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.”