Washington — World leaders, environmentalists, corporate CEOs and others who are in Johannesburg, South Africa this week for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) need to look no further than southern Africa for examples of the importance of collective action to build more sustainable models, argues Nitin Desai, the Secretary General of that conference.
In this second part of Jim Cason's conversation with him for allAfrica.com, Desai argues that the summit is particularly important for the African continent.
Why is this upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) important for Africa?
This conference is crucial, not just from the perspective of multilateralism, but because we have to address the underlying problems of development. We are going to be meeting in southern Africa, almost in the heart of the region which right now has a severe drought. We are going to probably have something like 13 million people at risk by March of 2003. We are halfway there in mobilizing the resources.
But the longer-term problem is that you are not going to get through this unless you address the underlying problems of water, of food security, of agriculture, of disaster preparedness and the related issues of health. This crisis is not simply something that the weather gods are responsible for. One of the reasons [for this crisis] is the neglect of agriculture. We have not placed the kind of emphasis we ought to place on management of land and water resources.
Drought has a strong link with sustainable agriculture practices, with water management, with land management.
But how will another big summit help discuss mechanisms for addressing future natural disasters?
You really cannot solve the land management problems of that part of the world in isolation in one country. Partly, there are physical interactions, sand dunes drift across national boundaries, people move. The fact is there are a lot of workers from Malawi who are now in Zimbabwe. Suppose those Malawi workers who are in Zimbabwe move back because of the drought in Zimbabwe, then what's going to happen in Malawi, which also has a drought?
So in many ways, the more you look at it, the more difficult it is to isolate a problem as being national alone. We do need cooperation, you actually need simultaneous reaction. That is one reason why we need to bring people together.
Could you explain more specifically what the conference on sustainable development might be able to do to help people in southern Africa address the drought?
Certainly we expect to highlight what needs to be done for the immediate relief that we have to undertake before March. Our immediate task is relief; there are 13 million people at risk. We've asked, I think, for $500 million.
But beyond that, I hope Johannesburg also focuses attention on the primacy and the importance of agriculture as the key to successful development. A lot of things one needs to do in order to manage a situation like this really requires one to look at long-term development and not just relief. There are many things that one can do in order to mitigate the impact of the drought with appropriate agricultural practices. We need to invest far more in agricultural research for dry-land areas. There are also many other issues of land tenure and so on, which we would have to look at. Clearly, water management is absolutely essential in any sort of drought situation.
Can you offer some suggestions of ideas that might offer hope for practical long-term solutions to water management at a local level in southern Africa?
For instance, rain-water harvesting. It is not a new method, but with today's technology you can apply it on a much larger scale. Investing in rain-water harvesting technology or investing in research on drought proofing crops.
I was at a function recently where they unveiled a new rice variety for Africa. The idea there was that you were combining some of the strengths of the African rice variety - which spread on the ground and so keeps the weed population down and is also more drought resistance, but it does not have a high yield and the grain shatters easily - with the Asian variety, which grows straight up. Therefore more of the nutrition goes into the grain, so it has a much larger grain output, but is prone to problems of weeds, etc. So what was done was combine these two, combine the high-yield characteristics of Asian rice with the sturdiness of African rice. Just transplanting the Asian rice won't help, even though it is very high yield. Just sticking with the traditional technology won't help, thought it is quite sturdy.
Speaking more broadly, what are the areas where this conference might be able to make the biggest differences in the lives of ordinary people in Africa?
If I were to identify two areas which would make probably the biggest differences to people it would probably be water, in its broadest sense. Not just drinking water, but also water for agriculture, and water-based sanitation. So you take water in its totality, and how it can be effectively and efficiently managed at every level, because water management cannot be purely local or purely national. Water is, in the very nature of the thing, something that requires management at every level, at the level of nations right down to the individual village. To me that is key, strategic.
I've seen many wonderful examples of how, by using water as a strategic resource and a key intervention resource, you have made dramatic transformations in the environment of an area, peoples' living, peoples' health.
And the second area that I would pick is energy for rural areas. I think energy for urban areas poses a different set of problem. But energy for rural areas is a major source of stress, given what is happening to traditional sources of energy. I also believe it is a major constraint on agriculture growth, for example.
I've seen in my country India, how when farmers got access to modern energy for pump sets, for instance, it made a dramatic difference in their agricultural practices. How when local artisans, like the carpenter in my village, when he got access to electricity, he was transformed. For generations, what his family had been doing was to make cartwheels. After he got that he put in a few lathes, and he started manufacturing furniture for people, he started managing little bits and pieces for the electricity board and he was not longer just a village craftsman. He became a small entrepreneur.
