization, and with September 11 just behind us, the case for a true global partnership cannot be made more convincing.
The clear recognition by most States that a sound and sustainable development is dependent on a balance of economic, social and environment considerations is perhaps the single most important achievement of the past thirty years. This new-found consensus that eluded us for so many years is rapidly changing mindsets and opens the way for integrated and more long-term policy decisions at all levels.
Solidarity between the rich and poor is squarely part of this equation. Therefore, issues such as improved terms of trade, market access, elimination of harmful subsidies, capacity-building, improved debt relief and increased ODA are intrinsic parts of the global sustainable development agenda. The Summit will need to demonstrate progress in these areas, building on other relevant processes, such as Doha and Monterrey.
Among the key substantive issues, the Johannesburg Summit will also consider measures to effectively address the poverty-related goals in Agenda 21 and the Millennium Declaration, eliminate unsustainable production and consumption patterns, protect the natural resource base and improve national coherence and governance structures at all levels. If Johannesburg can show a critical mass of concrete deliverables, it will reflect a new departure. Areas that are being discussed include access to energy and fresh water, health and special support to Africa. Partnerships with the private business and civil society will be essential components to reinforce the new government commitments.
The lessons on the road from Stockholm were hard earned and now deserve to bear fruit for all to see.
Links:
Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm 1972)
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio 1992)
Agenda 21
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
Statement of Forest Principles
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Ambassador Lars-Göran Engfeldt has been Chief Negotiator for global environment and sustainable development issues at the Ministry of the Environment in Stockholm, Sweden since 1998 and is a member of the bureau of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. He was the Swedish liaison officer in the secretariat for the Stockholm Conference in the early 1970s, and in 1993 was appointed Ambassador in Nairobi and Permanent Representative to UNEP and Habitat.
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