Piracy undermines a country’s ability to develop sustainably |01 August 2011

This was raised by the Seychelles delegation at a high level dialogue on institutional framework for sustainable development held in Solo, Indonesia from July 19-21 this year.

The conference was co-organised by the United Nations department of economic and social affairs RIO+20 secretariat and the Ministry for the Environment, Government of the Republic of Indonesia.

It is a follow-up to the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and the South China Sea (AIMS) RIO +20 preparatory meeting held here from July 7-8 this year.

The meeting in Indonesia was attended by environment principal secretary Didier Dogley, who also addressed the forum. He said piracy was costing Seychelles 30% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and therefore undermining our ability to develop and adapt to changes.

The Seychelles delegation also supported the call for a review of the established system of using GDP as the main factor to determine prosperity of a nation and reiterated the need to also consider other factors such as a country’s vulnerability.

At the end of the conference, delegates adopted a set of proposals entitled the Solo Messages, which will be further considered and consolidated together with other outcomes from other meetings in preparing for the RIO+20 Summit next June in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. 

The Solo messages call for an enhanced mandate for the UN Economic and Social Council and to establish a sustainable development council with a strengthened the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which together with other UN and regional agencies “Delivering as One” through an integrated approach in supporting national sustainable development strategies.

Since the 1970s scientists have realised that developed and industrialised nations were over utilising the earth’s natural resources at a rate beyond what our mother planet can sustain.  This led to the first UN conference in Stockholm, Sweden in June 1972 which produced the decisions Stockholm Declarations and action plan as well as establishing the UNEP.
 
Later, in 1983, the UN decided to establish the World Commission on Environment and Development with the task of producing a report entitled ‘Our common future’, also known as the Brundtland Report after its Chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The report, published in 1987, was as a result of a series of public hearings and studies done on a number of environment and development issues. The Commission at that time had already recognised the link between economic development and environmental issues, and also identified poverty eradication as a necessary and fundamental requirement for sustainable development.

This led to the UN conference on environment and development (UNCED) in 1992, in Rio Brazil and the world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg in 2002.   

Although, much effort and resources were invested in achieving this goal e.g. the adoption of Agenda 21 at the UNCED and the subsequent adoption of the Johannesburg plan of action in 2002 and later the Mauritius Strategy of 2005, not much progress has been made to turn these great aspirations and plans into reality.  In fact the world today is very near the tipping point of environmental catastrophy. Next year in June 2012 the world will meet again in Rio de Janeiro where it all started 20 years ago to seek new political commitments and to establish a clear way forward so as to save the world from the brink of disaster.

The recent meeting in Indonesia and the AIMS Rio +20 in Seychelles are part of several regional and global conferences being organised across the globe to prepare and galvanise political support for the Rio +20 event in Rio de Janeiro next year.

Contributed by the Environment Department