Advisory Commitee – May 2009

Last Friday I believe the Marrakech Advisory Committee met to discuss the most recent draft “10YFP” paper circulated a week ago and to consider plans for the upcoming year and how to engage the various stakeholder groups who, up to now, have not been actively engaged in the discussions or process.

Looking forward to hearing the reports on this meeting.  Anyone out there have information or comments on what was said and discussed?

- jhb

New 10YFP draft out for review

Last week I read the new draft of the 10 Year Framework paper. My immediate impression is that the MP is still not focusing on the WSSD mandate to develop “programs of support” to the initiatives out there working on this issue. It seems to instead propose a number of thematic areas which can be developed into initiatives by the UN and others. However this approach still does not focus on the key need here — to provide SUPPORT to the work that is going on. Instead it appears to be proposing new initiatives that are more likely to compete for what support is there.

Now that we are only one year from the official CSD review, it seems a bit crazy that we remain in this limbo.

Given the stakes, it is essential that we develop a clear set of proposals for the action which we need the UN to take in supporting the global sustainability movement.

- jhb

Commenting on the 1st Draft of the 10-Year Framework of Programmes for SCP

From Emmanuel Prinet:

Reading through this 1st Draft of the 10-Year Framework of Programmes for SCP brought back vague memories of reading through a similar document prepared over a year ago as input to the 3rd International Meeting of Experts (June 2007, Stockholm) called Background Paper 1: Key Elements of a Proposed 10 Year Framework of Prorgrammes on Sustainable Consumption and Production.  If you have an insatiable curiosity and have been titillated by the exotic title, you can read this document here:

http://www.unep.fr/scp/marrakech/consultations/international/pdf/StockholmConferencePaper1.pdf

The memories were of not really being sure what the text was supposed to be bringing to the table, and how it could be useful to accelerate the implementation of Agenda 21.

The 1st Draft lists several “possible outcomes for the 10YFP at the Commission on Sustainable Develpoment’s 2010 and 2011 sessions.  To many of us, the outcome should be a list of programmes that actually meet the needs of “national and regional initiatives” currently undertaken by governments, organizations, institutions, local governments, NGOs and a host of other communities of practice, and follow-up  by providing them with actual support.  In order to determine what these programmes should be, shouldn’t these stakeholders be consulted and asked what their needs are?  In other words, should we be supporting “the Marrakech Process”, or should it be supporting our regional and national initiatives?

In any case, it is hard not to feel an oune of cynicism about the whole process when you read the disclaimer in the Background Document 1 :

This is not an official publication and has not been endorsed by either UNEP or UN-DESA. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of UNDESA or UNEP; the designations employed or terminology used concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (p. 2)

Discussing the first draft

It is now near the end of the time for comments and input on the first draft of the 10 Year Framework paper circulated by the Marrakech Process  Secretariat. I am not sure how many people or organizations sent in comments but I personally have seen and heard relatively little discussion of the paper outside a small number of people. It’s a shame as it provides a good opportunity to discuss what we all think is needed to take us through this next decade of social and environmental problems. Will the so-called 10 year framework of programs, or as this new paper dubs it “framework of action” do the job? Frankly, it still looks pretty murky as to what is being put forward. I think one of the problems is that there remains a lack of clarity about what to me lies at the center of the WSSD mandate — to develop programs which will support national and regional initiatives working to promote sustainable production and consumption patterns. The key operational term here is SUPPORT — not “framework” or “Marrakech Process.” What we need is a clear description of ways the UN can help improve the effectiveness of the multitude of initiatives out there in the world which together constitute a vast, decentralized movement to transform the global economy to one which truly serves its citizens — while protecting the environment, eradicating poverty and meeting peoples needs through goods and services which bring no harm.

In the long run, this 10 Year Framework of Programs should be guided by the goal of reversing the social and environmental trends which continue to worsen since Rio. This reversal should guide the measure of “success” in the coming decade — not the number of meetings and speeches. We could in turn spend endless hours deconstructing this and other papers, whereas I would encourage us to discuss programs which address very specific needs for support which the UN is capable of providing. I think that would be a good use of time and critical thinking. Whether or not the UN or member governments agree and commit, it is helpful for us to articulate what programs could be useful and suggest ways these programs might take shape.

- jhb

What are your opinions on the UN’s discussion paper?

