UNU Update
 
The newsletter of United Nations University and its network of research and training centres and programmes

Issue 11: September 2001

 

Experts gather
to discuss
sustainable
development
inter-linkages
Sept. 3-4

 

Conference website

Programme (Word
document)

Internet broadcast

 

Sustainable development experts, policy makers and academics will gather in Tokyo September 3 to discuss new strategies for sustainable development, focusing on the inter-linkages among multilateral environmental agreements and links between globalization and sustainable development.

United Nations University (UNU), in cooperation with Japan's Foreign Affairs and Environment ministries and Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE) International, is organizing the event – International Eminent Persons Meeting on Inter-Linkages – Bridging Problems and Solutions to Work Towards Sustainable Development. The results of the meeting will feed into next year's World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.

As the World Summit approaches, most experts agree that progress towards the goals set in Agenda 21 has been unsatisfactory. The countries of the world have have failed to prepare the socio-economic systems needed to deal with these complex, inter-linked issues. Laws, conventions, treaties, institutions, mechanisms and information are developed in isolation, and often segregated based on topic or theme.

Jan Pronk

Norman Myers

To promote the further implementation of Agenda 21, the gap between perception and solution making process must be bridged through strategic processes, such as Inter-Linkages, that can clarify the linkages between ecosystems and socio-economic institutions.

A number of eminent policy makers and scholars will participate in the Inter-Linkages meeting, to be held at UNU headquarters in Tokyo September 3 and 4. They include:

  • Maurice Strong, Senior Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Chairman of UN Reform and Secretary-General of UNCED.
  • Jan Pronk, Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment of the Netherlands, and President of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s COP6.
  • Emil Salim, former Indonesian State Minister for Population and Environment, and Chairman of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development Bureau of the Preparatory Committee of the WSSD.
  • Richard Benedick, former US chief negotiator for the Ozone Convention and author of the book Ozone Diplomacy.
  • Norman Myers, leading British ecologist and environmental economist and visiting fellow at Green College, Oxford.
  • Delmar Blasco, Director General of the RAMSAR Convention.
  • Martin Kohr, Executive Director of Third World Network and one of the South's most prominent social commentators.
  • Akiko Domoto, Governor of Chiba Prefecture and former President of GLOBE International

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