World Summit on Sustainable Development Department of Public Information - News and Media Services Division - New York
	Johannesburg, South Africa 26 August-4 September 2002	28 August 2002

PRESS CONFERENCE BY 'UN WORKS' CAMPAIGN   Six people being featured on billboards throughout Johannesburg during the World Summmit by the 'UN Works' campaign spoke at a press conference today about their innovative grass-roots projects in sanitation, recycling, HIV/AIDS, environmental preservation, producing milk products and traditional fishing. The UN Works campaign features stories of men, women and children from around the world that have benefited from the work of the United Nations. At the Summit, the campaign is highlighting people who are building lives that balance economic growth, environmental protection and social protection. (The stories can also be found at www.un.org/works). Bindeshwar Pathak of India founded the Sulabh International Service Organization, which has opened health care centres, community toilet complexes and trained women, teachers and volunteers in health and sanitation issues. Mr. Pathak has also established what may be the world's only museum dedicated entirely to toilets. More than 2 billion people in India had no access to hygienic sanitation, Mr. Pathak said. It was estimated that almost 500,000 people, including thousands of children, died in the country every year from diarrhoea and dehydration. Over 700 million people had no toilets in their homes and had to defecate in the open or in buckets. Responding to the country's sanitation needs, Mr. Pathak developed the Sulabh system, an effective, affordable and acceptable pit toilet that completely recycles waste as fertilizer and biogas. His group has now installed more than 1 million household toilets and almost 5,500 community toilets, which are used by more than 10 million Indian people. Jeya Wilson of South Africa started the HIV/AIDS Desk for Business in her country, after proving that it made more sense for companies to prolong the active lives of their employees by providing resources and treatments. Her group has produced a policy statement that spells out acceptable employment practices about the disease. Ms. Wilson argued that managing treatment in the workplace was the most cost-efficient option for employers, and the most effective solution for workers. The first step was for companies to stop thinking of HIV/AIDS as a human resources issue and start thinking of it as a fundamental business challenge that must be tackled at the boardroom level. Once companies made that leap, they could begin to implement policies to extend and maintain the productivity of employees, prevent new infections and educate workers about HIV/AIDS and safe behaviours. Wes Adell of the United States has been converting refuse into compost and organic fertilizer to grow trees and vegetables. He has been invited to 21 countries, he said, because of a small project he began in a Kansas town. That project simply takes refuse and runs it through a new technological process, which converts 90 per cent of it to organic fertilizer. Janet Horani of Jordan has built up a successful business in her country producing yogurt from milk products. She sells most of her yogurt locally, but some has been exported to the United States and Australia. Her 10-person family lives in a small town in southern Jordan. She enlisted in a programme on producing milk products financed by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). After her training, she obtained a loan of $3,000 from the programme to buy 15 sheep for producing milk products on the condition that she repaid it out of what she made. During the first two years Ms. Horani was making milk products, severe drought hit her area, but she was able to successfully conduct the project with the help of her husband and sons. She enjoyed the business because it allowed her to meet all the needs of her family, and was now expanding it so that could send her children to university. Lama Byambajay of Mongolia has been leading a movement to encourage environmental preservation in his country by reviving the traditional Buddhist reverence for nature. In his post as president of a Buddhist university, he educates monks and other students about the importance of environmental awareness and conservation methods they can bring back to their home countries. Mr. Byambajay said Buddhist morals were the core of Mongolian civilization and their impact on the country's lifestyle had been enormous. Buddhism had made a huge contribution to the protection of nature and the environment. The communist region had suppressed that Buddhist tradition, but the religion's ideals had been restored with support from the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the World Bank. He was pleased with the country's cooperation with both of those organizations to save and conserve the environment and nature. Pauline Tangiora of New Zealand is leading a movement to pressure South Asian governments to release fisherpeople who have been imprisoned in Indian and Pakistani jails for straying across international borders, and grant indigenous communities the right to adhere to their traditional fishing patterns. Ms. Tangiora said that denying the right of fishing to indigenous, traditional and tribal peoples meant abandoning those people to poverty. Their lives had already been endangered by the poisoning of the oceans, the illegal dumping of toxic and nuclear waste and sulphur phosphate pollution. Pakistani and Indian fishermen used small boats to follow the tradition of finding food for their communities. Those now imprisoned were not guilty of taking huge amounts of fish or of destroying the oceans.   Press Conferences Summit News