The “Proposed Input to CSD on a 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production” is now available for public comment. We’ve been waiting months for this document. The final version will be presented in 2010 to the first of a two-year debate at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UN CSD), which will hopefully result in a global, intergovernmental agreement on various “programmes” supporting our national and regional efforts to address this huge challenge. (You can download this and other papers from the Marrakech NGO Forum website.)

Interested bodies are encouraged to read the document and send your comments to the UN. However, if you would like to see your ideas and opinions discussed more widely, please post them as comments to this blog. This is one of the primary purposes of this blog — to encourage discussion and public input into the UN debate on the “10 Year Framework of Programmes.”

Knowing that this important discussion and the results can easily get bogged down in bureaucratic rhetoric and technical/in-group jargon, let us try to side step this uninspiring swamp and keep our feet on a more solid path. We all have a long way to go and a lot is at stake. Most of all, we must not lose sight of the fact that changing production and consumption patterns is one of the essential requirements for this century, if our world is avoid the social and environmental catastrophes now looming ahead, not to mention the need and responsibility to clean up this current mess.

So, please share your opinions on this blog and let’s see where we can take this!

Jeffrey Barber, Executive Director
Integrative Strategies Forum

Marrakech Advisory Committee meeting

Minutes and decades

The minutes from the May 8 Advisory Committee meeting are out and available.  There the objectives of the Advisory Committee were explained: (1) to give ownership of the Marrakech Process and 10YFP to the countries, (2) to better engage stakeholders in the Marrakech Process, and (3) to ensure the openness and transparency of the process of elaboration of the 10YFP.

Get with the program(s)!

Arab Hoballah (UNEP) also described the main objective of the 10YFP being “to promote SCP to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation while also reducing social inequity.” He also stressed the need to identify the “key programmes” that should be included in the framework. This point is one which NGOs have been raising ever since the Marrakech Process began, which for some reason has been on the backburner for the past five years. However, there has been a tendency to veer away from the original WSSD directive: That these programmes are to be “in support of regional and national initiatives to accelerate the shift towards sustainable consumption and production.” Adriana Zacarias described the identification of these core programs as the main question. The obvious question that follows is: What kind of support from the UN system is needed by regional and national initiatives?

This question needs to delve deep into the diversity and complexity of stakeholder and country interests and priorities. This requires more than consensus statements on generalities but precise identification of services that the UN system can realistically provide to a range of different national and regional initiatives.

Yet this question is too often pushed aside in favor of such discussions as “how to better promote the Marrakech Process.” This easily leads to a classic institutional circle in which the discussion of means becomes its own end. Fortunately there is now “a sense of urgency” given the review of progress on this framework takes place next spring. After six years of discussions the result still seems confused and unfocused. Perhaps this will all change when the new frameworkpaper (due in June) finally comes out. We will see.

Point of the programs: support

In Stockholm, NGO Forum participants discussed this problem and agreed the focus needed to be on the task of defining and designing programs providing practical support to NGOs, business and governments in different countries and regions. For those of us engaged in national and regional initiatives and still waiting patiently for this active support, the discussion is quite basic. The needs have been articulated repeatedly for years — we need technical assistance, finance support, opportunities for multistakeholder dialogue (esp. with governments), informational databases, as well as independent monitoring and evaluation. As to the various Taskforces, a key question posed to them was what kinds of support would they provide to national and regional efforts addressing those issues? The so-called “framework” was more a question of the institutional cooperation and management of those programs, ensuring that useful support was indeed being effectively provided.

To some degree this emphasis is now appearing more in the discussions, yet the majority of attention appears to be more on process (i.e., promotion of the Marrakech Process) than actual program design. Is it possible this work, within the politically charged UN context, is too…sensitive?

What can we expect?

It is hard to say what we can realistically expect from the CSD 18-19 sessions. Some think we should all be calling for an ambitious international Program of Action on SCP rather than a more modest but possibly more practical set of support programs. Others think we should be calling on governments to simply meet the commitments they agreed to in 1992 in Agenda 21, such as the call for each country “to develop a domestic policy framework that will encourage a shift to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption” — not to mention “in the review of the implementation of Agenda 21, an assessment of the progress achieved in developing these national policies and strategies.” Agenda 21 also called for “new concepts of wealth and prosperity” and “the evolution of new systems of national accounts,” along with actions on government procurement, pricing, labeling, packaging, and other familiar areas. To be fair, Agenda 21’s “programme of action” on sustainable production and consumption had its gaps and weaknesses, yet it remains the actual benchmark for assessing progress — especially now that implementation of those governmental and UN commitments has essentially been deferred for 20 years.

