Making Good on Commitments Already Made: The Special Needs of Island States
By Chithambaranathan Mahendran
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| "Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make this mighty Ocean, and this blessed land." Islands have always conjured up images of "paradise". My own country, Sri Lanka, is referred to as the pearl of the Indian Ocean. Serendib of ancient times; but increasingly the azure blue waters, coral reefs and lush vegetation are in stress. The United Nations has been aware of this. In May 1994, at the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (Barbados Conference), 111 nations adopted the Barbados Declaration and Programme of Action. The international community wanted very much to come to grips with the problems facing small island States, which on their own would find it impossible to reverse the danger facing the fragile ecosystems and raise their incomes to withstand the growing concerns of a complex globalized economy, as well as preserve their traditional ways of life that were among their prized assets.
Unfortunately, these declarations of intent have so far remained mere declarations; they have not translated into action programmes. The Kyoto Protocol on global warming is the classic example of how sustainable development can be stymied by the economically powerful States to the detriment of small island States that are disadvantaged by their size, divided into many islands grouped together, with a narrow range of resources leading to specialization, vulnerable to the vagaries of international trade, high population density, overuse of resources due to excessive population, small watersheds that limit fresh water resources, and other attendant problems of under-development. The international community is well aware of the problems, but even on the eve of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, we were nowhere near meeting the minimum basic needs in finance and technical assistance to uplift the acute problems of island nations. The Summit defined commitments to be realized within two years. The miniscule size of small island nations means that development and environment are closely interrelated and interdependent. Recent events have proved that these States have lost some of their islands to the ravages of the environment, such as global warming, due to ill-conceived development strategies. Unsustainable development threatens not only the development of people but also their cultures and their very lands.
Development options are limited in small island nations. The most valuable asset they possess is their human resource. The United Nations should focus on the role that youth and women of these States could play in achieving the objectives of sustainable development. The international community will have to provide access to adequate, predictable new financial resources, optimizing the use of existing ones and adopting measures for supporting endogenous capacity-building, in particular for human resource development, as well as for energy-efficient and environment-friendly development programmes. Following his appointment as High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States, Anwar Karim Chowdhury is engaged in setting the direction and organization for his responsibilities, to galvanize the international community, with the UN system as the core, in mobilizing the UN family to deliver. This delivery will depend on the political will of the most advanced and economically prosperous nations to finance the programme of action, as envisaged in Brussels in May 2001. Thus, I see a window of opportunity here, and the UN system can deliver if the affluent members of the world body make good on the commitments already made. Where there is a will, there is a way. |
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| Focus 2002: Sustainable Development |
| Forty-eight States and an international organization participated in a treaty event at UN Headquarters, in conjunction with the Johannesburg Summit, when 83 actions relating to 39 treaties (5 signatures and 78 ratifications, approvals, acceptances, accessions and other treaty actions) were undertaken. In a letter to heads of State and Government, Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called on them to sign, ratify or accede to a core group of 25 multilateral treaties related to sustainable development. Palitha Kohona, Chief of the Treaty Section in the UN Office of Legal Affairs, told the Chronicle that Mr. Annan's letter had had a "significant effect", and a number of world leaders had written back and complimented the Secretary-General on the initiative. Though the number of treaty actions was less than the last treaty-signing event at the time of the 2000 Millennium Summit, Mr. Kohona noted that "the smaller number of treaty actions can be explained by the fact that the conference was in Johannesburg, while the treaty event was in New York, and many leaders were at the Summit".
These treaties attracted the most number of actions: Treaty actions were also received with regard to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification (3 accessions); Convention on Biological Diversity (1 accession); Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1 accession); Amendment to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1 ratification); and Protocol to the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2 ratifications/acceptances). —Sanjay Sethi for the Chronicle |
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