World Summit on Sustainable Development Department of Public Information - News and Media Services Division - New York
	Johannesburg, South Africa 26 August-4 September 2002	29 August 2002

PRESS CONFERENCE ON TASK FORCE ON GLOBAL PUBLIC GOODS   An expert International Task Force on Global Public Goods, set up to investigate the handling of global public goods -- such as clean air, water, financial stability, health, peace and security -- and then propose ways to better deal with them, was launched today at a Summit press conference by Gun-Britt Andersson, State Secretary for the International Development Corporation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden. Her Government, along with that of France, as well as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), would participate in the launch event this evening at Ubunto Village, South Africa. Sven Sandstrom, Secretary of the International Task Force and former Managing Director of the World Bank, also attended the briefing. He would lead the task force secretariat in Stockholm and former President of Mexico Ernest Zedillo would be one of the co-chairs. The group, to conduct its work over a two-year period, will consist of 10 to 15 experts from governments, world organizations, civil society, the business and academic sectors. The idea behind it, Mrs. Andersson explained, was to guide the international community in adopting a more concordant approach to the increasingly complex international cooperation on various public goods, such as clean air, water, financial stability, health, peace and security. A lot of discussion was under way about how to better deal with the common concerns and produce global public goods essential to meeting the targets that had been set at previous global conferences. She said it was understood that most of those targets had to be achieved through action at the national level, and many recommendations and best practices existed nationally. But, cooperation at the international level was much less developed; how to create a supportive international environment for achieving the goals was the question. In terms of resource mobilization, internationally the system was improving at identifying issues and setting targets, but that was still insufficient in its ability to act. So far, the resources set aside had been meagre, and resources earmarked for development often were diverted for other purposes. A concrete example of a global public product that, through private and public initiative, had been vastly improved was aviation traffic safety. That success should be possible in other areas as well, she said.   Press Conferences Summit News