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Mbeki calls for "shared prosperity"

[Southern Africa] UN World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) UN World Summit
UN World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD)
South African President Thabo Mbeki opened the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg on Monday with a call for a global "shared prosperity" rather than a system of survival of the fittest. After a decade of "inertia" since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - where the goals of sustainable development were set - Mbeki said this week's conference had an obligation "to adopt a meaningful Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, in the interests of all humanity and our common planet". "All of us understand that the goal of shared prosperity is achievable because, for the first time in human history, human society possesses the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment," said Mbeki. "There is every need for us to demonstrate to the billions of people we lead that we are committed to the vision and practice of human solidarity, that we do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest," he added. Sustainable development links economic growth, social development and environmental protection as interdependent elements of long-term development. The Rio Earth Summit endorsed Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action for a sustainable future that also emphasised a participatory approach to policy making and development. Mbeki urged participants to the 26 August to 4 September summit to adopt a "practical programme for the translation of the dream of sustainable development into reality and bringing into being a new global society that is caring and humane". While Mbeki called for a global vision to secure the development goals agreed at Rio in 1992 and those contained in the UN Millennium Declaration, analysts warned that forging a consensus between wealthy and developing countries at the conference, particularly on contentious issues such as trade and finance, would be an uphill task. "The draft declaration for the Johannesburg summit acknowledges that 'eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development'. Yet rich-country governments have so far failed to agree on essential commitments relating to trade, aid and debt relief policies that are needed for Johannesburg to deliver on this primary objective," the development agency Oxfam said in a statement. "If you take the need for poverty reduction and environment protection at face value, and ask is the conference going to deliver, it would be very difficult to say the conference is going to be a success under those terms," an Oxfam spokesman, Antonio Hill, told IRIN. "But there are concrete steps that can be taken by next week that can contribute incrementally," he added. According to Oxfam, positive steps would include reform to the international trade system to remove subsidies and barriers that handicap poor countries, agreement by rich countries to meet their long-standing aid commitments to the developing world, and for more progress on debt relief in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on tackling poverty.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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