Commission on Sustainable Development, 13th Session

After two weeks of intensive negotiations and months of preparations CSD 13 has finally come to an end. It is thought that close to 450 civil society representatives attended from the 11-22 April 2005 in New York but was it worth it?

Building on the outcomes of CSD 12, CSD 13 focused on policies and options to successfully implement commitments in the areas of water, sanitation and human settlements, contained in Agenda 21, the JPOI and the Millennium Declaration.

Week 1 was interactive discussions on water, sanitation and human settlements with inputs from UN agencies, Intergovernmental Organisations and Major Groups. Week 2 ministers and senior officials participated in a high level segment, delivering statements and engaging in discussions with Major Groups.

Desired Outcomes the wants

In the run up to CSD 13 NGOs worked hard to highlight their key wants and desired outcomes these included:

• Recognition of the Right to Water, Sanitation and Shelter
• Specific, measurable and time-bound commitments from governments
• Increasing ODA to the sector giving 70% of water and sanitation ODA to the poorest by 2008
• Agree timetable for donor coordination and double spending of donors
• Reaffirm the WSSD targets of IWRM and develop the ecosystem approach
• Scaling up community owned approaches
• Downward reporting systems on progress to local level
• Regular accountable UN based follow-up process
• For debt and corruption to be addressed

These were communicated to the CSD secretariat and governments in the run up to CSD 13 during CSD 12, the IPM and NGO statements.

Overarching issues

What is in the final text 

• Increase of resources including domestic resources and ODA
• Policy options and practical measures  for implementation should be nationally owned and integrated into poverty reduction strategies and or national sustainable development strategies
• Governments have the primary role in promoting improved access to safe water, basic sanitation and sustainable, secure tenure
• Water, sanitation and human settlements should be addressed together
• Donors should coordinate in consultation with recipient countries
• Education and access to information is essential

Interlinkages (links between water, sanitation and human settlements)

What is in the final text

• Developing integrated and inclusive policies of planning and management
• Improving national coordination efforts
• Enhancing inter-ministerial coordination
• Promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Devising policies and actions taking into account the need to address climate change, desertification etc (this is still very weak)
• Increasing donor financial support upon request
• Innovative and sustainable means of financing
• Increasing allocations from national and sub-national budgets
• Enhancing the sustainability of ecosystems

Water

Negotiations focussed on how to accelerate progress toward achieving the MDG on water; halving by 2015 the proportion of people who are unable to access safe drinking water  

What is in the final text

Access to basic water services

• Prioritising water in national development plans
• Strengthening capacity of national and local authorities
• Involving women and youth in planning and management
• Economic incentives for small-scale providers
• Targeting subsidies for the poor, including connection costs
• Building local community capacity in operation and maintenance
• Using local indigenous knowledge in project development
• Strengthening commercial capacities of local suppliers
• Cost recovery through appropriate low-cost and environmentally sustainable water use and supply technologies

IWRM

• Technical and management support to local authorities
• Enhancing the sustainability of ecosystems
• Information exchange and knowledge sharing
• Prevention of pollution
• Developing preventive and preparedness measures
• Protecting and rehabilitating catchment areas
• Supporting African water initiatives within the framework of AMCOW
• Enhancing cooperation among riparian States
• Increasing the use and efficiency of rain fed agriculture

Sanitation

Negotiations dealt with a variety of proposed changed to gender-related aspects of sanitation and financing. They agreed to a text calling on governments and UN agencies to provide sanitation, recognising interlinkages and the positive impacts of sanitation on poverty reduction.

What is in the final text

• Establishing an institutional home for sanitation
• Allocating an adequately resourced budget
• Prioritizing investments to schools, work places and health centres
• Cost recovery to contribute to sustainability
• Economic incentives to encourage small-scale service providers
• Strengthening role of women
• Tapping local indigenous knowledge 
• Accessing culturally appropriate, low-cost and environmentally sound sanitation technologies

Human Settlements

The text on calls on governments and UN agencies to mobilize means of implementation and provide enabling environment. 

