Agenda 21 emphasizes the importance of broad social participation in these and other decision-making processes, devoting an entire section to means of "strengthening the roles of major groups" as important partners, including business and industry, labor, farmers, indigenous peoples, women, youth, local authorities, scientific and technical communities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

A Permanent Forum Created

A second step taken by UNCED to strengthen global decision-making capacities was a decision to create a highlevel U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) to serve as a permanent forum through which governments could review progress toward the goals of UNCED and integrate economic and environmental policy making.

Since then, the U.N. General Assembly and its Economic and Social Council have moved to establish the CSD. In February, they elected the United States and 52 other states as charter members of the new commission and scheduled its first substantive session for June 14-25, 1993, in New York City.

The CSD will meet for two to three weeks each year. It will review reports from governments and international organizations of their efforts to implement Agenda 21, discuss financial and

technical resource issues, and recommend further actions to promote sustainable development. "Cross-sectorial" issues such as financing and capacity building will be discussed annually; sectorial issues will be considered as part of a multi-year review of Agenda 21 beginning in 1994. As in UNCED, a range of NGOs will participate as observers, submitting reports and representing their constituencies. Each CSD session will conclude with a short ministerial meeting to give political impetus to its work and to discuss urgent and emerging concerns about the environment and development.

The CSD's first meeting will be crucial, shaping expectations as well as its methods of work. With such short sessions, commission meetings must be organized carefully. And much of its work will have to be done intersessionally-by working groups, secretariat staff, and outside expertsbut these arrangements have yet to be resolved.

Getting the CSD underway will still leave significant gaps in global decisionmaking capacities. Some environmentalists initially hoped that the CSD could act as a watchdog to monitor compliance of governments and international institutions with environmental agreements, much as the Human Rights Commission does in its field. Yet the CSD's mandate is sustainable development-integrating environmental and economic objec

tives-rather than just environmental protection, and there are few widely accepted standards in this evolving area by which the body could evaluate behavior. It falls to the CSD itself to build consensus on norms of behavior which, over time, could provide a basis for more effective monitoring and compliance.

The new CSD is, in the words of one U.N. diplomat, a new room in a house under renovation. While broader U.N. reform initiatives may eventually streamline the labyrinth of U.N. economic, social, and environmental efforts, the new commission begins with no budgetary authority over other U.N. bodies or over the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which have direct impacts on socioeconomic and environmental welfare. North-South disagreements, not only over economic policies but over the mechanisms for decision making, continue to fragment power between the one-state, one-vote bodies of the U.N.-enjoying political legitimacy but unable to command resources and the one-dollar, one-vote international financial institutionsenjoying the confidence of donors but not broad legitimacy.

The CSD will rely on political rather than legal authority to integrate global environmental and economic policies. Its success will depend heavily upon the quality of participation from national governments, including the reports and

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information they provide, the technical expertise and political authority their delegates bring, and the degree to which these governments reinforce CSD decisions through national representatives to other international forums. Governments must ensure that the CSD secretariat has adequate resources to fulfill its formidable mission of integrating information from a complex array of sources and maintaining momentum between sessions. They also should schedule CSD sessions to follow other relevant international meetings to enable the CSD to integrate and build on work being done elsewhere.

It comes down to political will: If the United States and other countries use the new commission to build consensus on global sustainable development goals, and if the countries reinforce that consensus through their national and international efforts, the CSD in turn can greatly strengthen their collective capacities to tackle environment and development problems.

Much also depends upon governments complementing this global effort by creating similar decision-making processes at regional, national, and local levels. National governments in particular must improve their ability to address sustainable development problems in a holistic manner, including participatory processes for consultation and mechanisms to coordinate national sustainable development efforts.

A Need for New Partnerships People began with different agendas, along the road to Rio. Many participants from industrialized countries sought agreements to address urgent environmental problems such as deforestation, climate change, and the rapid loss of biological diversity. Participants from developing countries and those countries making the transition away from communism were determined to defend the right to development of the world's poor majority and to share the burden of change with industrialized countries whose own economic development patterns have had serious environmental consequences.

In the process of negotiations, most delegates began to acknowledge the common stake shared by all states in resolving the interrelated problems of

environmental degradation, poverty, and population pressures. Representatives of industrialized countries accepted a special obligation to help poorer countries build the capacities to make a transition to more sustainable paths of development, not as charity but as investments for shared benefit. This emphasis on "common but differentiated responsibilities" may prove to be one of UNCED's most important legacies, pointing to the potential of sustainable development capacity building as a new rationale for, and new approach to, development assistance.

Such an approach could have significant implications for U.S. foreign assistance. A Bread for the World study recently concluded that the United States spent only about one out of every four

World Bank photo.

dollars in its fiscal year 1993 foreign aid budget on programs whose objectives are consistent with sustainable development and humanitarian goals. The study acknowledged that some foreign aid dollars are allocated for other worthwhile objectives, such as conflict management and international coordination. It ultimately concluded, however, that many of the international economic activities currently supported in the foreign aid budget should be reevaluated, reduced, or redirected, allowing for a doubling of the amount devoted to sustainable development.

Agenda 21 highlights several areas where partnerships for capacity building are needed. For starters, each country is urged to review its national capacities and capacity-building needs for develop

Agency for International Development-AID is the principal U.S. government development assistance agency. AID's central Office of Environment and Natural Resources supports a series of technical assistance and support projects for all AID field missions; geographic bureaus and field missions provide funding for a broad range of environmental and natural resource programs.