Now that transformative capacity of local infrastructure, particularly in the rural areas, is, I think, enormous. These are the two things I would pick as things which you need to address. And both of these are things which you can't just say are purely local or purely national. I can have a wonderful power project at a national level, but if I do not have mechanisms to deliver the power to rural areas you are not going to get the transformation.
And there is no way in which I can get local energy systems functioning unless I have some corresponding focus on investment on a national level. So it has to be something which is far more integrated.
How is the world summit going to address these two issues of energy and water?
It so happens we are meeting in South Africa. One thing South Africa does not have is an abundance of is water. So they have a lot of sensitivity to issues of water scarcity, and technologies like rain-water harvesting, the importance of conservation and efficiency of water use. You will see a lot of that. There is going to be virtually an additional activity, an additional forum, and the whole focus of the water dome is on water-related best practices. [for more information see http://www.waterdome.net/]
There is going to be, I think, a presentation which is orchestrated by [the South African electricity utility] Escom on an energy plan for Africa.
But how are you going to ensure that in this discussion of an African energy plan, for instance, the focus stays on meeting the needs of the poor, the most needy.
The focus is on meeting the needs of these two billion who don't have access [to energy]. Not on national investment, but on what we need to do in order to get, for example, universal rural electrification. This is one of the types of goals we are looking at. Of course it is not going to happen in the next five or ten years, but can we put it on a time frame. Can we say in 20 years, 25 years, we will have universal rural electrification? But there are more things than that: the quality of rural electrification, the fact that in many places it is going to be easier to promote alternative technologies.
For instance, one of the things I've seen in Africa is really a successful solar project in Zimbabwe. I just saw this. It was highly decentralized. The money had come from abroad but all of the work was being done by local people. Young matriculates had set up small companies with ten or twelve workers who are taking on the contracts for installing these solar panels, which were being used by people mainly for light and for watching television. You can't use them for cooking. The high priority was watching television, but partly for light. I went and visited the project some time back.
What impressed me was how it was getting done. There were these ten, twelve, fifteen companies which had taken on the contracts for installing it. But there were no expats running it. The advantage of that was continuity, because at end of the contract, these companies were still there.
I hope that one of the things that comes out of the Johannesburg process is better knowledge about these things and also a stronger commitment to supporting them.
How much will the HIV/AIDs pandemic be a focus of the Johannesburg meetings?
I would say that in those countries where you have Aids at a pandemic level, you would have to accept that your immediate primarily goals would have to relate to HIV/Aids. Because what is the point in talking about strengthening agricultural research and extension if, say, a third of your agricultural research and extension workers have succumbed to Aids? What's the point of talking about universal education, if teachers are dying of AIDS, as they are in Zambia?
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So I do believe that one of the things we will have to do in Johannesburg is to focus very sharply on the whole HIV/Aids pandemic.
Let me give one example: the sustainable mining initiative. One of the things I did when I spoke with these people who are doing the mining initiative, I said please don't look at it simply in terms of backfilling land which you have excavated and the standard problems which you have in mining. Look at the broader dimension.
And let me give you one example. In Botswana, you have one of the highest incidents of HIV/AIDS in that part of the world. Why? Because of the large number of migrant workers come to work in the mines. Mining, the very nature of it is an industry which is going to attract single migrant workers who are going to be more susceptible to AIDS than others. Which means that if you are talking about sustainability, you should be addressing the AIDS issues as much as the classical environmental issues such as backfilling land and so on. And they have agreed to do that. And I hope that the sustainable mining initiative which they will unveil will include a component which addresses what are the obligations of the mining industry in this area.
Five years from now, what would you like people to remember from the WSSD in Johannesburg?
All UN conferences are a bit like a medieval fair. People put up their stalls and do their thing and it is up to the customers to decide what they are interested in. To some extent we as organizers have to give it a focus. In that main conference we are trying to focus on these five areas. Within that I hope the focus will be very clearly on concrete programs, on clear goals, on partnerships, and accountability and responsibility for results.
I hope that five years from now, when people look back on Johannesburg, what it put on the agenda is the notion that at long last we actually managed to get to grips with how do we get things done at the global level.
Accountability and responsibility for results-- it is not a slogan like sustainable development, it is more results oriented. Unless we do that we are going to discredit the whole process. We have to show results. It is going to be a great party.
Part 1: Focus on Accountability and Responsibility for Results
