Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The incapacity to finance sustainable development through philanthropic official assistance turned the Johannesburg Summit to business world and the financial industry.

Pioneering financial institutions — including development banks and private banks — have developed a wide range of innovations that can support sustainable development. This article highlights a few innovative products and markets and focuses on the progress made by financial players on the level of standards, metrics and guidelines to improve sustainability management systems, reporting and accounting practices and the multi-stakeholder dynamic.

The role of the socially responsible investing (SRI) community has been underexposed by the Summit. Through its voice and market success, SRI has moved from a green market niche to the mainstream, however not becoming mainstream. The invaluable levering effect of SRI has just been discovered by authorities and market regulators and is becoming instrumental.

In order to show the business case of Corporate Social Responsibility and to prove the financial viability of the People, Planet, Prosperity investing approach, the SRI community should critically reflect on its own quality assurance systems, sound disclosure and verification practices.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg during 26 August and 4 September 2002, was a truly remarkable event, not least because it identified and committed the world community to what has to be done to realise Agenda 21 objectives.

Discussion begins with the “means of implementation” of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPI). Education for, and raising awareness of, sustainable development are the key commitments in the “means of implementation”. The issues central to these commitments are discussed.

The crucial role of moral philosophy in education for sustainable development is then discussed. Defining the “problem” as lack of progress (in fact negative progress between Rio and Johannesburg) towards global sustainable development, a cause-effect relationship of the “problem” is developed based on a systematic and logical analysis. It shows that the “cause” is West’s profoundly materialistic, environment-degrading and exploitative attitude and activities to satisfy grossly unsustainable, hedonistic and insatiably avaricious Western life-styles — life-styles that are held up by the West as “ideal” fruits of economic “development” to be aspired by all. The “effects” are pollution of air, water and soil; mounting loss of biodiversity, ecosystems and species; relentlessly widening north-south divide, etc. It is argued that while science and technology can address some of the “effects”, they cannot address the “cause”. Only moral philosophy can by fundamentally re-orienting moral values to respect nature and the environment.

Based on sound and tested principles of Educational Psychology, a proposal is then made for including moral philosophy in the formal (content and pedagogy) of primary, secondary and higher education for instilling in children and young people genuinely environment-respecting moral values. To this end a generic syllabus for the secondary level is proposed.

Finally, it is argued that if the scientific community really believes that science or technology can radically change the pervasive environment-degrading moral values to those that respect the environment, thus paving the way to global sustainability, then it must demonstrate how this could be done and explain why, despite their abundant science and technology, the developed nations are the biggest polluters and consumers with grossly unsustainable life-styles. Certainly, examples would be much more convincing than rhetoric or tired old clichés about how science and technology alone could deliver global sustainable development.

A small part of the scientific community is seeking hard to enhance the contribution of science, knowledge and capacity building to environmentally sustainable and socially fair human development around the world. Many researchers over the globe share the same commitment — anchored in concerns for the human condition. They believe that science and research can and have influenced sustainability. Therefore their main goals are to seek and build up knowledge, know-how and capacity that might help to feed, nurture, house, educate and employ the world’s growing human population while conserving its basic life support systems and biodiversity. They undertake projects, that are essentially integrative, and they try to connect the natural, social and engineering sciences, environment and development of communities, multiple stakeholders, geographic and temporal scales. More generally, scientists engaged in sustainable development are bridging the worlds of knowledge and action. This pro-active, heavily ethics- and wisdom-based “science for sustainability” can be seen as the conclusion of all dialogues and discussions amongst scientists at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) 2002 in Johannesburg. The “Plan of Implementation” after WSSD will be based on political will, practical steps and partnerships with time-bound actions. Several “means of implementation” are going to be proofed and initiated: finance, trade, transfer of environmentally sound technology, and, last but not least, science and capacity building.

Some characteristics of working scientific sustainability initiatives are that they are regional, place-based and solution-oriented. They are focusing at intermediate scales where multiple stresses intersect, where complexity is manageable, where integration is possible, where innovation happens, and where significant transitions toward sustainability can start bottom-up. And they have a fundamental character, addressing the unity of the nature — society system, asking how that interactive system is evolving and how it can be consciously, if imperfectly, steered through the reflective mobilization and application of appropriate knowledge and know-how. The aims of such sustainability-building initiatives conducted by researchers are: first to make significant progress toward expanding and deepening the research agenda of science and knowledge-building for sustainability; secondly to strengthen the infrastructure and capacity for conducting and applying science, research and technology for sustainability — everywhere in the world where it is needed; and thirdly, to connect science, policy and decision-making more effectively in pursuit of a faster transition towards real sustainable development. The overall characteristic is, that sustainability initiatives are mainly open-ended networks and dialogues for the better future. A world society that tries to turn towards sustainable development has to work hard to refine their clumsy technologies, in “earthing” their responsibility to all creatures and resources, in establishing democratic systems in peace and by heeding human rights, in building up global solidarity through all mankind and in commit themselves to a better life for the next generations.

Governance and participation were designated as important issues to be discussed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. In this paper, the concepts of governance, participation and civil society are defined and discussed. Special attention is given to the close link between these three concepts, and to how they interact with each other.

In the second part of the paper, the focus is on the Johannesburg conference and its outcomes with respect to governance and participation. The tenor of the argument is that the outcomes are disappointing due to the multitude of compromises, agreed upon during the negotiation process. The third and last part of the paper summarises the rather modest achievements of the process, and identifies the future challenges.

Partnerships for sustainable development were seen by some countries as a key means of making progress towards sustainable development. As a result, partnerships were proposed as one of the WSSD outcomes and were the subject of much debate during the run-up to, and at, the Summit. This paper first seeks to understand why partnerships are perceived as having so much to offer sustainable development, and then goes on to assess the impact that the WSSD has had and can be expected to have on the use of partnerships for sustainable development. The conclusion reached is that whilst the initial step taken by the WSSD Bureau in proposing partnerships as an outcome was a bold move, nevertheless much more needs to be done to promote and provide support for partnership development. Some further actions are proposed, at the level of promotion and support and including the need to clarify the UN’s role regarding partnerships for sustainable development. In addition, some suggestions regarding the politics of partnerships are put forward. It is further argued that the contribution the business sector could be expected to make to sustainable development, not least through the medium of partnerships, would be greatly enhanced by the realignment of the framework within which businesses operate, so as to make it more conducive to sustainable behaviour.

This paper provides an overall evaluation of the outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which took place in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4 September 2002, in a historical perspective, against the background of earlier major United Nations conferences and General Assembly resolutions on environment and development. It focuses on the political and institutional context of the WSSD and its preparatory process and explores its policy implications for future international cooperation on sustainable development in a globalizing world. Both the results of the formal intergovernmental negotiations and the new phenomenon of ‘partnerships for sustainable development’ between governments, international organizations, the private sector and other major groups are analysed. The Johannesburg Declaration and the WSSD Plan of Implementation are shown to contain little in the way of political vision, credible new commitments and innovative approaches, likely to reinvigorate the implementation of the objectives of sustainable development as formulated in Rio. Though ostensibly designed to give a new political impetus to multilateralism, the WSSD rather revealed the inadequacy of intergovernmental political governance structures to address the social and environmental consequences of economic globalization.