While waiting for more in-depth discussion of meaningful support programs, we are hearing about the “branding of the Marrakech Process” with a PR strategy “involving journalists to write articles on the achievements and best practices of the Marrakech Task Forces and various stakeholders.” Hmmm. Maybe we should withhold judgement until we finally see the long-awaited first draft, which was scheduled for release by now. Hopefully this document will have the substance we have been waiting for. Hopefully we will find more than PR.

New Marrakech Process website

And for those who have not already discovered it, there is now an official “Marrakech Process” website, which provides a helpful new resource and reference point. One disappointment, speaking of “support,” is finding no reference or link to either our Marrakech NGO Forum website or blog — despite, strangely enough, a whole page “About the NGO Forum.” While the text cites our NGO statement in Stockholm, there are no direct references to the people and process following up on this. Instead of highlighting the slowly growing community of NGOs associated with the Forum, we are defined here as “a space.” While there is no space on the page highlighting our efforts to build a consultative process encouraging input into the Process,  there is room to fill a quarter of the page with a picture of a polar bear. Please! If you want us NGOs to be engaged in this process, give us a bit more support here for our efforts!

NGO Points for Advisory Committee

The Marrakech Advisory Committee will meet this Thursday in New York during the Commission on Sustainable Development. In response to Sylvia Lorek of SERI, who urges us to discuss and agree on some key points which we should have raised at that meeting, I suggest we continue to highlight the key points raised by NGOs in Stockholm last June. In particular:

1. The need for the Marrakech Process to focus on the goal of reversing the current worsening social and environmental trends — not simply of increasing the number of SCP meetings and familiar “commitments.

2. The 2010 CSD “review” session should evaluate progress beginning with the [still unmet] Agenda 21 SPAC commitments made in Rio in 1992 - not simply report on the series of Marrakech Process meetings since the 2002 WSSD.

This time frame, another NGO Forum recommendation made in Stockholm, is essential if we are to focus more on the actual substance of the so-called “10 year framework” — which is to support the struggle to change production and consumption patterns. The essence of this point is accountability. For example, in Agenda 21 governments agreed that each country should “develop a national policy framework on sustainable production and consumption.” Yet more than 15 years later only a few governments have even begun this process. If governments’ are not accountable for their previous commitments, how can the world trust any new ones? NGOs need to stress this accountability of governments and industry to the public.

3. Following from this point was the our for a multi-stakeholder review of progress towards SPAC since Rio, providing a history and analysis of lessons learned during the past two decades struggling with this critical but controversial topic. We have yet to hear of any such review proposed beyond the intergovernmental CSD discussion planned for 2010, which we can expect to consist of a series of country statements on their participation in the regional consultations of the Marrakech Process. Considering what is at stake, this kind of “review” is completely inadequate. We need to seriously produce an analysis of the substantive progress and obstacles encountered in implementing the Agenda 21 commitments during the two decades following Rio — not reports about meetings!

Finally, although not a major point made in Stockholm:

4. UNEP/DESA should stop trying to “sell the Marrakech Process” to the world, but instead acknowledge and more actively support the social movements towards SPAC already taking place. The social movement for sustainable production and consumption began long before the Marrakech Process began and support for this movement needs to be the priority, not the other way around! Instead of asking for national and regional initiatives to support the Marrakech Process, the UN needs to do a better job of actually supporting the “bottom-up” national and regional initiatives that are already on the ground trying to promote SPAC! In particular, the UN’s job should be to convince government and industry to make good on their previous commitments and in this coming decade to “make SPAC a fact.”

The three players

Today is the final day of the SCORE conference discussing the proposed “Action Framework.” It’s good to see a lot of the important ideas being discussed. One function of this blog can be to examine each of these in depth as well as how they should come together.

I would like to further examine and clarify the idea of the three key players or “Triangle of Change.”

