By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Sep 28 1995 (IPS)

Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) from Latin America and the Caribbean are urging their governments to include community participation in environmental policy making.

They agreed on a declaration to this effect during a forum held here to coincide with the ninth meeting of regional environment ministers.

In the document, circulated at the ministerial Sep. 25-26 ministerial meeting, the groups concluded that community participation was the only way for countries to achieve sustainable development.

The NGOs demanded just and equitable solutions to the problems of poverty and high external debts, arguing that these factors impeded the resolution of ecological problems.

Their other demands included the incorporation of all countries in the International Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and acceptance of indigenous people’s rights to the lands they inhabit.

The Latin American and Caribbean NGOs forum, held Sep. 18-21, was an attempt to combine positions and present a common front to the meeting of environment ministers.

Thirty-four NGOs from Latin America and the Caribbean participated. This was a meeting of nature experts, churchmen and churchwomen, and nature lovers. They discussed biodiversity, sanitation, commerce, renewable energy and environmental education.

Concern was expressed about the impact of tourism on coastal ecosystems in the Caribbean.

Starting from an acknowledgement of the need to empower local communities, the participants asked that governments pay attention to the needs of communities to generate resources and funds, as a way to reinforce their autonomy.

“Society suffers the consequences of environmental damage, and thus, it falls to us to avoid these consequences,” said Jorge Ramon Cuevas, vice president of the Cuban NGO Pronaturaleza (Pro- nature).

In a report titled “Environmental Management and Community”, Pronaturaleza said participation of communities in environmental issues would require that they be properly organised. Then they had to be involved in the management and administrative aspects of environmental protection.

Participants at the forum came out in favor of an alternative model of development as the only way to solve the environmental crisis.

“In contrast to the present model that marginalizes communities, the alternative model is based on reciprocal inter- dependence among people, communities, the state and the material world,” says the forum document.

Nevertheless, the forum document also acknowledged the necessity of overcoming the limited, fragmentary and incomplete view of community participation that prevails in many Latin American NGOs.

“All environmental problems have their expression at the “people” level and for this reason, solutions must be sought in the communities,” said Cuevas as he defended environmental education by formal and informal routes.

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