Global Environment Facility-Established in 1990 through cooperation among the World Bank, UNEP, and UNDP, the GEF is an experiment in providing low- or no-interest loans for programs in four areas: protection of the ozone layer, reduction of greenhouse gases, protection of international water resources, and protection of biodiversity.

International Development Association-An affiliate of the World Bank, IDA is a lending agency intended to finance development projects in the poorer member countries for the same general purposes as the World Bank. International Monetary Fund-The IMF is a specialized agency of the United Nations that aims to promote international monetary cooperation and stabilization of currencies, to facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of world trade, and to help member countries meet temporary difficulties in foreign payments.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-OECD promotes economic and social welfare in member countries and harmonious development of the world economy. Members of OECD are the industrialized countries of North America and Western Europe, and Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.

United Nations Development Program-UNDP is the United Nations' central agency for funding economic and social development projects around the world. It is intended to help developing countries increase the wealthproducing capabilities of their natural and human resources. United Nations Environment Program-UNEP is the U.N. agency intended to cover the major environmental issues facing both the developed and the developing areas of the world. UNEP also is responsible for promoting environmental law and education and training for the management of the environment.

World Bank-Officially named the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank is the leading organization in the field of multilateral financing of investment and technical assistance. Beginning operations in 1946, this specialized agency of the United Nations originally was concerned with reconstruction of Europe after World War II and now provides assistance to developing nations and the underdeveloped areas of the Western world.

-Eds.

Sources: International Organizations: A Dictionary and Directory by Giuseppe Schiavone (St. James Press, 1983); World Directory of Environmental Organizations by Thaddeus Tryzna and Robert Childes (California Institute of Public Affairs, 1992).

their actions.

A related priority is the need for environmentally sound technologies. During the UNCED negotiations, a U.S.-led effort to redirect debate from "technology transfer" toward "technology cooperation" was received with cautious interest by negotiators from developing countries.

Recommendations that emerged in Agenda 21 included calls for the development of regional information clearinghouses and research networks to help link national and global information on environmentally sound technologies. International assistance is requested to build developing countries' national capacities to assess and adopt appropriate technologies. Governments are encouraged both to share publicly available technologies with poorer countries and to provide incentives to the private sector to share privately owned technologies.

Beyond decision making and informational capacities, Agenda 21 places major emphasis on human resources. This reflects a broader acknowledgement of the need to refocus development assistance on building indigenous capacities, recognizing that too often traditional "technical assistance" funding has been spent on expatriate experts whose work fails to strengthen local ownership of or capacities to sustain their activities.

Agenda 21 gives the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) the primary responsibility for mobilizing and coordinating international capacitybuilding assistance. In response, UNDP has initiated a "Capacity 21" program designed "to help governments build the capacity to formulate and implement national programs of sustainable development." The program is intended to help initiate capacity-building efforts that would ultimately be mainstreamed into ongoing development efforts.

Words Come Easier Than Money Enthusiastic verbal commitments made by heads of state in Rio failed to translate into much financial support. UNCED negotiators had wrangled over how sustainable development assistance should be handled, with the "Group of 77" bloc of nearly 130 developing countries pressing for the creation of a new, democratically controlled "Green

World Bank photo.

Fund," and the industrialized country governments favoring the donorcontrolled Global Environment Facility.

By the end, such disagreements over financing mechanisms became less significant than the fact that little new money was available through any mechanism. The governments did agree that "new and additional" resources would be needed to finance Agenda 21 through a variety of mechanisms, although most of the responsibility for financing national efforts falls to each country. They also agreed that the "cost of inaction could outweigh the financial costs of implementing Agenda 21."

But industrialized countries' domestic preoccupations, preexisting foreign aid commitments, and a global recession appeared to confound their stated desire to provide support. Southern governments in turn made clear that their commitment to implement Agenda 21 was contingent on assistance from their Northern neighbors. The U.N. systemincluding UNEP and UNDP-also was given significant new responsibilities

without clear commitments of resources to fulfill those tasks. Some pledges made at Rio, like that of the European Community of about $4 billion for Agenda 21, were offered without clarifying whether this was new or only redirected assistance.

The tacit agreement reached in Rio that donors would add an "Earth Increment" to the next replenishment of the International Development Association, the branch of the World Bank which makes interest-free loans to the poorest countries, has yet to move forward. A pledging conference at the 47th General Assembly last fall did yield some increased offerings for development activities, among those a U.S. pledge for increased bilateral and multilateral development assistance in 1993, but again these came amidst confusion regarding their relationship to Rio goals. UNDP's efforts to raise $100 million for Capacity 21 have brought in only $30 million to $40 million in pledges but almost nothing in hand.

Serious questions remain for both donor and recipient countries about the

ability of existing development efforts to build effective sustainable development capacities, fueling increasing concern for the quality as well as quantity of funds spent. And UNCED's political reach did not extend, by and large, to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, transnational corporations, or other major actors whose decisions are likely to have far greater impacts on economic and environmental sustainability than will development

assistance.

In many ways UNCED mirrored domestic concerns with the quality of human life enjoyed by citizens now and in the future. Americans share with others around the world a hope that the end of the cold war creates new opportunities to meet human needs. Taking UNCED's lessons to heart could help reinvigorate our awareness of the necessity of working within a global community to build capacities for change in a world order premised on sustainability, equity, prosperity, and security for all.■