The role of government, local as well as national, is probably most clear. As Lewis Akenji pointed out, the 10 year framework will only be effective given the leadership shown by and among country governments, that the ideas and priorities of sustainable production and consumption need to move “up the hierarchy.” Considering the challenge of “the way mankind has organized its economic system of production and consumption,” this responsibility indeed needs to be taken up by more than one ministry (usually that of environment.) The reduction of SPAC to a sub-category of environmental protection is a barrier to progress. Both Rajan Gandhi and Lewis Akenji have highlighted some of their experience at the regional and sub-regional level to get governments and others to raise as well as clarify this priority.

The role of business and industry is clear to a point: Obviously, production, investment and distribution are all managed through the structures and processes business and the market. Despite the myth of consumer sovereignty, it is the investors in control of resources who decide the what, how and who involved in production. These decisions are influenced by government regulations and subsidies, as well as market demand, but the bottom line is return on investment. As long as sustainability is profitable it is good business. When it becomes expensive, industry is more resistant and provides its own set of barriers to progress.

This is where the third player comes in, which is often described as “civil society.” This is one of the most important yet least understood of the three players. Without the support of this group, government and business has no legitimacy nor can they function. Because of this, communications (e.g., mass media, advertising, political ideologies, etc.) are directed towards this group in gaining that support. The SCORE paper refers instead to citizens/consumers — which gives the impression of individuals and households. However, individual/household action (such as purchase power) is only one part of this broad and complex realm. Individuals and households have only limited power of influence in themselves. This is where community organizations and public interest organizations and networks come in, providing the collective voice and action which go beyond individual efforts. Nationally and internationally, this is the realm of NGOs — whose very identity is linked to the monitoring of progress by governments and business in “delivering the goods” to the people they are supposed to serve.

Especially given the need to bring “stakeholders” together and to build “trust,” as Sylvia Lorek has stressed, we are going to need to examine, discuss and hopefully agree on clear understanding of the nature of this third player. “NGO,” “civil society,” and “major groups” are all terms tossed around in this discussion, sometimes creating more confusion than clarity. Yet we need to cut through the fog here is we are to arrive at an agreement and agenda for action.

This Marrakech NGO Forum, in particular, needs to clarify this question of “who we are” in providing our input into this process.

Jeffrey Barber, Integrative Strategies Forum

First Msg from SAG India

Great to have a blog dedicated to exchanging ideas on SCP, the Marrakech Process and the formation of an NGO Forum which was initiated in Stockholm mid 2007.  We’ll soon add a link to the Meeting Report of the 2nd India Roundtable on SCP which we organised for the Indian Ministry of Environment & Forests and UNEP-DTIE on the 19th-20th December 2007.    We are inviting other NGOs from the region to join in the discussion and hope this will be the beginning of a vibrant and useful debate

SCORE! Conference on the 10-Year Framework of Programmes (Marrakech Process)

The European SCORE! Network (www.score-network.org) is holding its 2nd conference on March 10 and 11, 2008, in Brussels. The conference will see the launch of a Framework for Action on sustainable production and consumption that was developed by SCORE! over many months, in collaboration with members of the NGO community. This Framework for Action is designed to contribute positively to the development of the Marrakech Process’s 10-Year Framework of Programmes. Click on http://www.score-network.org/score/score_module/index.php for more information on this conference, and to register (free of charge).

We need your input! You are invited to read and comment on this Framework for Action; please take a few minutes of your time to examine the document and have your voice heard: the more people look at it and make suggestions on how to improve it, the stronger it will be, and the more it can help move the Marrakech Process forward. To comment on the Framework for Action in the lead-up to the conference in Brussels, please download it from the Marrakech NGO Forum’s website: http://icspac.net/NGOForum.htm; post comments and suggestions you may have either by responding to this post, or by sending them to the Marrakech NGO list-serve (*) for all to see: marrakech@icspac.net (if your e-mail is not yet part of the list, the message may not go through; please subscribe to the list by sending your e-mail address to Jeffrey Barber: jbarber@isforum.org).

Thank you!

Emmanuel Prinet, One Earth Initiative, Canada

(*) The NGO list-serve is, to this day, comprised of all the NGOs that participated directly and indirectly to the Marrakech Process’s Third International Meeting of Experts that took place in Stockholm in June 2007. It is open to any and all NGOs that are interested in the Marrakech Process, and that wish to keep track of developments and provide input.