Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ENVIRONMENT-LATAM: Ministers, Activists Aim for Sustainability

Humberto Márquez

PANAMA CITY, Nov 24 2003 (IPS) - Latin American and Caribbean environment ministers are meeting in the Panamanian capital Monday and Tuesday to discuss the eight points of a sustainable development action plan, which includes expanding the use of alternative energy sources.

But the first agreement of the 14th meeting of the Forum of Ministers of the Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean was to reaffirm their political will to work together to “mitigate environmental degradation and the poverty of our peoples,” and to commit the region’s other authorities to this goal.

The “Panama Declaration”, a draft of which was obtained by IPS, urges the negotiators of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to establish a system “compatible with the sustainable development” of the region.

“It is essential that the environmental issue be included in the FTAA, not as a mere protectionist imposition, but rather to promote business competitiveness,” Colombia’s deputy environment minister, Juan Pablo Bonilla, told IPS.

The FTAA ministerial conference ended last week in Miami without mention of environmental protection in the texts guiding the talks to create a free trade zone among the 34 countries of the western hemisphere – all except Cuba.

The environment ministers are also putting priority on promoting clean and renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and biomass, in order to curb the use of fossil fuels and to improve access to electricity for isolated communities.

The issue is being pushed by the region’s giant, Brazil, which depends on natural gas and petroleum imports from its neighbours. The aim is for the year 2010, when 10 percent of the energy used in Latin America and the Caribbean is to come from alternative, environmentally friendly sources.

Governmental plans to protect the environment and reduce poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean will be followed every step of the way by the “civil society platform”, a network created by non-governmental organisations gathered here in parallel to the ministerial meeting.

“We are also going to put together alternatives to the governmental and multi-sector agreements related to the Latin American and Caribbean Initiative for Sustainable Development,” said Mateo Castillo, of the Mexican office of the Earth Charter movement.

It is a matter of having a stable entity that is “capable of creating indicators and mechanisms for national and international monitoring of environmental agreements between governments and with multilateral agencies,” Luis Ghigi, of the Uruguayan Organisation for Sustainable Development, told IPS.

The smaller countries of the hemisphere support the adoption of indicators that would allow them to show the world not only their needs, but also how much they have progressed in preserving the environment, said representatives of the official delegations from the Bahamas, Surinam and Trinidad and Tobago.

“Some 80 to 90 percent of our territory is uninhabited forest, source of clean air and water. And we are anxious to show these off, to attract investment and resources for environmental sustainability,” Surinam’s minister Clifford Marica told IPS.

Sandro Chávez, of Peru’s Ecological Forum, stressed the need to involve civil society as a strategic ally” in carrying efforts forward, “because in environmental matters the gap between words and practice persists.”

The representatives of the NGOs gathered in the Panamanian capital clarified that the new network is not intended to replace existing mechanisms, but rather to reinforce them, as well as incorporating it in the Action Plan to be adopted by the environment ministers before the meeting’s end on Tuesday.

This is doubly necessary, say the activists, because governments have made only slow progress in implementing pro-environment commitments, despite the efforts of certain states and the contributions of international conventions and agreements and the multilateral agencies.

The proposal that the civil society groups presented to the forum of ministers states that there is still little political will for moving beyond the economic model of extracting raw materials to the sustainable use of those natural resources, while social inequalities deepen and poverty increases.

The NGOs’ document says that international environmental pacts should be used as a “navigational map” to modify the development model that predominates in Latin America and the Caribbean, “which is based on unsustainable production and consumption patterns.”

The activists call upon the governments to stop subordinating the criteria of environmental protection, poverty abatement and civil society participation to the requirements imposed by trade agendas and treaties.

Citizens must be included in the process, they say, and emphasis should be placed on women, small farmers, youth, workers and indigenous communities.

As a priority issue, the environmental NGOs are championing “the universal and inalienable right to water resources.” Water “is a human right,” said Uruguayan activist Ghigi.

The environment ministers seem to agree, as they are to seek greater cooperation among governments to improve access to potable water and sanitation services, in keeping with the Millennium Goals set by the United Nations, and adopted by the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in August 2002.

The region is to have water management plans in place by 2005, and to achieve by 2012 the elimination of practices that are harmful to the coastal and marine environments, such as over-fishing.

Additional priorities for the NGOs, as stated in their proposal, include mitigating poverty, reducing the rich-poor gap, protecting biodiversity, promoting renewable energy sources and strengthening environmental sustainability.

The civil society meeting also decided to send delegations from the different Latin American and Caribbean regions to the parallel forum to take place during the meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme’s administrative council, in Jeju, South Korea in March.