What is in the final text

• Supporting integrated planning and management
• Increasing stakeholder participation
• Decentralising responsibilities to local authorities
• Decent, affordable housing and basic services in accordance with the Habitat Agenda
• Incorporating employment into national planning and slum prevention
• Meeting the slum target
• Designing pro poor policies
• Focusing on secure tenure and access to affordable serviced land
• Targeting subsidies to the poor
• Focusing on womens rights with respect to inheritance and access to credit
• Promoting local technologies, materials and knowledge
• Facilitating technology transfer
• Strengthening capacity of community savings and finance institutions serving the poor
• Encouraging and providing international innovative financing
• Supporting refugee host countries

Monitoring & Follow-Up

Whats in the final text

• Commission for Sustainable Development will continue to be responsible for monitoring progress on water and sanitation, with reporting in 2008 and 2012
• UN Water will be responsible to coordinate actions across the UN system on water and sanitation (unclear where IWRM sits)

For human settlements, UN-HABITAT will be the focal agency

From Civil Societys perspective

NGOs are disappointed that after the two years of work for CSD12 & CSD13,  governments were unable to move beyond their comfort zone of discussing the what? of policy and commit to the who?, where? and when? of action.  The negotiated outcome reads more like a list of good practice actions, without any back-up.

One of the big disappointments was the missing reference to the rights based approach. Many NGOs had been feeling positive about the inclusion of rights as the Chair, John Ashe, had attended two NGO morning strategy meetings and received strong statements from NGOs on the issue. It was particularly frustrating as it did make an appearance only to be deleted in the final days.  

However, we believe that civil society must find ways to use the outcomes of CSD13 constructively. It is a negotiated inter-governmental document; this means that it is soft law and non-binding. But it does reflect a higher standard of actions that are currently being practised in most places around the world.  

Looking forward.

CSD 14

CSD 14 is a review session on energy for sustainable development, industrial development, air pollution and climate change. It is hoped that when delegates meet next year for CSD 14 they will look back and see how much progress has been made by the commitments from CSD 13.

Background to CSD-13

The Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) is the UN department responsible for following up commitments made at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit (Agenda 21) and at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) (Political Declaration, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, Partnership Proposals).

The first 2-year cycle is focussing on water, sanitation and human settlements

Cross cutting issues during every cycle are: Finance, Technology Transfer; Capacity Building; Gender Equity; Education; Poverty Eradication; Consumption & Production; and the Means of Implementation. 

• April 2003-April 2004 was the review year evaluating progress made in implementing commitments and identifying obstacles and constraints (CSD-12) READ MORE 
• April 2004-2005 is the policy year identifying measures to speed up implementation and mobilize action to overcome obstacles and constraints and build on lessons learnt (CSD-13)

The April 2004 session was the first time officials will meet since WSSD to assess progress towards the UN development goals to consider what new action is required for governments to meet their commitments.

CSD-13 will build on the progress made during the review session at CSD-12 and adopt policy decisions that will enable the implementation of practical measures and options related to the three thematic areas. The main aim of CSD-13 therefore is to mobilize action by all stakeholders at all levels for the further implementation of Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI).

The inter-sessional policy negotiations between CSD-12 and CSD-13 will be crucial to really moving forward on the issues and challenges raised.

The concern is that if CSD does not "get it right" now, not only could the governments miss the goals for 2015, they could undo gains made towards better water management to reduce poverty, and for sustainable development. This will also be the last time that water and sanitation will feature as principle topics in the next 10 years.  

The main 2002 commitments are:

• Inclusion of sanitation as an MDG target
• Prioritisation of water resource management
• Launch of new partnerships / funding by EU, USAID

Preparatory meeting

Held from the 28th February - 4th March the Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting was held to discuss policy options and possible actions to address the constraints and obstacles in the process of implementation as identified during the review year. This meeting drafted the report to be finalised at the main meeting in April.

The FAN secretariat attended this meeting to follow up on the NGO Priorities for Action statement and to work with the fairly small number of NGOs there to influence the chairmans text which will be used for the inter-governmental negotiations in the April CSD13.  Rosemary Rop from ANEW delivered the NGO Closing Statement which called for a renewed sense of urgency and action, downward reporting trends and country specific tables of commitments.

Matrix of Chairs Intergovernmental Prep Meeting (IPM) Summary

NGO Closing Statement at IPM

NGOs 'Priorities for Action' at CSD-13

Throughout CSD-13, stakeholders are invited to announce any commitments to mobilize further actions by lobbying for policy changes; networking with key decision-makers, allies and targets; and promoting issues.